Barb MacLeod

Barb MacLeod was born June 10,1943, in New York City. She explored her interest in caving as a geology majorat Antioch College, but she preferred working in the dirt to working in theclassroom. Since opportunities for women in geology were rare, she switched toanthropology, and now holds a Ph.D. from the University of Texas.

Her education took her through plenty of aviation-heavy towns, including St.Louis, Yellow Springs (near Dayton) and Seattle, but the death of two friends ina canoeing accident had left Barb with a flying phobia, which turned commutingto archaeological digs into long and frustrating trips. After a bus trip fromAustin to Raleigh-Durham in 1993, she decided to get help to deal with thephobia. As the phobia passed, she enrolled in a ground school, intending only toseparate myth from math. The school offered an introductory flight, which shetook, and it became the flight that changed her life. In 1993 she went from afear of flying through primary flight instruction and was doing loops and stallsby the fall of that year.

She still finds time to publish as one of only a couple dozen specialists onancient Maya hieroglyphic decipherment, and still finds time to compose, recordand perform songs about aviation, but her full-timejob and passion is teaching flying at FirstClass Aviation in Austin, Tex. She's also an active member of the TexasAviation Association, which has had its hands full lately keeping generalaviation alive in the Austin area.

When did you get interested in geology?

I used to go fishing with my father on numerous rivers in the Ozarks ofsouthern Missouri, and I was intrigued by the wonderful caves along the rivers.I started caving on my own when I was twelve or thirteen, took it veryseriously, and joined a caving group in St. Louis. I was a geology major for twoyears in college, but I didn't stick with it. I wanted to tramp around in thewoods and do field exploration, but there were very few field opportunities forwomen in geology at that time.

What was at the root of your fear of flying?

In 1963 I was into caving, and a couple of close friends I used to cave withdied in a canoeing accident, and that turned my life upside down. I didn'trealize it at the time, but that was the incident that precipitated my fear offlying. I came from a very small family so I didn't have a lot of relatives topass away, and I hadn't really encountered death yet. My parents were alsoseparating at the time, so my world became very fragile. I was phobic about alot of things. It wasn't just flying. I didn't want to drive, didn't want to gocaving, even became edgy about crossing the street when there was no traffic.

I was in the process of planning to spend that summer on the Northwest coastbackpacking the length of the Cascade Crest Trail. I didn't have a lot ofexperience but I had a lot of will, and I was perfectly content to go off bymyself if no one wanted to come along. I didn't want to fly to the Northwest, soI wound up taking the train, and getting there alive was the beginning of myreclamation of my life. I didn't have too many opportunities to fly, but whenopportunities came up I found that I was reluctant to take them, though I did,with increasing fear. Years later I managed to figure out that my fear had itsroots in the death of my friends in the spring of '63.

I did hike the Cascade Crest Trail that summer, and I was so overwhelmed bythe beauty of the Pacific Northwest that I couldn't go back to Antioch Collegein Ohio. I enrolled as a geology major at the University of Washington, andspent almost ten years in Seattle. I jumped ship from geology after I found outwhat the field situation was like, and got into anthropology, where there werelots of field opportunities. I didn't know quite what I wanted to do inanthropology, what part of the world I wanted to work in, but I had always had atalent for languages, so I got interested in linguistic anthropology and that'sultimately the direction I took.

Had you flown before the phobia set in?

I had flown twice. I had one experience on a 707 from St. Louis toWashington, D.C., and I had been in a Cessna 182 up in the wilderness of Maine.On that trip I was hiking with some friends and we we hitchhiked out from afishing camp into one of the nearby towns, and decided to fly back in. It was alittle scary, first time in a small plane, but it was beautiful and exciting,too.

There was an eight-year period when I did fly on the airlines, and I found Ihad greater and greater periods of anticipatory anxiety, but once I made thedecision to fly and strapped into the plane, my fellow passengers had no idea ofthe turmoil I was in. I had two rough flights, back to back, with turbulence andvisible lightning due to proximity of thunderstorms. It was a feeling offragility in an environment I was already uncomfortable with. Those two flightsscared me to the point where I just didn't want to fly.

I went into the Peace Corps, and my job was to be a cave explorer for theDepartment of Archaeology of the government of Belize. It was a greatopportunity but I had to fly to get there, and I turned that flight into anenormous rite of passage. I was sure that I was on God's shit list and thisflight was going to prove it to me. We landed safely in Belize City and I washappy to be on the ground and launched myself into a wonderful five-year job.

My job was to go deep into the jungle and explore Mayan caves that no one hadbeen in for 1,500 years. They were great, long caves with miles of riverpassage. There were artifacts and evidence of burial sites, and it wasdangerous. There were lots of close calls with loose rocks and close calls withdrowning — the kind of things you would expect if you put yourself out in thewilderness on the edge.

I'm getting a picture of Indiana Jones.

It was very much an Indiana Jones kind of life. I explored and mapped caves,and did salvage archaeology in them. It was spectacular.

So there was a part of me that wasn't afraid to take on new opportunities andadventures, and could balance risk and reward, and on the other side was totallypetrified of getting on an airplane. I couldn't make sense of it and I buriedthat part of me. I was ashamed of it. Very few people knew about it. I didn'tknow what to do about it and didn't see any way out of it.

I got out of the Peace Corps in 1975 and moved to British Columbia. I livedon a little island in the Strait of Georgia, and went back to Guatemala to workfor the Sierra Club as a river guide, then back to Alaska in the spring of '76,and enrolled at the University of Texas in the fall of that year. All of thiswas overland travel because I was afraid to fly.

How did you get help to tackle the phobia?

I had a job offer in 1991 to teach at the University of North Carolina forone month a year. It's a conversational course in a Mayan language calledYucatec Maya — it's spoken in Yucatan, Campeche, and Quintana Roo in Mexico. Ifirst taught the course in June of 1992 and they were quite willing to send me aplane ticket, but I took the bus from Austin to Chapel Hill. It was anexhausting, stressful and uncomfortable trip and I vowed that no matter what Iwas going to make myself fly there in June of 1993. As that time approached Istarted having a series of dreams — and I've been active in dream work sincethe late '70s — and these dreams would put me in airborne situations, incommercial airliners or small planes. They were wonderful and excitingopportunities and it was clear that the dreams were pushing a message for me toget over the fear and that I could learn to love to fly. Then I'd wake up fromthe dreams and decided it was too scary. But I had already committed that nomatter what I was going to do it.

I had squirreled away a bunch of articles about programs that were run by theairlines, and I think most of the major airlines have tried programs like thisat different times. One of the more successful programs was the one AmericanAirlines had started in the early '80s, and I had an article about that programwritten by someone who had participated in it. As it turned out, ReidWilson is the psychologist that ran American's program and he had a practicein, of all places, Chapel Hill. I called him and explained my situation, andjust the rapport that we established on the phone was a good start. I had allkinds of backup plans in place but did complete the flight to Raleigh-Durham —even changed planes in Dallas — and it was a great flight. It was an overcastmorning and when we popped up into the sunshine it was almost a religiousexperience, a sense of relief and wonder. Another thing that helped overcome thefear was just opening up to friends about it, which I hadn't done before. Irealized that they weren't going to ridicule me, and their support andunderstanding would make us better friends

During those four weeks in Chapel Hill I met with Reid three times, and hehelped me understand how the fear came about. I flew back to Texas without anyanticipatory fear at all, and to me that was the evidence that there had been achange. I spent the rest of the summer bouncing across the country seeing familyand friends I hadn't seen in 15 years. After about a dozen commercial flights Iwas ready to explore this new discovery and get some education about it.

I signed up for a ground school — it's the class I teach now — not with theintention of learning to fly, but just to learn more about it. They gave us anintroductory flight and I came down from that half-hour flight in a 152 knowingthat this was the purest form of the drug and I just had to have it. It's afeeling that I watch my aerobatic students go through now. It's a combination offear and excitement and fascination and trepidation all mixed together.

When the phobia had you in its grip, was your distrust directed at thepilots, at the machines, or at yourself?

I did feel vulnerable when I was up in the air, off the planet, and felt moreat the mercy of screw-ups. But there was an element of wondering if I belongedin the world. I grew up with two alcoholic parents, in an unstable,dysfunctional family, and I think I did concentrate abnormally on thepossibility of mechanical failure and pilot error. Every plane crash proved thatI was right and vindicated my attitude, and the media play to that attitude evenin non-phobic people.

Tell us about your first solo.

It didn't come very quickly. I think I had about 30 hours. I was alreadylearning spins and loops and rolls before I soloed — in fact we did them on myfirst lesson — but I was terrified of landing. When I look back at my limitedexperience with commercial flights, the worst part was always landing, and someof that must have carried over.

I wasn't sure that my first solo was going to happen that day. My instructorwas a former Air Force pilot and he said the usual thing — "Park it here,I'm going to get out, it's going to climb like crazy" — and I did it. Hehad signed me off to several airports so the next day I came in and took theairplane and went off and did a bunch of landings. I think that day was actuallymore exciting than the first solo, because it was my first unsupervised trip outof Austin.

So in 1993 you went from a fear of flying in the spring to soloing, loops andspins in the fall.

It was a tidal-wave experience. It makes you realize that all things arepossible. You have to be ready for it, you have to push it along, and you haveto not let anything get in the way.

I had my private license in July of '94 and began aerobatic training a fewdays after that. Then I took a mountain-flying course in British Columbia for aweek, and came back and finished the aerobatic course. We used the syllabus inBill Kershner's Basic Aerobatic Manual, and he refers to 21-turn spins in thebook. One day my instructor turned to me and said "I'd like to try a21-turn spin." Part of me said "Holy Shit!" and part of me said"I want to be there" and we decided to do it as part of my aerobatictraining.

That really whetted my appetite for long spins so I started doing them andvideotaping them. The longest one is 52 turns and I sent the tape to BillKershner, who was interested because he's never done more than 30 himself.

Who holds the record?

I think that the international record is still held by Eric Mueller who did125. Then there's the question of upright versus inverted spins, but I thinkMark Madden — who died last year — broke Wayne Handley's record of 67 invertedby doing over 80.

Is that a record you're interested in holding?

I think I could do 125 turns if I worked up to it, and started with enoughaltitude.

Do you have any trouble keeping count?

Apparently not. I've been able to do it every time I've tried, but it doestake a lot of concentration to stay focused that long. These days I do aboutseven or eight spins with my students, and it's hard to just jump up to 25 ormore. You have to train your brain to stay focused.

What airplane were you in when you did 52 consecutive spins, and how highdid you start?

We were in a 152 Aerobat and started from 13,500 feet. I took one of myformer aerobatic instructors — who was a bit reluctant but went anyway — andthe deal was I would call out the turns and he would call out the altitudes. Wewere on our way to 14,000 feet but it was getting dark and we didn't want totake the extra 10 minutes or so it would've taken to get the last 500 feet. Wewere pretty slow already.

Tell us about the forced landing and the sunglasses.

It was the same airplane that I now instruct in. The owner was using a mechanicat a private field called Pegasus, about 20 miles northwest of Austin. I usuallyferried the airplane there and back, but this time someone else had brought theairplane in and I was bringing it back. My friend Ken dropped me off, and I didthe walk-around, and discovered there were only about three or four gallons offuel in the airplane. Ike, the mechanic, said "I normally don't sell fuel,but I might be able to find you some." He had a Navion there at the shopwith some gas in it, so he got a bottle and drained some into it, and it lookedfine. It was blue. So he took the valve off the Navion and filled up a jerry canfrom the wing tank.

I went up to his house to use the restroom, and when he came back he hadalready poured the gas into one of the wings of the Aerobat. I checked the sumpsagain and I remember distinctly taking off my blue-blocker sunglasses to checkthe right wing, taking them off when I checked the gascolator, and nottaking them off when I checked the left wing, and, of course — as I found outlater — he had poured the fuel into the left wing.

I got airborne and my plan was to climb to 4,500 feet and do some aerobaticsbefore I came back. I got to about 4,100 feet and got a little roughness, abouta 200 RPM drop, then it smoothed out again, but it got my attention so I turnedfurther east, which was friendlier and flatter terrain. At that point I did awingover and all hell broke loose. I got real serious roughness and then theengine just quit. I could see Georgetown airport about six miles away, and Iknew I had a tailwind, so I turned toward it and hoped I could make it, and Idid, with altitude to spare.

A lot of interesting things go through your head after an engine failure. Theprimary thing is to fly the airplane, and there's no time at which I failed todo that. I maintained best glide, I knew I had a tailwind, I knew how far I hadto go, and I also knew I could screw this up and die, too. I called Georgetownand told them I was going to do a downwind landing and that's what I did. I hadjust enough momentum to roll off the runway onto the taxiway, and that's when Irealized that my knees were knocking. A mechanic helped me flush the tank andthere was just a lot of water that had gone into the left wing. Once we drainedit, the plane flew just fine.

Is that your only forced landing?

No, I've had two more since that one. I had carb ice on my firstinstructional flight. We were below a cloud base and there was a lot of humiditythat day. We found out later that the carb heat duct was not working properly,even though I got a noticeable RPM drop during runup. We got carb ice and therewasn't enough carb heat to fix it, and we were able to hold altitude to do anemergency landing at what's now our municipal airport — Bergstrom — but thiswas when Mueller was still open. ATC at Mueller was encouraging me to go toMueller, but as I got close to Bergstrom I decided to use the "E word"and go there. I was met by fire trucks, police cars and a few city vehicles, butother than that it was uneventful. The mechanic came out the next day,determined what the problem was, and fixed it.

The other one was October 1st of last year. I was with a student in thepattern at Taylor, which is about 25 miles northeast of Austin, and we had beendoing simulated engine failures over fields a half-hour before that. I was ondownwind and had the classic combination of vibration, smelling smoke, oil tempcoming up, and oil pressure dropping off. We were downwind at pattern altitudeso I flew it in and landed. A piston had cracked, decompressed that cylinder,which over-compressed the rest of the engine, and blew the oil out the breather,all in about 10 seconds. My student handled it quite well, and I felt like Ihandled it well, too.

Did having an experience like that rekindle the phobia?

Absolutely not. The phobia is gone. Flying is my life and I can't imaginewhat would make me stop doing it.

How did music get into your life and when did you start writing songsabout flying?

I grew up surrounded by music of all kinds—classical, jazz, folk, blues, and ofcourse rock 'n' roll was a part of my adolescence. But I have been a folkie fromthe git-go. I learned to play guitar in 1959 when my caver boyfriend taught me afew chords. I love singing harmony; that's better, even, than doing snap rolls.Songs learned at summer camp — and the opportunities there for group harmony —played a large role in my musical development. I have written many songs aboutthings I am passionate about; it began in high school with my first caving song.Many others followed, and some won awards at national caving conventions. I havewritten several "Mayan jungle" songs also. My first flying song was"Grows You Up and It Grows You Down" andwas written just after my first aerobatic solo, in October, 1994. After that,they just kept comin' out regularly over a two-year period.

What's the most interesting thing you discovered about the Mayans in yourtravels?

Just in the last ten years we've had a major shift in our understanding ofthe Mayans, and when we go back and read what was first thought about the Mayanswe realize how much we didn't know. We're likely to see more change in our viewof them as more cities are unearthed, and we learn more about the politicalalliances and sub-alliances, and warfare and marriages. For instance, we used tothink that they were peaceful and that their culture was dedicated tounderstanding time and the heavens and astronomy, and those notions have fallenby the wayside. If anything, we conclude that they were a lot like us. They werefascinated with all kinds of things in their natural world, they were verycompetitive, and they were up against hard times. They had to deal withoverpopulation, drought, inadequate resources and we're still trying to sort outhow they handled it and why they disappeared.

Learning to read their hieroglyphics has been amazing to me. The goldenperiod of decipherment is now. It started around the early '70s and I've beenimmersed in it from the beginning. In that time we've gone from not reallyunderstanding how their writing system worked to now being able to read 85 to 90percent of it. My contribution to that understanding has been the grammar, andthat's almost like having a time machine. We're now able to piece together andread aloud a language that hasn't been spoken aloud in 1,500 years.

What's your favorite Mayan cave?

There's a complex called the Caves Branch area which wasn't widely known totourists until recently, but there are tours now that allow you to rappel intothe caves. There's a cave called Petroglyph Cave in central Belize that I'd sayis pretty pristine as an archeological site. There are wonderful crystalformations, and skulls covered with crystals, petroglyphs on the walls, and formany reasons that's a favorite cave.

I'd say my all time favorite cave anywhere is the MammothCave Flint Ridge system in Kentucky. It's the biggest cave in the world, byfar, and it's endless and historical. You can go crawling off into corners ofthat cave and find kneeprints of people that explored that corner 80 years agoand you're the first person to come in after them.

We've heard a lot of bad news about the GA situation in Austin. Can yougive us some good news?

The Texas Aviation Association is a strongorganization and we've managed to establish a rapport with the Department ofAviation. I was the one who blew the whistle on the minimum standards they triedto impose, and TXAA and AOPA got in behind us and wrote a very strong response,and the city responded favorably and altered their minimum standardsaccordingly. There are still some issues there that we don't like, but I'mcrossing my fingers that maybe we've successfully dealt with this. I thinkthey'd like for GA to leave Bergstrom and go somewhere else, but there's nowhereelse for us to go. Apparently the Pflugerville project is dead. That's a townnorth of Austin that did an airport feasibility study, but there was so muchopposition from the local landowners that they gave up on it. There are stillsome people talking about reopening Mueller. I know that it will come up againin the legislature.

So the good news is we've got a strong local organization, and without thatwe'd be dead in the water.

What's unique about the way you teach flying?

I love teaching. I taught during graduate school, did summer camp counseling,and taught the Yucatec Maya course for eight years. Flying is a very emotionalactivity and I think I relate to the emotions of the students. As a CFI you'regiven training about how to teach. I learned what I had to learn to regurgitateit on my CFI checkride, but I don't necessarily follow the book down the line. Itry to use my intuitive sense about how to present information, and I'm reallydedicated to my students. When I get passionate about something I think isworthwhile I want to share it with others so they can get passionate about ittoo.