Just getting there was an adventure. We took our small company plane, and because of a ferocious headwind, had plenty of time to look out and see the landscape below. There isn’t much grass west of I-35. I can understand why the Comanche’s were so ornery. We barely cleared the tops of the hills near Cloudcroft, New Mexico, at nearly 9,000 feet, home of the high school football field with the highest elevation in the US. Once clear of the snow-capped peaks, we glided into Los Cruces before the tanks went dry, which would have caused the engine to get very quiet.
While at the STIHL meeting we discussed just enough business to call it a business trip and then heard from some very interesting speakers. The first speaker was Dr. Robert Ballard. For those who don’t know, which included me until then and some of you until now, Dr. Ballard is the fellow who found the Titanic. And based on his credentials and long list of degrees, he is easily the most brilliant person I’ve ever met.
I learned a number of things from him. First, the search for the Titanic was a cover for the Navy’s search for a downed Soviet Nuclear Sub. Finding the Titanic was an accident, but there you go. And I learned about the world’s largest mountain range and geological formation, the mid-continent ridge, which essentially circumnavigates the entire earth. I would have guessed the Rockies or Himalayas, but what do I know. And then Dr. Ballard began talking about the mid-continent ridge being the origin of life, and he wasn’t kidding. That’s when I decided his brilliance had limits and that he’d spent too much time underwater.
The next day’s speaker, Mike Durant, was sitting next to me. We began whispering like school kids about flying. Mike, like me, is a pilot and an author, but he’s more than that. Mike’s flying is movie material and his books are non-fiction. I was reading his most recent book “In The Company of Heroes,” when we met, not actually at the moment we met, but during the time. Mike writes about his own experiences, and in the book he shares his story of the Battle of Mogadishu. Mike knows the story because he was the only American survivor of the battle and held prisoner for several days. If you’ve seen the movie “Blackhawk Down,” you know part of his story. Read the book to learn the details.
Anxious to tell Mike about my books, I began by telling him that all of the net proceeds of book sales are donated to Resurrecting Lives Foundation. And he asked about RLF - www.resurrectinglives.org, and I explained. And then he mentioned having a niece serving in Afghanistan who was a medic with a focus on head injuries, RLF’s primary focus. And that’s when the small world thing began to shape up.
I gave Mike the email address of Dr. Chrisanne Gordon, who heads up RLF and graduated Summa Cum Laude from Ohio State’s Medical school, so almost as brilliant as the speaker Mike and I were supposed to be listening to. A few days later, Mike’s niece made email contact with Dr. Gordon. It gets better. Dr. Gordon was walking into an exam room when she got the email. She’s one of those people who grabs at her cell phone like a jumpy gun slinger and was reading the email when entering the room. Her patient asked what was so important. Dr. Gordon explained. As it turned out, the patient had been stationed in Somalia during the Battle of Mogadishu and was well versed on Mike Durant’s story.
Heading home, our tailwind was over 200 MPH. Our ground speed occasionally exceeded 500 MPH. We made the trip from Palm Springs to Marble Hill in just under 4.5 hours. That ain’t bad for a little single engine airplane. It truly is a small world.
