The amazing grace of Christmas morn

From Wesley Pruden:

The malls and the Main Streets will soon fall silent. The ringing cash registers and the happy cries of children will be but ghostly echoes across silent streets as hearths beckon, gathering friends and families.

But in the clutter of Christmas morn, the Christ born in a manger 2,000 years ago still lives, liberating the hearts of sinners and transforming the lives of the wicked. The authentic story of the redeeming power of the Christmas message is nowhere more vividly illustrated than in the incredible life of an English slaver named John Newton.

John Newton was born 300 years ago into a seafaring family in Liverpool. His mother was a godly woman whose faith gave her life meaning. She died when John was 7, and he recalled as the sweetest remembrance of childhood the soft and tender voice of his mother at prayer.

His father married again, and John left school at 11 to go to sea with him. He quickly adopted the vulgar life of rough seamen, though the memory of his mother's faith remained. "I saw the necessity of religion as a means of escaping hell," he recalled many years later, "but I loved sin."

On shore leave, he was seized by a press gang and abducted aboard HMS Harwich, and life grew coarser. He ran away, was captured, put in chains, stripped before the mast and flogged mercilessly. "The Lord had by all appearances given me up to judicial hardness. I was capable of anything. I had not the least fear of God, nor the least sensibility of conscience. I was firmly persuaded that after death I should merely cease to be."

The captain of the Harwich traded him to the skipper of a slaving ship, bound for West Africa to take aboard human cargo. "At this period of my life," he later reflected, "I was big with mischief and, like one afflicted with a pestilence, was capable of spreading a taint wherever I went."

John's new captain liked him, however, and took him to his plantation on an island off the African coast, where he had taken as his wife a beautiful but cruel African princess. She grew jealous of John and was glad when it was time for them to sail.

John, however, fell ill, and the captain left him in his wife's care. The ship was barely over the horizon when she threw him into a pig sty, with a board for a bed and a log for a pillow, blinded him, and left him in delirium to die. He did not die, but was kept in chains in a cage and fed swill from her table. Word spread through the district that a black woman was keeping a white slave, and many came to taunt him. They threw limes and stones at him, mocking his misery. He would have starved if slaves waiting passage to the Americas had not shared meager scraps of food.

Five years passed, and when the captain returned, John told how he had been treated. The captain called him a liar and branded him a thief. When they sailed John was treated ever more harshly, allowed to eat only the entrails of animals butchered for the crew's mess.

"The voyage quite broke my constitution," he would recall, "and the effects would always remain with me as a needful memento of the service of wages and sin." Like Job, he became a magnet for adversity. His ship crashed onto the rocks, and he despaired that God's mercy remained after his life of hostile indifference to the Gospel. "During the time I was engaged in the slave trade," he said, "I never had the least scruple to its lawfulness."

The wanton sinner, the arrogant blasphemer, the mocker of the faith was at last driven to his knees: "My prayer was like the cry of ravens, which yet the Lord does not disdain to hear." Miraculously, he was rescued, and made his way back to England to reflect on the mercies God had shown him in his awful life. He fell under the preaching of George Whitefield and the influence of John Wesley, and was born again into the new life in Christ.

On Christmas Eve in 1807, he died at the age of 82, leaving a dazzling testimony to the miracle born on Christmas. "I commit my soul to my gracious God and Savior, who mercifully spared and preserved me, when I was an apostate, a blasphemer and an infidel, and delivered me from that state on the coast of Africa into which my obstinate wickedness had plunged me." His testimony, set to music, would become the favorite hymn of Christendom:

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

• Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times.

TobyLaura.com

Time marches on

Here are a few photos showing me at some of the airlines I've worked for and the planes I've flown as I've gotten older and put on a few pounds. First a ramper for Delta in DFW, then in the Saab 340 turboprop, then Chautauqua's RJ, and then Cathay's 747.



TobyLaura.com

San Francisco

I just arrived back in Hong Kong from a three day trip across the Pacific to San Francisco. Photos of my visit can be seen by clicking the photo above. With almost 200 mph winds blowing West to East across the Pacific, our flight was less than 11 hours to the West coast of California, but then coming back, it was a little more than 14.5 hours.

The captain flew us to San Fran and then I flew us back to Hong Kong a few days later. Both takeoffs were at heavy weights due to the weight of all the fuel it takes to travel those long distances. My takeoff, coming back for the longer flight, was the heaviest I've even taken off to date, which was at the maximum takeoff weight of the 747-400 passenger plane: 397 metric tonnes, or 397,000 kgs. For my American readers, that's heavy, at nearly 875,000 lbs! We left San Fran with 375,000 lbs of fuel, enough to run a family car for an average of 80 years. We landed back in Hong Kong with a little over 18,000 lbs left in the tanks.

Aircraft use flaps, both on the leading edge and trailing edge of the wings, to generate lift at slower speeds, like for takeoff and landing. These flaps extend, and to the untrained eye, can look like the wing is coming apart. As the flaps retract, they change shape so that they can fit back into the wing. While they are changing shape, they actually create more drag than lift, or said another way, they create more trouble than help -- at least momentarily. As they create more drag for the few seconds that they are changing shape, our stall speed increases. When a wing stalls, it quits making lift and [for the purposes of simplicity] the aircraft quits flying. It actually still produces lift and is flying, but that's for another technical discussion when you need to fall asleep some night!

As the stall speed increases, we have to be going faster, or be above that speed, to keep flying. The trouble with heavy takeoff weights like our flight out of SFO, is that there is another factor at play: maximum speed. As the flaps travel from flaps 1 to flaps up, there is an upper speed limit for flaps one, and there is a lower speed limit of stall speed. That difference between the upper and lower limit is only about 8 knots! At 272 kts, we start to get the onset of stall, and at 280 kts we overspeed the flaps. The lesson I learned that day was the importance of being right on the money as far as departure speeds as there is little room for error. It would be like keeping your car's speed to within 35 mph and 38 mph, or something bad would happen.

It's at those moments that we as pilots do not want an engine failure to occur. It has been said that the purpose of the engines is to keep the pilots cool -- because when they quit running, just see how the pilots start to sweat. When I flew my ERJ-145 at my last job, our flaps up speed was usually around 150 kts. At these heavy weights in the 747, the flaps up speed, or clean speed, was 282 kts. That difference is an amazing value.

In this post, I bored my readers with a discussion on flying great circle routes, as the shortest path between two points on the planet. The San Francisco trip actually did not follow that route at all. To and from the West Coast, we flew a more southerly route, over the fatter part of the Earth, passing just a few hundred miles north of Hawaii. A great circle path would take us up near Cold Bay, Alaska, and just south of Anchorage. This trip was a case of caring more about the wind speed and how that could help us, instead of flying the shortest distance. We were able to gain a lot of time and fuel savings by following where the winds were pushing us the strongest, instead of flying the shortest path to SFO and back.

It was nice as we approached the coast of California. The weather was fine and we could see the 1 and 101, that run along the coastline. Those are the highways where Toyota and others film their commercials of cars running along the coast. It was also nice to be able to hear American air traffic controllers for the first time in six months. I didn't have to strain my ears to hear what was said and the faster they talked to us, the faster I could "give it back" to them. It was amazing to return to the Bay area. The first time I was there, I was interviewing with Cathay. Before that, I had only been there on my computer, flying Microsoft Flight Simulator as a kid in junior high, wanting to be a pilot someday. In that version of the flight simulator, the airplane started off on runway 27 right, in Oakland. I would takeoff and fly over the bay and land in San Francisco in my little Cessna 172. It was fun to do it years later, experiencing the real thing.

I've been very blessed to have a lot of full-circle moments along my career as a pilot, where I have been able to return to places as a pilot, where I once was simply a young kid, looking out, wishing I could be a pilot. The first moment came when I was able to land my RJ into DFW. I grew up near there in Arlington, Texas, and would spend ours in the heat watching American Airlines MD-82's launching and landing. My dad and I once snuck into a construction zone to get a better view, where not even a fence separated us from the runway. There were no signs saying specifically to stay out, so we helped ourselves. Our plan was to slip away or play dumb if the cops rolled up. Another time was when I fly into Purdue University's airport in my RJ on a charter flight, taking the Purdue girls basketball team back to West Lafayette, IN. I had spent many hours at Purdue learning about aviation, and then got to return there as a pilot. Another time was heading Back to Bali, Indonesia with Cathay. Then there was also this SFO trip.

I tell you: I'm not very rich, but I'm a very wealthy young man. God has truly blessed my life and it's easier to see when I put His blessings in the perspective of the "full circle" view. All I can say is that if I can do it, anyone can. If I can attain some of my dreams, then so can you. Don't give up, stay focused, and you'll get there too, whatever dream it is that you have. How? It's simple, really. See, the secret is that I didn't do any of it. We can't do much on our own, but with His help, anything is possible . . . If you feel your dreams are falling flat and you need some encouragement, think back on how much your life has been blessed. It will help put things into perspective.

We had an extra day to relax in SFO, so I walked around downtown, as our hotel is right there in the middle of it all. I walked passed Union Square, where I interviewed, looked around in the Macy's store, and rode the cable car down to the Wharf on the Embarcadero. There was good food on the Wharf, a great view of The Rock, a chance to see Lombard Street, and a great time riding the cable cars.

Taking this picture, with Alcatraz behind me, I saw some birds overhead, and then felt a splatter of something moist on my head and shoulders. Yuck! I'll leave it up to you to figure out what that was. Needless to say, I'm not too happy in the photo . . .

There are some pictures of the wooden brakes used by the trollies. Basically 2x4's that press down on the tracks are what stop the cars. At the bottom of the San Francisco hills, everyone riding can smell the scent of burning wood in the air. The cars are pulled along by a cable under the street and the driver simply pulls a lever to grab onto the cable when he wants to move forward, and then releases the cable when he wants to stop. The cables are driven by a central hub that runs several cable lines at the same time. The pictures show the cable and the pulley's and the large operation it takes to make it all happen. Over the life of one cable, it can stretch over 100 feet. Because of this, a second pulley is set up to take in the slack, as the cable stretches. Also underground are the giant pulleys that turn the cables 90 degrees to go around the corners of intersections. If you head to Frisco, a ride on the cable cars and a view of the pulley system is a must.

It was great to be back in the U.S. however brief it was, and it was amazing to be able to do such a long-haul trip. If training wasn't so stressful, I would actually relax and enjoy all this flying! This was a great trip, and I hope my others turn out to be as nice as this one was.


TobyLaura.com

Christmas at the Headland

While in training at Cathay Pacific, I am staying in their own hotel, the Headland. The Headland Hotel is nice, but is sure isn't home. They have just put out a lot of Christmas decorations in the lobbies to help those of us who celebrate the holidays feel a little bit better. There is actually a lot of the Christmas spirit and decorations around Hong Kong. Even though Buddhism remains the major religion of China, there seems to be no problem celebrating Christmas here. However, I've been told that Hong Kong won't pass up any chance to celebrate a holiday or cash in on the secular side of the Christmas spirit.  After all, Hong Kong is the beacon of capitalism here just south of Beijing.

It is nice to see that the hotel has put up Christmas trees with Angels on the tops of them. I have become so used to the ridiculous American culture that is full of political correctness and that is constantly afraid of offending someone, that I was startled to see Angels in this somewhat public place. There are many things the U.S. could learn from the Chinese and one thing is remembering that Christmas is a Christian holiday. Americans can't even put up a tree in a mall for fear of offending some religious group, but over here, it seems like the Angels are no big deal. And why wouldn't they be? At least the Headland hotel has the sense that too many of us Americans don't have: it's a Christian holiday, put up Christian decorations.

I desperately want to spend Christmas at home with Laura there in Groveport, Ohio. I currently have a week off around Christmas, but that will be subject to how well training goes. I have a performance check on the 19th and 20th (keep those days in prayer?) and if I pass them, then I get to go home. If I don't do as well as they want me to, then I get to stay here and do a few more trips until I am up to speed. Every trainee gets a minimum of 25 flights in training and some need more and some need less. I've had a long, stressful time trying to learn this 747 and the way Cathay wants it to be flown. My flying background is a 50 seat regional jet and transitioning to this large plane that carries 400 people across the Pacific Ocean has been a challenge, to say the least. Currently, there is about a 40% failure rate on the progress checks. But, as my sister pointed out, that's a 60% pass rate!

So, we'll see. I want to do well, but I need to not get too down on myself if I need more training. I would guess that some of that is a small ego-pride thing, but really, I just want to be finished with training and get home to my wife for Christmas. That is the end goal, and after nearly six months in training, the Lord knows I'm ready to be home. Here is the tree that Laura put up in our living room back home. I want to be with her in front of that tree so bad that it hurts. We'll have to see how everything goes.

Hey, Christmas in Hong Kong can't be too bad, right . . . ?



TobyLaura.com

Johannesburg

Our 747-400 was cruising along smoothly at 35,000 feet, late at night over the Indian Ocean. I sat in my seat, staring out the window in awe and amazement as I couldn't believe what I was able to see. For even though there was no moon and it was a dark night, the sky was ablaze with stars. Out over any ocean late at night without the "lesser light" of the moon governing the night, so many more stars can be seen. And because there are no cities over the ocean to pollute the view of the stars with Earth light, the view of the stars and Milky Way Galaxy were not short of stunning. I felt like I could read my charts in the light of the stars.

When the sky looks like this, constellations are hard to make out because there are so many other stars, that previously couldn't be seen, that are now clogging the view. I could see Orion out in front of us and the Milky Way was arcing over our heads. The Indian Ocean below us was easy to make out, simply because it was the dark part of the view where the stars ended. The water's horizon eerily swallowed up the stars out on the edge of the Earth, like a cosmic event horizon. The beauty of the moment was both overwhelming and terrifying, as I thought about the sheer scale and grandeur that is the cosmos above us. Read my blog entry on the Hubble Deep Field (HDF) for some insight into the true scale of the Universe.

As the captain and I sat there mesmerized by the view of the stars, some lights appeared on the horizon. As we drew nearer, they spread out and got larger. In the middle of this huge sea of blackness, a ring of lights became clearly visible. They took on the shape of a rough circle and reminded me of something similar to a scene in the movie Abyss, where lights formed in the ocean as well. Unlike the Abyss, we knew what the lights were: the Island of Réunion. It sits well off the coast of Madagascar and has two large volcanoes rising up out of the center of the island. One volcano is 8,600 feet tall and the other rises over 10,000 feet and tonight, they were unseen in the darkness. Because of the active volcanoes, no one lives in the center of the island, but everyone spreads out by the beach (wouldn't we all?). That's why the island, at night, looks like a ring of lights, because the darkness in the middle of the lights is actually very high terrain. There were some low lying clouds that made the islander's lights glow with an eerie haze. In all this blackness, under all these stars, this strangely lit island, seemingly suspended in space, was quite the view to fly over on our way back to Hong Kong from Johannesburg.

I have never been as far South as Johannesburg, South Africa and I really wasn't too sure of what to expect. The photo at the top gives you an idea of what I thought it would be like to travel to South Africa's spot on the globe. Luckily, even though we were way down there, up was still up and down was still down (isn't this planet cool?). You can click the sideways picture for more photos from my trip. Speaking of cool, our hotel rooms weren't. I had also forgotten that as one passes south of the Equator, the seasons are opposite to those in the Northern hemisphere. Late November near the Cape of Good Hope is quite warm, as it is nearly summer there. The hotel had problems with its air conditioning and promised it would be fixed by the afternoon. It was still not working when we left the next day. It was okay, because even though it was warm, it wasn't too bad, as Jo'burg is over 5,550 feet above sea level.

That height above sea level is what causes the flying in and out of that airport to be a bit more of a challenge. The higher one gets above sea level, the thinner the air is. With thinner air, aircraft engines don't perform as well, as there are fewer air molecules to work with. Our flight into Joburg was uneventful, but on the way out was when the troubles began.

When we arrived at the airport, the temperature was already 85 degrees. We found that the APU (axillary power unit) that runs to provide air conditioning for the plane, was not working. So we went from a warm hotel to a warm aircraft! Inside the cockpit, the temperature read 108 degrees, as the plane had been sitting in the sun for some time. This was an unacceptable situation to load passengers in, so because the APU was out of commission, we'd have to start two of our four engines to do the job of cooling the cabin. As it turned out, one of the three air cycle machines (air conditioners) wasn't working either! The fueling was being done on the left wing and the cargo was being loaded on the right side, so we couldn't start any of the engines until one side was clear. Since we were going to board passengers via the ramp with air stairs, we elected to wait until the cargo was finished loading on the right side, so that those two engines could be running while we loaded the passengers on the left side, to try and keep the cabin as cool as possible. So, once the cargo was loaded, we started and then ran the number three and four engines (the right side) for about a half hour to cool the cabin down to something tolerable, like 80 degrees. Air cycle machines only do so much in hot weather, because unlike your car, they compress and then re-expand air to make it cooler, which can only do so much in the high heat.

The plan was to finish boarding, and then push back and start engines one and two. However, just as the last passengers were boarding, the load controller came up and told us we had a problem. They had to remove one container of cargo from the cargo hold. This could only be done with the engines shut down on that side. The captain let out an exasperated sigh, and we came up with the plan to start engines one and two, and then shut down engines three and four while the cargo was unloaded. We had to start engines one and two on the left wing, or the cabin temp would quickly rise again, with 390 people back there.

Finally, we got the all clear and it was time to push back. With all that time spent running engines, we were two hours late and right on the limit of the minimum amount of fuel needed for the long twelve and a half hour flight back to Hong Kong. It was my turn to fly us back and that would give me experience performing a max power takeoff. We took off right at our performance limit, based on temperature, weight, and hight above sea level (over a mile high on the ground in Joburg). Our takeoff weight was 371,000 kg's, or 818,000 lbs. That's heavy, even when not departing from a place like this.

The captain stood the power up for takeoff, and all we did was sit still with a huge, roaring rumble behind us. All four Rolls Royce RB211-524 engines, that can produce 60,000 lbs of thrust each, gave us all they had, but we just sat there for a moment. It takes a second or two to get over three quarters of a million pounds moving down a runway. We started to creep forward and the captain called, "Thrust set". A while later, he called, "80 kts". There are then two more calls: V1 and Rotate. V1 is called as a point of no return, so to speak. At that speed, we can no longer safely abort the takeoff, so, if after that speed is called, an engine fails, we have to continue and get into the air, or we'll overrun the end of the runway on an abort. Rotate is called at the speed in which I need to pull back on the yoke and fly us off the runway. The captain called "V1" and I could clearly see the end of the runway coming closer. Closer. CLOSER! After what seemed like an eternity, he called rotate, and we lumbered safely into the air. The numbers say it will work (an abort that is) but even when V1 was called, the far end of the runway was quickly approaching.

At these heavy weights and high altitudes, long takeoffs are normal, however it takes a little nerve and practice to resist the urge to rotate early, prior to it being called by the other pilot, especially when the literal end is near.

It was a nice ride back as we headed out over Madagascar and then seeing the beautiful ring of lights that was Réunion Island, just south of Diego Garcia, North of Kuala Lumpur, over troubled Bangkok, and then into Hong Kong.

You might say a prayer for me as my training days are coming to a close and my line checks (flight evaluations) are quickly approaching. Flying this beast is stressful enough, but being checked on it is even worse! I'll just have to relax as much as I can during my evaluations, and think back to the beauty that was seen in the night sky over the Indian Ocean. As stressful as this training may be, I am truly blessed to experience these travels over God's great globe.


TobyLaura.com