By Mike Delorenzo in AIM AIR, Essays & Articles
Seven thousand feet below me, lost in a greenish mist, is a canopy of tightly packed trees. It stretches before me for hundreds of miles, and creeps behind for hundreds more. I’m flying over the rain forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly known as Zaire, and simply known to us as “the congo.” [...]
By Mike Delorenzo in AIM AIR, Essays & Articles
Snap.snap.snap.snap.snap. A cool and dim dawn hour awakes to the sound of high-voltage igniters firing steadily as the engine compressor spins to life with a speedy whine. The Cessna Caravan begins its start sequence: Starter engaged, igniters on, fuel on, a whoosh and a low rumble as the gas generator lights. Engine revolutions build with [...]
By Mike Delorenzo in Essays & Articles
So much road. So many white lines ticking away aside our little Honda at 65 miles per hour. Two thoughts constantly cross my mind. Where do we get all this asphalt? And why can’t we send some to Africa? For seven weeks this Spring, the country opened up before us over five thousand odd miles [...]
By Mike Delorenzo in AIM AIR, Essays & Articles
It’s hot, it’s tiring, it’s a foreign landscape unfolding before you at a hundred and fifty miles per hour. It’s noise and vibration, a heavy load and an aching back from loading it. It’s dusty and turbulent. It’s wrinkled maps and a bag lunch under the seat, a missionary family asleep in the back, exhausted [...]