gravity – Oh Fair New Mexico

Opting out of Oppenheimer: My Father’s Atomic Obsession

Posted on September 4, 2023September 4, 2023
by Karen Fayeth
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The American tale of a nuclear family

A color photo of a mushroom cloud from an atomic text at Nevada Test Site in 1957. The photo is very orange with the top of the mushroom cloud in very bright light. — One of many photos of mushroom clouds found in my family’s archives. This one is a rather well-known public photo of a nuclear test done in 1957 at the Nevada Test Site. Here is a link to a color-corrected version found in the University of Las Vegas archives.

—

In July 1945 the first detonation of a nuclear weapon happened in the New Mexico desert. It happened at a place called the Trinity Site. Until just a few months ago, a large part of the modern world had forgotten, didn’t know, or didn’t really care about that fact.

The movie Oppenheimer has brought the story behind the evolution of the atomic bomb back to the mainstream, making it both hashtag-able and trending.

I have conflicting feelings about that.

You see, that horrible, fantastic, historic moment in New Mexico also sparked something important inside my father. A young man of 14 at the time and living in South Bend, Indiana, after the events of that first test of the atomic bomb, my father was enamored with and fascinated by the science and mechanics of both nuclear weapons and nuclear energy.

—

My dad was born smack dab in the middle of eight children. He and his brother Bob were so-called “Irish Twins,” born eleven months apart and inseparable. My dad, named Tom, was small because he had been sickly as a child, and he was awkward. His brother Bob was big and convivial. They were quite a duo. Both smart and funny and full of life. Abbott and Costello of the Midwest.

Tom was not that good in school, mostly likely due to undiagnosed dyslexia, but he had an aptitude for math. After high school, he got a technical certification from DeVry in Chicago. In 1957 he was recruited as an electronic technician by Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

You’ve probably heard of the infamous laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico. If you saw the Oppenheimer movie, you may have learned about it there. Oppenheimer’s work built that research lab and he also served as the Director of the Los Alamos Laboratory from 1943 to 1945.

But there is another National Laboratory in New Mexico, and that lab was also engaged in the research and science behind nuclear weapons. Sandia National Laboratory is a larger lab than Los Alamos and is located in Albuquerque.

In the late 1950s, at Sandia, my dad had found his way to the heart of the work being done in nuclear research during the early days of the Cold War.

It was work he would embrace and love doing for more than forty years.

—

My dad was a complete nerd. Glasses, pocket protector, pants too short with white socks. All of that, right to the stereotype.

He was also smart, socially awkward, but gregarious enough. People liked ol’ Tom and he liked people.

In the Fall of 1958, while working at Sandia he met a pretty young secretary (back when that was still the job title). She had moved from Oregon to New Mexico at first to help her brother take care of his kids, and later she was also hired on to work for Sandia.

In Albuquerque in the 1950s, Sandia was a really good employer. Still is, actually.

My mother was young, single, and worked at a job that was located on an air force base. What I mean to say is that she was surrounded by young and available men.

My mom dated a bit and she and her roommates had their youthful fun. Then my beautiful mom met my nerdy dad, and so began their story.

—

After that first nuclear test happened at the Trinity Site, in the years that followed, there were plenty more tests of nuclear weapons. My joke has always been that those years were about, “Hey, let’s blow this up to see what happens,” but all of those tests were nothing to joke about. They really were testing multiple forms of weaponry to better understand the power and capabilities.

Two places where nuclear weapons testing occurred for decades are a group of small islands in the Pacific Ocean and in the desert in a dry lake bed between Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada.

It was in 1958 that my dad found himself out on an island called Bikini Atoll, doing telemetry for several tests of thermonuclear explosions.

After returning home, he then found himself sent out to the Salton Sea, where ballistics tests were being carried out. Family scrapbooks contain really goofy and incredibly embarrassing love letters from my dad to my mom, quick missives sent during the time while they were dating but not yet married. Letters postmarked from the Salton Sea in California.

Once my parents were married and after the birth of my brother, my dad went back to school at the University of New Mexico to complete his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. He had been told if he wanted to continue to grow in his career at Sandia, he’d need a full degree. So he worked and went to school. My mom worked and took care of her firstborn.

Later, he got a job opportunity to go to Los Alamos with the hope of improving his career by working on a particle accelerator. He moved his wife and son and began work up the hill and the small but mighty lab. Los Alamos was considered more prestigious.

My mom was also able to get a job at the lab in Los Alamos, and they lived and worked and really enjoyed living there. This was the mid 1960’s and things were hopping. Soon enough, my sister was born.

Then came a job opportunity through a good friend that promised even better career advancement if my dad would move over to the Nevada Test Site, which back then was called the Tonopah Test Range.

While working at the Nevada Test Site, my dad worked in an area of the site called Area 52. You know… just next door to Area 51*?

And it was there in Tonopah that I enter the story. My folks had only really planned for two kids, but oops. I guess I had something to say.

Not long after I was born, the family then moved back to Albuquerque and Sandia National Laboratory, and that is where I was raised. I have only vague memories of Nevada, I was really too young to remember anything.

New Mexico is where I’m from and who I am. Something I remain proud of and always will.

—

Growing up I loved going through my family’s photo albums. My mom was an avid scrapbooker and so I would spend hours poring over all of the bits of bobs of her history.

My dad also kept plenty of photos. He would get unclassified photos from many of the projects he worked on and keep them as mementos.

I guess back then I never thought it was weird that our family photo albums contained images of mushroom clouds. Not just one or two, a bunch. My dad avidly collected images and details of the site and what was tested.

Black and white photos of various equipment were also to be found in those scrapbooks. And brochures and technical manuals. My dad spent a career fascinated with and dedicated to the development of nuclear weapons and later, nuclear energy.

A black and white photo of four columns of old style mechanical equipment with knobs and readout windows. This was likely testing or monitoring equipment used at Bikini Atoll during the many nuclear tests that were conducted. — Photo from my family’s archives found on a CD full of scanned photos, this was in a folder of photos that appear to be from Bikini Atoll. Didn’t everyone have photos like this in their family photo albums?

—

Growing up during the Cold War in New Mexico was maybe a little different than it was for kids in other states. A lot of our playground chatter was about whether or not the Russians would drop a bomb on New Mexico if the so often threatened nuclear war began.

We’d debate the merits of running toward ground zero or running away from it. Was it better to be immediately vaporized, a shadow on a wall like those horrific photos from Hiroshima? Or better to be alive but deal with radiation sickness? Real fun playground talk like that.

These were the topics of debate on the minds of Cold War kids in the 1980s. I think we’ve collectively forgotten that feeling. That fear. I grew up in a town with a big military base and a National Laboratory. I grew up in a state that in the 1990s often showed up in various ways in the stories told on the X-Files television show.

Both of my parents held security clearances, so it wasn’t unusual to walk home from school and see government men in dark suits (so called “G-men”) who were interviewing our neighbors because one or the other of their security clearances was up for renewal. And we answered the door for the G-men because our neighbors worked at the Lab too.

It’s always been strange to me when people think what my dad did or that time in history was cool. It was never cool to me. My dad was obsessed with this stuff and would torment us kids for hours and hours telling the stories. Over and over. It was exhausting.

He’d talk about being out there on the island, and it was time for a test and he put his hands over his eyes and the light from the explosion was so bright he could see the bones in his hand. I always thought that was probably a bunch of bullshit, but over the years I’ve talked to others who were there and they said the same.

He’d talk about weapons and telemetry and words I didn’t know and didn’t want to know. He’d talk even when I didn’t want to hear. He would tell the stories and go on and on and on.

Then for many years, there was a whole lot of backlash about the development of nuclear weapons. For a long time, I didn’t tell people what my dad did for a living because more than one person had given me a long lecture about why what he did was bad and how I should be ashamed.

I was never ashamed. I was just tired of his obsession and being forced to listen to his stories again and again. Those photos of mushroom clouds and everything that went with the continuing development of Oppenheimer’s deadly toy were forced on me, an unwelcome part of my childhood, and now it seems I can’t escape it even well into my adulthood.

—

My father was diagnosed with Pulmonary Fibrosis in 2002. He was given three to five years to live. It took a while for him to reconcile himself to this diagnosis and with time, we came to understand that the irreparable scarring in his lungs was most likely due to the inhalation of beryllium.

Which is to say, it was a side effect of the work he had done for all of those years.

He had also been exposed to a whole lot of radiation, back when they didn’t always know what all of those bombs and all of that radiation would do.He had absorbed so much that my mom said she counted fingers and toes when each of her kids were born because she just wasn’t sure how we’d turn out.

Given all the radiation, one might think that it would be cancer finding its way to my father. In some ways, the pulmonary fibrosis was worse. The ever-lessening lung function took his oxygen and his ability to tell long-winded stories. It robbed him of his voice. The voice used to torment and bore and prattle on for decades. The disease forced him to go silent in order to breathe.

What a strange and cruel irony.

I remember one hospital stay when we’d thought it was the end of his life, but he rallied. When he was sitting up in bed and recovering, I asked him if he wanted us to file a claim along with a group of people who were seeking compensation for their beryllium exposure from doing the same kind of work he had done.

While the United States government would never admit fault, they would admit that maybe there had not been enough safety measures in place over the years. Beryllium is one of the more nasty elements on the periodic table.

My dad said no, he didn’t want us to file. He was proud of the work he did and he accepted the consequences. He said he was proud to have served his country both in the military and with the National Laboratories.

His illness was a price he was willing to pay.

—

It’s a little odd and dislocating to see the word Oppenheimer as a trending topic on Twitter. To hear younger people talking excitedly about going to see the movie and learning about the odd little man who created something so immense and awful.

What was so nerdy and goofy and embarrassing about my dad is suddenly… cool? I did not see that one coming.

I recently heard that there is a waiting list of people who want to go tour the Trinity Site when it opens again in October (it’s only open twice a year in April and October).

My dad used to lead tours at the Trinity Site. He could go and tell all of his old stories to groups of people who hadn’t heard them before.

In retirement, he also was a docent for the National Atomic Museum which is now called the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History. I always felt a little sorry for those school kids who went to visit the museum on a field trip and got my dad to lead their tour. Oh god, those poor kids had to listen to him drone on. He loved every minute of it.

I’ve had a few people ask me if I am going to go see the Oppenheimer movie and I usually say no with a quick vigor that raises an eyebrow. If I know the person well enough, I’ll explain that it would be like sitting through three hours of all those stories my dad tortured me and my siblings with throughout our childhoods. If I don’t know the person that well, I’ll just demur and say I think the movie is a little too long and I might catch it on streaming.

The truth is, I am not sure that I want to see it. You see, that story doesn’t hold the mythic sway for me that it might hold for others.

—

I asked my mom, now nearing the age of 89, if she was going to see the movie. She was a lot closer to all of the action than I ever was. She said that she had hoped to see some of the old buildings in Los Alamos in the movie, but once she heard they’d built a set and didn’t film in the actual buildings, she was less interested too.

She told me how she remembered back in the 1940s and hearing about the test at the Trinity Site. Then later how scared she was when the atomic bomb was used in Japan. She would lay awake at night in terror for what it meant for the fate of the world.She said how awful it was that the atomic bomb was used. And how awful World War II had been before the atomic bomb was used. It was all just awful.

Once in the 1980s when I was feeling my teenage oats I asked my mom how she could possibly work at a place that made nuclear weapons. Her reply is something I have remembered for many years. She told me that she didn’t like nuclear weapons either, but other countries had them. Countries that were not friendly to the US. She was able to reconcile it in her mind because, she said, the US needed to be able to defend itself.

I think about what she said quite often. I can both agree and disagree if I think about it long enough.

—

For months it seems that all I see are either photos of bubblegum pink Margot Robbie or black and white emaciated Cillian Murphy.The amount of money spent on PR for these films must be staggering.

I suppose it has paid off, both broke box office records on their opening weekend and spawned a thousand think pieces. Exploration of the history of both a plastic doll and nuclear war. Both are valid, I think. Both have meaning.

Neither is on my list of movies to see.**

I see promotional photos of the actor Josh Hartnett who plays Ernest O. Lawrence in the film. Lawrence was another important figure in the development of nuclear weapons.

Here’s a fun fact: my grandmother grew up in South Dakota and her brothers were in the same class and friends with Ernest Lawrence. My dad used to ask her a thousand questions about what she remembered about the man she called “Ernie.”

So I guess this story, my American tale of a Nuclear Family, began early, back when the key players were just kids and the Great Depression hadn’t even happened.

—

My father passed away in 2005 and I think if he had been alive today he would have wanted to see the Oppenheimer movie, but he would have scoffed at all the ways they got the story wrong, I’m sure.

I’m kind of sad that my enormous nerd of a dad didn’t get his moment in the zeitgeist. He didn’t get to see his lifelong obsession at the center of public discourse, if only for a little while.

I’m sure soon enough, as public interest moves along in Internet time, something new will emerge and the recent interest in Oppenheimer and his work will again wane.

I’ve long thought about writing about my dad and his history, I just honestly never thought anyone would care. Right now, for a little moment in time, my strange, awkward, atomic-obsessed dad and all of those mushroom cloud photos in our family archives are actually at the very height of trendy.

And no one is more surprised than me.

A black and white photo, a man kneels down to touch the ground and the earth is cracked and dry. The sun is in front of the man rendering him in silhouette. His shadow is long and stretches out toward the front of the photo. — Photo from my family’s archives found on a CD full of scanned photos that is titled only “Tonopah” in my mom’s handwriting, meaning the Nevada Test Site. The silhouette sort of looks like my dad, but probably isn’t. I am pretty sure the person is inspecting the glass left after a nuclear explosion melts sand.

—

Footnotes

*While not quite what this story is about, I did ask my dad more than once about Area 51. I’d asked him what he knew, what he saw. I wanted the inside scoop on the whole alien myth. My dad held a significant security clearance for all of his career and in response to my questions, he pointedly told me that there was nothing he could say.

I’ll never know if he knew anything about Area 51. I suspect not. But then again……

—

**Though once upon a time I was entirely all about my Barbie Dream House with the working elevator.

—

This post was originally published on Medium and more of my work can be found over there @karenfayeth.

Every Picture Tells A Story

Posted on January 28, 2020January 31, 2020
by Karen Fayeth
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The Story is in the Eye of the Beholder

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My photography teacher and mentor holds regular photo review sessions where we, her students, come together to show our photos and receive feedback from the group.

The rules are that we show our photo but stay silent. The photographer says nothing while the audience to reviews it, forms their opinions, and then provides feedback. Once feedback begins we are allowed to answer questions but the preference is to stick to the aspects of the photo and not stray too far into the backstory of why, what, or how.

Our teacher learned this from her own mentor, the legendary Al Weber. It was how he worked sessions with his students.

There are plenty of juicy quotes out there in the world about how a photo should tell the story without further explanation. How the photographer should say what they want to say visually and refrain from adding more explanation.

I understand that view and don’t entirely disagree. In a different photoclub meeting a few years back, I had quite a spirited debate with a fellow photographer who insisted that the technical aspects of the photo were all that mattered and “telling a story” was unimportant.

I insisted that a photo that doesn’t tell a story is boring. We agreed to disagree.

His technically superior landscapes remain astounding in their quality and dull in aesthetics. My photos have something to say, but are technically imperfect. Both of our photography styles are relevant and fine. The artist makes their art as they see fit.

You see, I’m an unapologetic logophile — a lover of words. I’m a storyteller from birth and when I look at photos, I like to hear what the photographer has to say about how and why they took the photo and what it means to them. I find sitting in silence a challenge when I’m so creatively inspired by my peers.

Also, the story a viewer gets from my photo may not be the story I was trying to tell. I know, I know, that’s fine. Everyone sees art in their own way, through their own filters, and that is valid. Of course.

But sometimes, like the photo in the header of this story, I want the viewer to know more. I want you to feel what I felt when I took the photo. I want it to resonate on a deeper level.

So now that you’ve seen the header photo, I’m going to tell you the story.

—

t was the first week of this past December and I was traveling home to California from Tennessee. My itinerary said that I would fly on a small commuter plane from Knoxville to Denver, and then from Denver to San Francisco.

Riding on the very small commuter plane gave me no small amount of pause, in fact I wrote about it here:

My Fear of Flying

Before heading to the airport, I’d checked the weather in Denver and the news was not good. Snow. Lots of snow. Here I am flying on a very small plane right into the heart of a winter storm. Due to land in Denver around 6:45pm, it would be when the storm was expected to be the worst.

I was, to put it in crystal clear terms: Freaked Out.

Snow, small plane, winter, ice, terror, tired, just want to get home, will I even make it home tonight, I don’t want to die, pleaseohpleaseohplease… Like that, swirling around in my head. (Isn’t anxiety just so helpful?)

That header photo, the one with the beautiful sunset, was taken over eastern Colorado. Above the clouds was the most magnificent view of the sunset from the plane’s large window. The roiling storm clouds gave a great foreground. The contrast of blue and orange are a perfection of complimentary colors that only Mother Nature knows how to create.

Now, let’s be honest with each other: There are a lot of beautiful photographs of sunsets out there in the world. Plenty of astounding locations, views, and colors. My photo is surprisingly clear and well-focused for having been taken through a plane window. I used a Sony Cybershot as it was the best camera I had on me at the time.

I look at that photo and I love the brilliant colors, that I managed to mostly (but not precisely) center the sun, and the clouds make it very moody. But when I see that photo, what I feel is fear.

The dark and foreboding clouds below that gorgeous Colorado sunset were a metaphor for everything I was feeling when the shutter clicked. This photo was taken at the edge of the storm, you can see the ground on the right lower side. We had not yet begun to find the center of that winter storm when this photo was taken. It still lay ahead.

I should probably title the photo “Yearning for the Runway” because as I both watched and photographed that sunset, I kept visualizing over and over in my mind a smooth landing, pleading to the universe for safety.

Turns out by the time we got to Denver there had been a break in the storm and the runways were clean, dry and perfect. We landed pretty much as I had visualized. The snow was projected to start again soon, so after a little deicing, we took off late but made it home to SFO on time and intact.

I don’t know if telling my story makes you see the photo any differently. Maybe what you see when you read the story of that photo is different from mine.

I like knowing that my photo is more than just a lovely sunset, it’s my reminder that life is both precarious and precious.

And small planes are safer than I think.

Just wait until I tell you about my photo of a deceased ladybug.

—

This item first appeared on Medium, find more of my work @karenfayeth over there.

My Fear of Flying

Posted on December 8, 2019
by Karen Fayeth
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It never goes away, it can only be managed

Photo by Lucas Ludwig on Unsplash

—

“I love to travel, I just don’t like what it takes to get there.” — Me, before every trip

Last week I was delighted to pack by bags and head out on a business trip on behalf of my employer. My job gives me the opportunity to travel once or twice a year and I am happy to get out of the office and on the road. I really do love to travel. Anywhere. Large, small, domestic, international, if there is travel to be done, I’m in.

Over my life I have traveled a lot, not the “gold status for a lifetime” kind of amount, more like 3–4 trips a year, sometimes more. I’ve seen quite a few countries, with a whole lot more to go.

My first plane ride was at seven years old. My mom, sister and I traveled to Oregon to visit my mom’s family. We flew to Salt Lake City, changed planes, then on to Portland. I remember the excitement, the thrill of the ride, the joy at seeing how lush and green Oregon was in comparison to Albuquerque.

I love seeing places I have never seen before, just as much as I love going back to a place I know and remembering all the things I like about it.

One thing that hasn’t changed over a lifetime of traveling: I’m moderately terrified of airplanes. Okay, to be fair, I am not a nervous flyer gripping the armrest like a life raft, but I do have trepidation every time I board a plane.

I’m usually cool as a cucumber getting to and through the airport, but once boarding is called and I am on the jetway, the reality of what I am about to do takes hold. To cope, I have to run through a well-practiced serious of thoughts to calm myself down enough so I don’t turn around and sprint back off the plane.

What I am saying is most of the time I do just fine. I’ve gotten used to your average passenger plane, three seats on each side, air safety is pretty good, all of that. But it’s still a hard thing for me to give up all control of my fate, pack my ample curves into an narrow and uncomfortable seat, accept being sealed inside a tin can, and allow one human being to pilot me and my fellow passengers high into the air.

Every once in a while, my travels throw me a curveball. A few years ago I was beyond excited to be asked to travel to Porto, Portugal. I think I said yes so fast I broke the time-space continuum and said yes before my boss even asked the question.

However, when the day of travel arrived what I found waiting at the airport gate was the largest passenger plane I had ever seen in my life. I actually started laughing out loud. “I am not getting on that thing,” I said to nobody but myself.

A plane so large it needed a special gate at the airport to load. Called an Airbus A380–800, it’s occasionally referred to as a whale. This plane has two floors. It has an actual staircase inside. I mean, come on now.

Airbus A380 on MAKS 2011. Image from Wikipedia and used under a CC BY-SA 3.0 license.

I had to sit down and really, really ask myself if I was going to willingly get on that plane and ride for the eleven hours needed to get to Frankfurt. On the logical side of my brain, I reminded myself of watching loaded C-130s take off from a nearby military airfield, so I knew this plane was possible. The dimensions of the thing were just more than my brain could take.

Well, this past week, I had the opposite problem. After flying from San Francisco to Houston, I was to board a small regional plane that would get me over to Knoxville. I have flown very small planes before, including one bumpy ride on a terribly noisy turboprop, but for some reason I was not prepared for the plane that awaited me at the gate.

An Embraer Air ERJ-145, new, shiny, sleek, and terrifying. I texted my husband this photo with the caption “aw, shit.”

I knew I was going to be flying a small plane to Knoxville, I’d even made a joke a few weeks back about “Flying on a La Bamba plane.” When faced with the reality of the situation, the joke just wasn’t funny anymore.

When the glass door opened and I stepped out onto the tarmac, I began to run through my usual mental roll call of thoughts: “You are going to be fine, you don’t have to get on this plane if you don’t want to, these are professionals who do this every day, planes are very safe, you are safe, but you have choices.” And so on like that.

I locked up pretty good, but given my stubborn nature, I refused to let myself balk. I gamely walked up the ramp, got my stuff stowed, and crammed into the seat. I texted my husband, “I’m in my seat. I think I’m now wearing this airplane,” as it certainly felt snug about the hips.

This plane has two seats on one side and one seat on the other but is fairly comfortable. I was lucky to be on the one seat side, enjoying both a window and the aisle.

Once the doors were shut, I immersed myself in my book and did my best not to think too much about it.

If my trip to Frankfurt was riding a whale, to Knoxville I rode a sardine, and in both instances got there safely, on time, and no worse for the wear.

Look, fears and anxieties aren’t always rational, that’s kind of the point. I know flying is very safe, but my mind still has an awful lot of questions about the wisdom of being 30,000 feet above the surface of sweet, sweet Mother Earth.

One upside? The Sardine had nice big windows, all the better to capture a Tennessee sunset above the clouds.

Just Plug The Number, It’ll Be Okay

Posted on February 29, 2016February 29, 2016
by Karen Fayeth
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A leap day is observed because a complete revolution around the Sun takes slightly longer than 365 days. It compensates for this lag, realigning the calendar with the Earth’s position in the solar system; otherwise, seasons would occur in a different time than intended in the calendar year. — Wikipedia

On my way into work today, I was listening to whatever morning radio station was not running commercials and landed on a crew of three djs discussing facts and trivia about today, February 29th. Better known as Leap Day.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we all know the deal. The Gregorian calendar is nice and all, but doesn’t *quite* work. Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, as the saying goes. And, apparently, calendars.

While I have a degree in finance, I am not a finance person. Humorously, the work I do is slotted under the Finance organization, so I can confidently say that in the parlance of the Finance industry, Leap Day is better known as a fudge factor. A plugged number. A “what do you want the numbers to say?” kind of adjustment.

Let’s just call it a rounding error.

I work in contracts and we have something similar. It’s what one of my first and favorite bosses called “weasel words.” This is where the person on the other end of the contract (usually a lawyer) is being petulant and you can’t quite give them the language they want. Instead you can appease them with something in the vicinity of what they want. Words like “reasonably attempt” and “in accordance with best practices.” Leap words, if you will.

Not to digress, but baseball has something similar. Called a “neighborhood play” it roughly means that the second baseman doesn’t have to actually touch the base or runner to get the out as long as they are near to the base and in control of the ball.

Second basemen tend to stay a bit off the bag because lead runners like to come barreling in trying to disrupt a potential double play. The topic of the neighborhood play came to a head during the playoffs last year as a player got seriously injured.

So in this Leap Year, baseball looks to be changing up the rules. Which will likely make for a lot more leaping shortstops trying to stay off the DL.

In the spirit of both Leap Day and my favorite sport of baseball, I present to you my favorite Giants shortstop of all time, Omar Vizquel, doing what he did best.

Happy Leap Day!

Leaping Omar image found here.

The Day I Rode In The Belly Of A Whale

Posted on June 15, 2015June 15, 2015
by Karen Fayeth
3 Comments

Or: Tales From The Upper Deck

When word came down at work that I had approval to travel to Porto, Portugal to participate in meetings with key folks from around the world, things began to follow a usual path.

Since the place I work for gets a lot of Federal funding, we’re bound to abide by the Fly American Act, i.e. when on Federal business, fly US carriers.

No problem. I’m used to shoving my cookies onto a United Airlines jet and riding around the world, so per the norm I picked out my United flight pairs and the admin booked them. I was all set.

Because I am a little weenie and need more leg room, I like to pay out of pocket to upgrade my government bought United economy seats to United Plus economy seats.

My employer doesn’t pay for business or first class and I don’t fly enough to rack up the miles to get me there, so I ride in the back half of the plane. Economy plus at least gives my long legs a little room. A little less sardine-like.

However, when I logged into my United account and tried to upgrade my seats, I was told I could not. That I would have to wait until the day before the flight to pick out seats. What?

It took a little work but I figured out the deal. Three of my four flights on this trek would not be on United planes but a codeshare on Lufthansa.

Well hell, I’d never flown Lufthansa before so this was an adventure.

Doing some research on the Lufthansa site, I also figured out that my plane for the San Francisco to Frankfurt leg of the trip would be on an Airbus A380-800 airplane. A gigantic double decker of a holy-crap-that’s-huge airplane.

In fact, it’s the largest passenger plane flying today.

Looking up the specs of this plane online, I found people affectionately call it “the whale,” and it’s no wonder. The configuration I rode seats about 500 people.

When I was finally able to select my seats, I found that the second floor of the airplane (this airplane has two floors!!) was mostly first and business class, but the back of the upper deck had a small grouping of seven rows of economy seats. So yeah, I scooped up an aisle seat upstairs right away.

On the day I arrived at SFO, I let out an audible “wuh-huh-hoooooo” when I saw the airplane sitting at the gate. Then I became filled with anxiety. “How will that ever fly?” said my worried mind.

I wondered if my brain had anything I could compare this to. Many years ago I worked for a Lockheed Martin site that was right next to a military airstrip. Every once in a while the military would practice “touch and goes” with various planes and pilots. We’d drag our desk chairs outside and watch the show.

What I’m trying to say is, I’ve seen a fully loaded C-130 execute a touch and go, so yeah, I realized that the A380 could certainly fly. And I was going to get on it.

As I walked down the jetway to the plane, my heart began trip hammering. I always have a moment of pause before boarding any plane but this was different.

I stepped through the nice wide doorway and saw a beautiful gleaming white staircase front and center. “Ah, that must be how I get up there,” I thought.

The oversmiling male flight attendant looked at my ticket and informed me that I needed to go all the way to the back of the plane and find a staircase there.

In other words, your economy-seat riding ass don’t climb these stairs, honey.

Fair enough. I set off on my journey to the back of the plane. I stopped rest once or twice. I had snacks to keep my energy up. I may have camped out overnight. Jesus, that’s a big airplane.

Finally I reached the end of the plane and scurried up the stairs, then slid into my seat.

It was still an economy class seat so it fit tight around the hips. I got snug like a bug in there as the plane began to push back from the gate.

The Lufthansa A380 features three live cameras, one on the nose pointing forward, one on the tail also pointing forward, and one on the belly looking straight down.

Here is a terrible quality image. It’s a photo taken with an iPad of my screen on the plane as we are somewhere over the Labrador Sea. It’s enough that you can see what the view from the tail camera looks like:

I wanted to stick my hand out the window and wave to the camera, but that’s mostly frowned upon

It was mildly surreal to watch this behemoth take off from a bird’s eye view but I was fascinated.

Once aloft, I began to realize why non-US carriers rock the casbah. It’s one word: alcohol. The wine flows freely on non-US airplanes. I had flown a Singapore Airlines plane a few years ago and was gently surprised at the wine served with meals. The Germans have the Singaporeans beat. Wine with snacks, wine with dinner, brandy and irish crème after dinner.

All of this is a plot, however. They ply you with food and booze then turn down the cabin lights. Pretty much everyone falls asleep right away. Except me, I have a flaw in my DNA. I can’t sleep on a plane. Not even a long haul. Nope.

The Good Man shares this flaw and it’s good when we travel together because we entertain each other like little kids while everyone else sleeps. Sadly on this trip I was alone.

The flight attendant overseeing our little cozy area of economy class seats was a rockstar. He noticed I was the only one awake and didn’t let up on the top-notch service. He checked in on me constantly and brought water, juice, snacks and some cookies that seemed way too delicious for economy class.

Even though I was packed into an economy seat I felt spoiled like a little princess up there, inside the white whale.

When she touched down in Frankfurt I was reluctant to leave my cozy little seat and my white glove service. It was a gentle landing as the plane beast docked next to its siblings.

That was one of the most comfortable and happy international flights I have ever known and I am sure I will reflect back on it for years. It has become the high water mark by which all other flights will be measured.

Sadly, when going home from this journey, the Frankfurt to San Francisco leg will be on a plain old United jet, a Boeing 747-400. That plane also has a second deck, but only the pish-posh get to sit up there.

I’ll be seated among the cattle, in an economy plus seat but still among the unwashed. No first class cookies for Karen on the way home.

I think I’ll write a nice letter to Lufthansa to tell them how much I appreciated the flight attendant. As I have learned in my short time in Portugal, I will extend a hearty obrigada (i.e. thank you or much obliged) for his attention and job well done.

And I will wistfully dream of my time inside the whale, a modern day Jonah high above the bustling world.