I Am Not A Gold Knight
November 6, 2010
This is what I look like during a rapid, thousands and thousands of feet corkscrew descent trying to keep my ears popping before the eardrums break and giving a thumbs up to the pilot in front of thousands and thousands of air show spectators that cannot see me. I didn’t want the pain in my ears to stop the show. I was told it is best I don’t look out the windshield of the plane. I would see nothing but the ground racing towards us. I looked and it was beautiful.
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A long time before we lifted off, I was strapped in and I was not allowed up again, even when I could see what was to be. My cameras were strapped in and I was not allowed lens or memory card changes. Across from me were two other photographers and on my right, between me and the door was another. To my right was one open door and across from me also to the right was another, these doors remained open before and during flight. On the ground it was warm but up there in that sky, it was cold, really cold. In my left hand I made moving images and sound blindly while at the same time I made still images almost blindly around another and out that door, that, was, just, right, there. Out each open door I only had that brief moment to see Knights fly and I did all I could.
Twenty-four years ago I wanted to be a Knight, a Golden Knight and an injury kept me out of the military, it was not to be for me. Today, I was the closest I could ever really be. It was all I could be and when I tried to keep my ears from imploding today, my face looked like it did twenty-four years ago.
The aisle was narrow and each Knight had to pass me to fly. I made a portrait of a Knight in the door, I looked down to check it. While looking down I felt a hard hit on my foot. I panicked, I thought I had tripped a Knight, in this plane, with those open doors, right there so damn high up in the sky. I looked up and he was looking right at me, he had hit my foot on purpose. I looked him in the eye and then strained to hear him over the propellers as he pointed down towards the ground at an orange and white painted roof,
“Hey, you want to get some WHATABURGER®?”
I told him, “Yes, right after you!”
He just smiled.
Later, on my drive home, after the plane took me down, I went to WHATABURGER®. I don’t know where he ate.
