A global tour, low and slow

"Why the trip?" he continued. "I've lived overseas for 19 years, and it's time to move back to lovely Alaska before I'm considered too old to get a job there.... The cost of crating the aircraft is about the same as flying it myself. So why spend that loot when I can get 100-plus hours in my logbook and a lot of interesting experiences?

"And then there's the chance to set the world's speed record from Windhoek to Fairbanks," he joked, since it's never been done before, as far as he knows.

"There are an enormous number of people who are helping out in this endeavor," says Arthur. Among them: a South African pilot who lent him a life raft; the Namibian president's former pilot who provided landing-approach charts for airports in Africa and Europe; the Boeing Company, which shared proprietary information on winds; and "a guy in New Hampshire who specializes in orienting pilots to the rigors of flying the North Atlantic."

"I'll have to write a lot of thank-you letters when I'm done," he says. I'm listed as "second in command" of Arthur's Cessna 182, a single-engine aircraft. Since I'm the only other person aboard, that's literally true. Long ago, I was a naval aviator, flying jets from aircraft carriers, so I have some experience in flying. But my main job this time is map reader, baggage handler, flight attendant, and designated finder of places to stay when we drop onto a new airfield for the night. I'll also be recording the journey.

Our route was determined by geopolitical factors (relative political stability, where we can get fuel, how hard it is to get visas and landing clearances, etc.) plus geography - crossing the North Atlantic via the Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Greenland is really the only way in a light aircraft. We had intended to go up the east side of Africa. But that would have entailed passing through Saudi Arabian airspace, and getting permission became a bureaucratic impossibility. So a week before scheduled launch, the route was changed to the other side of the continent.

Along the way, we'll witness the expanse and connectedness of things below in ways impossible to see from an airliner. We'll move through a world challenged by natural disasters, AIDS, overpopulation, and poverty, through one that is high-tech, rich, and fighting environmental battles linked to consumption and overcrowding, and finally to the resource-rich but barely populated regions of Canada.

When I'm feeling romantic, I like to think of us as a modern-day Lewis and Clark (or maybe Huck and Jim), two guys on a once-in-a-lifetime aerial road trip. But there's more to it than that. Amid the mundane details and daily routine inside the Cessna cabin, I expect there to be unforeseen revelations and epiphanies - about the world seen this unique way and perhaps about ourselves.

Charles Lindbergh wrote: "The important thing is to start: to lay a plan, and then follow it step by step no matter how small or large each one by itself may seem."

In this case, I think I'd balance Lindbergh's instruction with one by Burton Holmes, the grand old man of travel: "Get the gist of a journey, ground fine by discrimination, leavened with information and seasoned with humor."

I'm ready, Arthur. Fire up the Cessna. Let's go.

*First of a series. Part 2 will appear May 4.

(c) Copyright 2000. The Christian Science Publishing Society

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