Autumn brings cold fronts sweeping through the Gulf Coast area. The cool, crisp air (courtesy of Canada) brings sunshine, pollen – and great visibility….at least for a day or two before the evil Gulf Moisture reasserts its supremacy and once again surrounds us in haze. But while the good visibility lasts, I like to climb up to ten or fifteen thousand feet as I fly over the coastal islands and look to the horizon. To the east and north, I can see well into Louisiana. To the south and west, well down to Matagorda and beyond. During hurricane season, millions of coastal residents watch the televised predictions of storm tracks, praying and hoping that a tropical low will miss them by just thirty miles (the size of the most destructive wind circle). That seems like such a long way to most – thirty miles…. But here I am, looking out of the top of my canopy as I roll over to survey the earth’s surface and can see four times that distance at one glance. And just fifteen minutes ago, I was sitting on the runway at home…. Airplanes in general, but RV’s in particular, can change your “World View”.
When I was a teenager learning to fly in a J-3 Cub, I remember a solo flight where I decided to climb up to 10,000 feet, just because I could. It took quite awhile, but there I was – high over the Twin Cities of Minnesota, looking down on the entire metropolitan area from edge to edge. Here was a city in which I had spent my school years, a place vast enough to take more than an hour to drive across – yet now I could see it all at once. It was an amazing sight, something that I enjoyed at a level that I simply can’t describe. I believe it is the same reason I love to climb mountains and look back out on the plains beyond. There is something visceral about seeing a larger world, the world beyond the low horizon, which satisfies us to the core.
I remember coming down from that flight and talking to the guys at the airport about it. I was amazed that so many didn’t understand the value of the experience. “Why’d you want to go that high, anyway?” was a common question. Personally, I couldn’t imagine NOT doing so! So many private pilots flying simple and slow airplanes never climb more than a few thousand feet above the surface. They are content to bounce along at low altitudes, struggling with turbulence and heat, their horizons limited to a few tens of miles. There world view is what they can see a few miles ahead, a perspective not much different than a driver on the plains of Nebraska. Ahh….what they are missing!
The RV opens up our world by giving us both speed and altitude capability. It changes your perspective completely. Breakfast on the Mississippi, dinner on the Pacific – nothing to it! A couple of weeks ago, we left Houston just before sunrise, and ended up in northwestern Nevada by mid-afternoon (and would have been on the Oregon coast for supper if not for a little band of weather). A few days later, we launched across the Basin and Range again, and crossed a significant portion of the western expanse in just a few hours on our way to West Texas. The amazing thing about this is that even now, I can see the entire route in my mind’s eye, the memories burned like photographs in my subconscious. I can bring up Google Earth and follow the route saying to myself “yes, I remember that, I was there!” and I can do that with many (if not all) of the routes I have flown throughout my life. I have always said that if you want to hypnotize me, put a map in my hands – I will stare at it until you take it away. Looking at the earth itself is even more mesmerizing.
Travel used to take human beings months. Significant travel could take years. Crossing the Great Plains was an expedition, a life-changing event that usually signified a permanent change – few would undertake the return journey after the hardships of the outbound trek. The Rocky Mountains were an endless chain of hardships – not a pleasant and beautiful site to be crossed in an hour or two. The dry lakebeds between ranges were places of death and skeletons – not inviting emergency landing sites in case of trouble. Cities were visited weeks apart – not ticked off on the half hour as landmarks and turning points to be logged.
It is easy to become jaded by the ease that airline travel permits. Get into an aluminum tube, sit (uncomfortably) for a few hours and get out of the tube a thousand miles away. Maybe you see the world go by, maybe you don’t. But get in an RV and watch the panorama move. Watch all the maps you have ever studied come alive below you. Enjoy the world-changing experience of realizing that you are mastering time and space in a machine you built and now control. This is what travelling in an RV is really about! There are faster and higher flying airplanes, but they seem to disconnect you from the process. There are lower and slower airplanes that hint at what is to come, but only tantalize without satisfying. Having the range, speed and altitude capability to change your perspective on the world in a few short hours is what it’s all about. Once you have travelled in an RV, you and the world will never be the same again – the change is both permanent and profound...it is a change to your World View, it it can never be undone!
When I was a teenager learning to fly in a J-3 Cub, I remember a solo flight where I decided to climb up to 10,000 feet, just because I could. It took quite awhile, but there I was – high over the Twin Cities of Minnesota, looking down on the entire metropolitan area from edge to edge. Here was a city in which I had spent my school years, a place vast enough to take more than an hour to drive across – yet now I could see it all at once. It was an amazing sight, something that I enjoyed at a level that I simply can’t describe. I believe it is the same reason I love to climb mountains and look back out on the plains beyond. There is something visceral about seeing a larger world, the world beyond the low horizon, which satisfies us to the core.
I remember coming down from that flight and talking to the guys at the airport about it. I was amazed that so many didn’t understand the value of the experience. “Why’d you want to go that high, anyway?” was a common question. Personally, I couldn’t imagine NOT doing so! So many private pilots flying simple and slow airplanes never climb more than a few thousand feet above the surface. They are content to bounce along at low altitudes, struggling with turbulence and heat, their horizons limited to a few tens of miles. There world view is what they can see a few miles ahead, a perspective not much different than a driver on the plains of Nebraska. Ahh….what they are missing!
The RV opens up our world by giving us both speed and altitude capability. It changes your perspective completely. Breakfast on the Mississippi, dinner on the Pacific – nothing to it! A couple of weeks ago, we left Houston just before sunrise, and ended up in northwestern Nevada by mid-afternoon (and would have been on the Oregon coast for supper if not for a little band of weather). A few days later, we launched across the Basin and Range again, and crossed a significant portion of the western expanse in just a few hours on our way to West Texas. The amazing thing about this is that even now, I can see the entire route in my mind’s eye, the memories burned like photographs in my subconscious. I can bring up Google Earth and follow the route saying to myself “yes, I remember that, I was there!” and I can do that with many (if not all) of the routes I have flown throughout my life. I have always said that if you want to hypnotize me, put a map in my hands – I will stare at it until you take it away. Looking at the earth itself is even more mesmerizing.
Travel used to take human beings months. Significant travel could take years. Crossing the Great Plains was an expedition, a life-changing event that usually signified a permanent change – few would undertake the return journey after the hardships of the outbound trek. The Rocky Mountains were an endless chain of hardships – not a pleasant and beautiful site to be crossed in an hour or two. The dry lakebeds between ranges were places of death and skeletons – not inviting emergency landing sites in case of trouble. Cities were visited weeks apart – not ticked off on the half hour as landmarks and turning points to be logged.
It is easy to become jaded by the ease that airline travel permits. Get into an aluminum tube, sit (uncomfortably) for a few hours and get out of the tube a thousand miles away. Maybe you see the world go by, maybe you don’t. But get in an RV and watch the panorama move. Watch all the maps you have ever studied come alive below you. Enjoy the world-changing experience of realizing that you are mastering time and space in a machine you built and now control. This is what travelling in an RV is really about! There are faster and higher flying airplanes, but they seem to disconnect you from the process. There are lower and slower airplanes that hint at what is to come, but only tantalize without satisfying. Having the range, speed and altitude capability to change your perspective on the world in a few short hours is what it’s all about. Once you have travelled in an RV, you and the world will never be the same again – the change is both permanent and profound...it is a change to your World View, it it can never be undone!
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