Tina Marie's Ramblings

I went flying with a friend today in his Tiger. When we turned downwind to land at Weiser, I noticed a plane which looked an awful lot like the Duchess stuck in the mud next to the runway.

When we landed, I discovered that it was, in fact, the Duchess, and it was very, very stuck. The entire right main wheel was sunk in the mud, at least a foot or so down.

See, Weiser doesn't have paved taxiways. And it's been raining for weeks - it's spring in Houston. When it's dry, we taxi down the grass along the runway, but when it's wet, you wait until there isn't anyone landing or taking off, and you taxi back down the runway, then turn around and takeoff.

I don't know the name of the woman flying the Duchess. She's about 19 or 20. Daddy bought her a block of 50 hours of Duchess rental (at $152 a hour), and she just got her first airline interview. She's tall, blond, and attractive. She was taking her tall, cute, blond boyfriend flying.

Except that she hadn't wanted to wait to back-taxi, and she'd tried to taxi down the grass to the end of the runway. And it really, really hadn't gone well. The Duchess is a 3900 lb airplane. The grass next to the runway was too wet to walk on. In many places, there was standing water.

So she'd made it about 750 ft down the grass, and then gotten stuck. She'd kept going for a while, judging from the amount of mud kicked up on top of the wing by the right prop, but eventually she came to a stop.

When I got there, there were 3 flight instructors, the owner of the flight school, and the boyfriend milling around next to the airplane. She was sitting in the airplane, because, "I don't want to get my shoes wet!" (gee, perhaps you should have thought about this before trying to put 3900 lbs of airplane here!).

After some mulling around, and some experimental tugs, it was decided that the plan was this: One flight instructor in his pickup truck pulling it backwards by the tail tie-down, and the other two instructors and I were going to push up on the wing to lift it out of the mud. I was standing by the wingtip, sinking up to my ankles in cold mud, waiting for the tail to be tied up, and she was just sitting there, giving me a look of total disdain.

Every woman has seen that look. It said, "You don't deserve to call yourself a woman." And I responded in the same way I've responded since I was in third grade - I was ashamed.

I was ashamed of my hair, full of airplane grease because I'd spent the morning working on Michael's airplane. I was ashamed of my big breasts, and my big belly, and my big butt. I was ashamed of my baggy jeans, muddy to the knees. And my soggy, muddy tennis shoes. I turned red, and turned away.

And then the tail was hooked up, and we lifted, and the strap broke. And it was tied up again with heavier rope, and this time we lifted, and he pulled, and it came free. She didn't even thank us - just loaded the boyfriend (who had just stood around watching the whole time), and headed out again, without ever getting her shoes wet.

It was hours later before I thought about it or her again. And when I did, I was angry - at her, for having the nerve to look down on the people helping her out of the mess she'd put herself in, but more at myself for allowing her to make me feel that way.

You'd think that at 32, I'd be past this.

Obviously, I'm not.

Tags: duchess, introspection
Current Mood: annoyed
Current Music: Emeril