E5: El Cóndor and the Sulawesi Volcano

El Cóndor and the Sulawesi Volcano
Lobster Bob's Scenic Tours | Vehicle Story: El Cóndor

NARRATOR: Somewhere on Earth, a volcano is smoking. A market smells of a hundred spices. A little plane is climbing higher than the clouds. You can see it. You can learn about it. Every place is real... and it is all out there. Lobster Bob has been everywhere. Now he is taking you. Passport ready?

NARRATOR: This is a Vehicle Story. Today: El Cóndor. Registration YV-528. Track: Air.

NARRATOR: The Fleet Registry lists El Cóndor as a bush plane, bought at an auction in Caracas. She is named after the Andean condor, the largest flying bird in the world. The condor rides thermals. It almost never flaps. It works with what the air is already doing, instead of fighting it. Lobster Bob spent three years learning to do the same thing. This story is about the day that lesson paid for itself.

NARRATOR: The place today is Sulawesi, an island in Indonesia, and the airfield at Manado on its northern tip. One degree, twenty-nine minutes north. One hundred and twenty-four degrees, fifty minutes east. And here is the fact to carry to school: Indonesia has more active volcanoes than any other country on Earth. More than one hundred of them. A child can hold that at dinner tonight.

NARRATOR: On the morning of this story, before the flight, Lobster Bob did what he does before every flight. The walk-around. The fuel check. Then he walked to the front of the aircraft, put his thumb on the small nick on the propeller blade, moved it across the leading edge once, and started the engine. He has never said what the nick means. He has been asked. He has not answered.

NARRATOR: They took off south along the coast, over green water and dark green jungle, past a mountain that had been asleep for as long as anyone at the airfield could remember. It was not supposed to be active. Nobody had told the mountain.

NARRATOR: It did not explode. It cleared its throat. A column of grey ash rose off the summit, straight up, taller than the mountain itself, and began to lean across the sky ahead of them. And ash is the one thing a plane cannot argue with. It is rock, ground as fine as flour, and an engine that breathes it in stops being an engine.

NARRATOR: Lobster Bob turned El Cóndor away from the column and dropped towards the sea. The air over volcano country does not sit still. It rises and falls in great slow hills, and El Cóndor did what her namesake does. She found the air that was going her way and rode it, engine steady, nose level, out along the coast, while the grey column stood on the horizon behind them like a second mountain. She did not hurry. Hurrying is flapping, and she does not flap.

LOBSTER BOB: She flies like she knows where she is going even when I do not. I find this reassuring and also slightly unsettling.

NARRATOR: They landed back at Manado with a fine grey dust on her wings. Lobster Bob climbed down. He looked at the volcano, a long way off now, still clearing its throat. Witnesses report that he aged visibly. The plane did not.

NARRATOR: A mechanic at the airfield helped wipe the ash from her wings, and while he was there he noticed the nick on the propeller blade, and offered to smooth it out. Twenty minutes of work. Nothing to worry about. Lobster Bob said no. He put his thumb on the nick, moved it across the leading edge once, and booked fuel for the morning.

LOBSTER BOB: I rate El Cóndor ten out of ten. If anyone asks, I say nine.

NARRATOR: The volcano that was not supposed to be active went back to being a mountain, in its own time, the way mountains do. El Cóndor flew out the next morning, over the same coast, past the same summit, riding the same slow hills of air. She did not flap. She never flaps.

NARRATOR: Subscribe at lobster bobs podcast dot com for your weekly round-up and free resources.

NARRATOR: Lobster Bob has been everywhere. Now he is taking you.

LOBSTER BOB: You are the missing passenger, mijo. Passport ready? The world is not going to wait forever.

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