Dragon Lady

"Houston we have a problem" that quote goes around in my head these days. 

...

I once new a tall ginger, a big guy. He moved like a golden panther, smooth, fast when needed. He could hardly pack himself into the cockpit of his Dragon Lady with his spacesuit on. We spoke a language of planes, space, and all the other ones too.

Looking over the banks of the Banana river, we would sit at a pine coloured table with awe inspiring coats of varnish, lights bouncing off each ripple, and plan the future. We both saw the problems that were around us; it was the early 90's. He saw them from a different angle, we both knew it was just going to get worse. We enjoyed coming up with solutions in rapid fire. I sat next to him sometimes and others across. He had the best ideas, and the worst plans. His plan was that every one gets one bullet. It was the worst plan. We would laugh but I would always say, "Baby, that never ends well." meaning it literally...and then I would tell him he was going to make a great politician. I had the better plans and he knew it.

We drove across the state of Florida without a care in the world looking for adventure when he wasn't working. We rode in elevators, climbed stairs and looked behind curtains. We watched the aircraft take off and land as the fastest coolest car they could find sped down the run way, '3. 2. 1'. (The pilot can't see the ground so one of the others drives as fast as needed along the U2 as it's landing. It's amazing timing and communication.)

I was invited to see inside his aircraft one afternoon. They let me climb the ladder and see the whole layout. It was beat up with black matte paint rubbed off in some places. It was beautiful. If you know how much I love all things that can fly and see you will know that this was my sacred; I saw inside an active spy space glider before flight. 

One night when he was picking me up for dinner I answered the door but wasn't ready. I introduced him to my father and left them to chat. I wasn't going to be long, just long enough. I come out of the hall way and see him opposite of my dad slouched in a chair. In the car I told him, 'no one is going to take you seriously unless you sit up' and we laughed because we knew it was true. 

He had to leave early, possibly because I was a distraction, that was the inside word. We played tetris with all his aluminum rectangle bags filled with his orange, special fitting spacesuit; in every way. We placed them carefully into the hatch of my white Mazda 323 so I could drop him off at MCO. We weren't worried about the future, we knew the plan. 

He knew he was going to die before it happened but I also know he had hope there was another way. It was 1996 when my husband at the time, his classmate, came home and debriefed me/told me the news. His plane had crashed outside of Beale AFB.  

...

Risk assessment is something every individual does. 

We've had an explosion and we are running out of air. There has to be another way than going down in flames. You need really good communication lines. A book within a book, a story in a story said in shorthand. "Ah, Houston we've got a problem." means' there is a way to fix a problem if you have the best minds working the problem...and can convey it.