The Right Stuff

“There’s no such thing as a natural-born pilot. Generally, the person with the most experience is best.” — Chuck Yeager

• On the one hand there’s The Wrong Stuff such as ignorance, hubris, fear and panic;
• On the other hand there’s the education, training and experience we use to purge all of The Wrong Stuff and keep it out of our system.

I never met Chuck but according to my log book, he must have heard my engine noise on Thanksgiving Day of 1999 while I was figuring out where to park my Piper Arrow (depicted below at El Monte) on the Grass Valley Air Attack Base (O17), since renamed to Nevada County Airport (KGOO).

I had come to a stop right in front of his hangar — the one with the unpainted, silvery F-104 Starfighter fuselage (depicted above all painted up), then brightly polished against the elements, gleaming in the sunlight and reaching for the sky on its display mount, and other historical relics out front — and the bay door was wide open. No, I didn’t stride in and say “Hey! I know you!” because so did millions of others across the world and I didn’t want him to remember me as the gazillion and 1st gawker to interrupt his daily business. My brother had seen him too in the local hardware store and them’s the rules about famous folk and mega stars because they have lives too.

Here is the Piper Arrow I flew from El Monte (EMT) to Grass Valley (then O17) that day.