The skies are full of airplanes these days. Well, not as many this past year, obviously. But in general, we can almost always look up and see a plane traveling overhead.
Of course, we have Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright to thank for this. They were standing on the beaches of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903. Then they weren’t. Then they were again. Yes. The first flight. And today, December 17, marks the anniversary of their first flight.
I rarely write about them, or this event, because their works are so widely known. But once again, I was struck by the photo we always see of that first flight.
There is Orville, in the plane, laying flat as a pancake, and Wilbur is running alongside. The wheels are barely 6 inches off the ground. They say they took their plane up four times that day on the beach, for around 10 seconds each time. It has also been recorded that the plane reached an altitude of 120 feet. We don’t see that in the photo, as the plane is scarcely off the ground. The picture reminds me of myself, running across the driveway, jumping into the air every few steps, shouting, “I’m flying, I’m flying.” I only do this on mornings when I’ve had too much coffee.
At any rate, that first flight seems lackluster to me. But we had to start somewhere. That’s true with everything, you know. We all have to start somewhere.
Someone asked me the other day how it was that I know so much about “website stuff.” Well, a long time ago, I had a keen interest in “website stuff,” and I started reading and learning. It doesn’t matter what the “stuff” is. We just learn and do. Baking. Mechanics. Swimming. Gardening. Physics. Language. We all have our skills and, hopefully, our aptitudes.
I think that’s what makes good people great — their aptitudes. Their natural ability. Those gifts. That’s part of learning something new. Of course, there is the actual “work” of learning, the paying attention, the practicing. And then, sometimes, when there is “greatness,” I feel a little luck might be involved.
Take another event that happened on this day.
On December 17, 1979, a Hollywood stuntman named Stan Barrett became the first person to travel faster than the speed of sound on land. Good old Steve Yeager did it in the air, but Stan Barrett was on the ground.
This took place on a dry lakebed at California’s Edwards Air Force Base. Barrett drove a rocket-missile-powered car. But, luck failed him. He did not set an official record.
The radar scanner was acting up that day. So when Barrett traveled at the top speed of 739.666 miles per hour, it was only an estimate. So, he decided to try again and drove across the lakebed a second time.
It was only about 20 degrees Fahrenheit that day, and in order for Barrett to break the sound barrier under those conditions, he had to go faster than 731.9 miles per hour. He fired up the rocket engine, and once the engine was up to capacity, he took off. He zoomed right past the bank of timing devices. It only took a few seconds to travel the six-mile lakebed.
But poor luck stepped in. The radar speedometers on the ground malfunctioned again. Instead of Barrett’s speed, they measured the speed of a passing truck, which was only traveling at 38 miles per hour. They gave him the “unofficial” record of breaking the sound barrier, based on Air Force data estimates. But the controversy over how fast Barrett actually went persists to this day.
So there it is. No matter who we are and what we do, we grow by learning. The work. The aptitude. The luck. Sometimes, we soar to great heights. Other times, we’re mistaken for an old, slow-moving pickup truck.
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‘All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.’
–Immanuel Kant
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‘That which we persist in doing becomes easier for us to do; not that the nature of the thing itself is changed, but that our power to do is increased.’
–Ralph Waldo Emerson
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‘Every student can learn, just not on the same day, or the same way.’
–George Evans
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Three guys in motion. All the rest of us too.
