Eight thousand feet down, the Sacramento Valley shines beneath me, a living emerald quilt. Lakes shimmer in the brilliant haze. From here, the cars are white blood cells, coursing through the veins of Calaveras County.
Adam Wilt is the amiable pilot of this Cessna C177A N30304, vintage 1969, with all the Populuxe design hipness of the period. The vinyl dashboard is crinkled and cracked from years of sun and air, and the windshield is streaked with hairline scratches, but the ashtrays are clean and the wings are unmarked. The fat-ass engine growls and hauls us through the fog.
“We’re at cruising altitude,” says Adam. “I would say it’s OK for you to get up and walk around the cabin, but I’d have to get out first.”
“I’ll bet you’ve used that joke before,” I said.
Adam looked chastened. “No, I haven’t,” he said. Mountains, fields, trees, sky: everywhere, luscious and thrilling hues of green and blue.
We met Josh and Tasha at the airport, who greeted us like old friends. They smiled and corralled us into their van, loaded with props, sunscreens, a tent, a power generator, and a gregarious chihuahua named Dieter.
In half an hour we are at a lush, open, green pasture that goes by the quaint name N 57 deg 36.657′, E 120 deg 53.387′. Dave Kellum, the director, introduces me to the costume: a green industrial plastic slicker, black coveralls, black shirt and tie, gas mask, and bowler top hat, filled with several bags of ice to keep me cool. The suit plus full-face gas mask plus balaclava plus bowler hat plus galoshes plus slicker plus backpack weighs in excess of eighty pounds.
I stand in front of the camera. Grips reflect fill lights on my sweltering head. I blink and become Geoffrey Done.
“Son of a bitch,” I whisper. I raise the pistol towards the mechanical eye, two-hand grip —
Bang! Cut! “Okay, next set-up,” says Dave, and four people scramble to rearrange my costume.
Six hours and fourteen set-ups. At the end of a productive day, Adam and I are back in the Cardinal, floating at one hundred twenty miles an hour into a picture-perfect west-coast sunset.
Really! you must convince your culture to invest in nano-technology. All that cumbursum equipment is frightfully outdated…..
EAO
Ogyletree, that’s out of line, but it’s only an article 75.b.1 violation, so we’ll let it pass–this time. But mind you this: There might not BE a next time. The cows are watching, the cows are ALWAYS watching… your Visage is no match for their vigil…
I am somewhat curious if Adam’s airplane is a piece of junk. Why would you want to fly in an airplane that has a dashboard that is cracked, and has a scratched windshield. Do you realize your LIFE depends on this airplane not flying apart?
Adam is one paranoid geek motherfucker. I strongly suspect that that creaky little plane is better maintained and monitored than 90% of the commercial aircraft in the sky.
Do you suppose Adam uses his airplane to pickup girls? I can see that geek using the pickup line "Hey baby, want to save $20 by not having to buy a vibrator? I have an airplane that vibrates even more!"
Um, no, I can’t see Adam doing that.