Old Story Alert!

This is a story I wrote in 2008 just after the volcano opened up and the vog started. I hope you like it. Where were you when the dog began?

I Can't See Clearly Now May 16, 2008 Halfway to the airport I found myself staring through the passenger side window to see if I can catch a glimpse of what it looks like around the mountain towards Kamuela. Quit that, I have to tell myself. Focus on the road ahead or you'll never get a chance to find out if it's got clear air or not. The number one killer of people in West Hawaii is the result of what is technicaly called "crossing the centerline and coming in contact with oncoming traffic" or a head on collison. Spending too much time gazing other than straight ahead while driving a car on Hawaii is a good way to meet someone new in a very unpleasant way. I have three targets I need to shoot. The Watanabe Rose Farm in Waimea, as well as a three acre future fish farm in Volcano Village and a 123 acre ranch half way up the mountain above Milolii. If you plotted each property on a map they would form a rough triangle with legs close to eighty  miles apart. In other words, a good amount flying to be done today to get these jobs done. And I do need to get them done. If I hit the trifecta and catch all three its a fourteen hundred dollar day. I could use a fourteen hundred dollar day right about now. I just got my kids dental bill from Dr. Hirata. When the hell did it start costing a hundred fifty bucks plus tip for each cavity? Shoulda gone to dental school instead of flight school. As I walk across the ramp to my plane, tail #26Mike, I see the local mechanic, Keith, pushing a wheeled rack loaded with a dozen red five gallon fuel cans towards his Cessna. This is an odd sight as the normal method to fuel a plane is to taxi over to the fuel area on the south ramp. Grumpily wondering if maybe the airports only fuel pump is broken again, as it has been three times in the last six months, I head in his direction to ask.  By now Keith is standing on a ladder pouring gas into a funnel sticking out of the right fuel tank above the wing. As I approach the trailing edge of the wing and am about to ask him what's up, Keith beats me to it by saying: "Two bucks a gallon, it adds up quick." Aviation mechanics by nature are men of few words. And those words they use are sparing in sentiment and frivolity. They are very much to the point when they speak. Keith is such a mechanic, but since this is Hawaii you have to add the fact that you usually will find him hunched over an engine cowling wearing flip flops, shorts and a tank top. It may be an international airport, but it's still Kona, Hawaii after all. "Four fifty a gallon at the harbor" Keith says. "They're chargin' Six sixty eight here on the field." "Six sixty-eight!" I painfully exclaim. "Crap, it was five fifty a gallon two weeks ago!" "Yep" Says Keith and goes back to his fueling. Six sixty a gallon! "Damn!" I think as I head to my plane. Let's see, 26Mike burns eight gallons an hour so that comes out to forty eight bucks per hour in gas alone. A year and a half ago I was paying thirty bucks an hour. I wonder if a dentists costs have nearly doubled in the last year and a half? Before climbing in and buttoning up 26Mike I take a last glance around at the sky and see that a grey haze is quickly seeping in everywhere I look.  The Vog has moved back in.  For those not living on the island of Hawaii I should explain. Three months ago a crack opened up on the floor of the huge Halemaumau Crater located at the Kiluaea Volcano. It immediately began spewing forth a massive cloud of sulphur dioxide gas. This gas has taken the form of a smog like shroud of particulate matter that, depending on the wind, creates a haze which turns our normal clear blue Hawaiian skies into a twilight zone like veil of grey which limits visibility to little more than a few miles. Some days it is better and on others it creates an oppressive sheet of dismal colorless sky and a non-horizon which saps you of the desire to do most things outside. For someone like me who pays his mortgage by shooting sunset weddings, there hasn't been a decent Kona sunset in a month. But, being the eternal optimist all who know me know that I am, I decide to take off confident that the skies will be clear where I need them to be clear. Leaving Kona airspace I climb through two thousand feet and as I change course towards Waimea I tell the passengers they are free to move about the cabin and instruct the fight attendants to begin the inflight beverage service. In other words I take bite of a granola bar and crack open a water. As I am climbing towards Waimea I make a call to the flight service station and ask for a weather briefing for the Volcano area. I hear the female briefer take a sharp in-breath and in effect tell me that I did not want to fly anywhere near the volcano. Uh-uh, bad idea, don't do it, run...run away like the wind! ect. The actual briefing was quite a bit more formal and involved a lot of technical weather jargon, but that is basically what she was saying. Stay the hell away from that side of the island today! Crap, there goes five hundred bucks. OK, scratch the fish farm in Volcano Village. So what about the rose farm in Waimea? Still worth a shot I figure. I made it to the Kawaihae Road which if you follow it takes you up the mountain three thousand feet to downtown Waimea and a few blocks from the farm. As I began to fly up hill beside the road I could sense the visibility both below me and ahead of me diminishing. Right, OK drop down a bit stay over the road and all should be good. I take a look down at my chart, check the flight instruments and then back up out the windscreen. Nothing! Absolutely nothing. No sky, no horizon, no ground, nothing but a bright grey haze all about me. Great, I'm in the volcanic version of a white out! I remember that I was fling a heading of about 080 degrees before I looked down and immediately add a hundred eighty to that and aim for a 270 heading, shove the throttle to full power and begin a right turn, away from the Kohala Mountains I know are on my left somewhere and head back toward the ocean I know is behind me. I watch my artificial horizon, compass, altimeter and vertical speed indicator just like I was taught to do way back when. Forget about the mountains you might run into, head for the ocean you know is back that way somewhere. They don't call it sea level for nothing, you won't hit a thing fifty feet above sea level once you get over it. Gradually as I descend below appears a silvery carpet of water and a black lava rock coastline. OK, all's well from here on in. In Hawaii you fly by the coastline rule when everything else has gone down the crapper. Find the coastline, follow it and eventually you'll find an airport or a golf course you can land on. Not even bothering to consider the 123 acre lot in Milolii I make my way back to Kona airport, land 26Mike and tally the day. Instead of walking away with fourteen hundred bucks in the bank  I am a hundred in the whole for fuel and have wasted half a days worth of work.  Damn Vog.  But, I am also not a smoking aluminum laced hole in the ground south Waimea, so I guess it was a good day. Mayor Kim ought to put a call in to FEMA and ask them to airdrop a ton of Tums into the volcano, see if that would solve Madam Pele's heartburn. I wonder if Dr Hirata ever has days like this? Laters...Brian