The morning route to Elmira takes me over downtown Syracuse, the Onondaga Indian reservation and the head of the Tully Valley. It continues over Otisco, Skaneateles, Owasco and Cayuga Lakes, and the farms and woodlands in between them. Once the last of the lakes is behind me, and the hills of home rise ahead, the sightseeing becomes even more interesting.
Three valleys cut through the hills east of Watkins Glen. The right one carries route 227 through Bennettsburg from Watkins Glen to Perry City. The center one is the Smith Valley, carrying the name of Hector Smith, the namesake of the surrounding Town of Hector. The left valley carries route 13 from Ithaca to Elmira. It is interesting because it so clearly shows the maximum advance of the last glacier; above Mazourek's the valley floor is hilly where the glacier dropped its debris. Below that point, the bottom is a flat outwash plain where the meltwater deposited the glacial debris that it carried.
It may sound strange, but I think of things like that as I fly along. On clear mornings I pass within a mile of Cayuta Lake. It was originally owned (after the Indians, of course) by the Lawrence family who built three mansions and a stone chapel on its shores. They never lived there, although two of the mansions have survived to this day. To my left is the Connecticut Hill area, once home to many farm families but now just woodland and lonesome lanes. During the depression, the farmers were bought out, the dwellings razed, and and the land reforested.
The area has a more contemporary history too, which is to say my history. I drove a school bus through the hills above Odessa for 18 years. I look down and see the roads I traveled and see the houses where I once stopped. I think of the kids that are now grown. One family of farm boys, none of them a bus driver's delight, stayed home and have built one of the area's largest dairies.
Another is a pilot who gave me a hello one morning on the Syracuse departure frequency. Another is a local storekeeper, another a teacher, the list goes on and on through the professions, trades and occupations.
There are a surprising amount of parallels between my present job and the bus runs that I had. Both require a sense of confidence and independence, both run on a close schedule, and both have periods of boredom interspersed with moments of great agitation. I always drove the long runs that went up and down hills several times, giving me an early morning view across the entire "world- as- known- to- me" and of the skies above. I enjoyed the job, and really it wasn't a whole lot different than what I do now.
In a strange if not fortuitous circumstance, it was through the window of the school bus that I first became aware of the job I now have. Many mornings as I climbed Newtown Road northeast out of Texas Hollow I would see a large single engine airplane flying fairly low, going southwest towards Elmira. It was one of the planes I now fly, traveling the route I now have. It was probably 15 years ago.
As I drove up the hill I would imagine having that job, and how interesting it would be. I was about 40 back then, and not flying at all. I was content to merely imagine the freight pilot's job because I had no inkling that I could someday sit in that very airplane and look down at the roads I was then driving. Seeing that airplane probably had something to do with my return to flying after a 13 year break, but I never imagined any flying but grass- field flight instruction.
Times and circumstances changed and changed some more again. Three years ago I was instructing at Elmira. I had been trying to reestablish my instrument rating, but decided that just like the machinist work that I had tried a few years earlier, I was too old a dog to learn that many new tricks. The freight pilot vacancy opened right in front of me, and to this day I cannot believe my audacity in applying for it. I had never seen the inside of a storm cloud, yet I sought a job that would take me into Newark Airport, alone in the dark, in all sorts of weather, right from the beginning.
As I pass over the Odessa area on nice mornings I watch out my windows and see the yellow buses driving the same roads I did for so many years. At age 40 I thought I was too old to learn the things I eventually learned in my 50s, and in that there is a lesson for everyone; it takes more time, it takes more luck, and the stakes are higher, but late life career changes are possible. Sometimes I wonder what might have been if I had moved up from little airplanes earlier, in the 70s or 80s, but the thought passes quickly. The time wasn't right.
Wondering about jobs you could have had is just like wondering about women you wished you might marry. My wife and I were both "old enough to know better" when we married 24 years ago, and sometimes we think of what we might have missed by not meeting earlier. That thought passes quickly too; we both know that each of us hadn't yet become what we needed to be. The time wasn't right.
In love, and the rest of life too, it seems that the best things are found when you aren't really looking.