One day at Ithaca I had screwed my courage to the sticking point, hopped on my Honda scooter, scooted over to the Ithaca airport, and joined the East Hill Flying Club, an organization that owned a Piper Cub and a Tri-Pacer, and I learned how to fly. I had taken a few lessons at the age of fourteen, but quit when we began to do stalls and my stomach had dropped faster than the plane. Now I found that although I was still scared, I could handle it, and I progressed quickly. Probably the single most terrifying, exhilarating moment in my life was my first solo. I hadn’t yet earned my private pilot’s license, but I was able to fly by myself and was allowed, even encouraged, to take short crosscountry trips. For this—and for me—Ithaca was ideally suited. The Tri-Pacer had a four-hour range at 120 knots cruising speed, and Ithaca was well within flying range of Washington, New England, New York—and Brookhaven. I took off and was soon approaching Long Island Sound, and having second thoughts. Whenever I flew out of sight of the Ithaca airport I not only continually looked around the skies to be sure there were no other planes anywhere near me, I also kept my eyes on the ground, picking out level places where I could put the plane down if the motor in front of me ever quit. Now, approaching the Sound, it looked vast and never-ending, with Long Island nothing but a dim, dark line on the horizon. If the engine quit over that water, if I went down … I turned around, was ashamed of myself, turned back again, turned around again, took a deep breath and headed out over that endless expanse of water. Ten minutes later I was approaching Long Island. I skimmed over Port Jefferson, found the little airport that served the lab, and set her down smoothly. A cab took me to Brookhaven, I said hello to everyone, found Joe Zähringer’s notebooks, and was amazed.
Monitoring cruise at the western Long Island Sound disposal site, July 1991 / submitted to Regulatory Division, New England Division, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers ; prepared by R.W. Williams ; submitted by Science Applications International Corporation.