About once a year I get to fly somewhere on an airplane.  Sometimes it’s for work, sometimes for a wedding, sometimes for a funeral, never just for vacationing, but perhaps I will do that someday.  I like flying in airplanes.  I especially like that final turn on the tarmac, sometimes followed by a pause at the runway, when I know the engines will throttle up next, and inertia will push me back in my seat.  I recently found out that most people like aisle seats, and airlines may be charging more for them soon.  But I like the window seat, especially during the day.  I like when there is a break in the clouds and I can see the ground passing below.  Once in a while I can see the shadow of the plane on the ground, miles below.  From that height the shadow is tiny, just like an airplane in the sky is tiny when viewed from the ground, and not at all as the aircraft seems when I am in the airport watching them come and go.  I like watching the shadow pass over the patchwork of fields of different colors, of green circles made by irrigation systems inside of arid brown squares.  Passing hundreds of these fields in a minute, I begin to add up the length of the flight . . . all these parcels, owned by someone, tended by someone.

Next week I fly again, and this year’s trip is for work.  As much fun as it is to fly on an airplane, I am really excited because I am going to Atlanta, Georgia, and there is a small possibility that I will get to see the World’s Biggest Pipe Organ.  I read about it a couple years ago.  It is up in the air exactly how the biggest pipe organ would be measured, so there are actually a few contenders, depending on if you count manuals, ranks of pipes, total number of pipes, or number of stops.  But this particular one is a stand-out among gigantic pipe organs.  It has seven manuals (keyboards), over 1200 stop tabs, and it has one of only two true 64′ open stops in the world.

The boxes on this wall are the actuators for the lowest diaphone pipes. There is one box per pipe, and the bottom of the pipe begins at about chest level.

The 64′ Diaphone is a pipe that makes an 8 Hertz tone, more than an octave below the normal range of human hearing.  It works the same way a foghorn does.  I have personally heard a 32′ Diaphone in person and remember it well, but this goes a full octave lower!  It is true that this organ is not in very operable condition, and much of it doesn’t work.  But even so, I hear that they are open a couple days a month for tours, and maybe I will be able to catch one of these. That would be so cool!  This organ is the loudest musical instrument in the world – the Grand Ophicleide stop alone produces 130 decibels at a one meter distance.  It operates on 100″ inches of air.  That is to say that the air supply for the pipes has enough pressure to raise a column of mercury over 100 inches.  Mercury is heavy!  A church organ operates on something like 30″, and most theater organs on 60″ or more.  But 100″?

I’m not really a pipe organ nut.  I don’t play them, repair them, or collect them.  But I do appreciate the complexity of moving parts, the mechanical apparatus of a tracker, and the valves, solenoids and switching network of an electrically operated organ.  I appreciate the craftsmanship that goes into an instrument like this, and the amount of time and skill it takes to build one.  I love the sounds they produce and the works written for them, especially those by the greatest Lutheran cantor ever, J. S. Bach.  And I love a performance by a skilled organist.  The pipe organ is, after all, the mother of all brass instruments, and while I am confined by ability to playing the smaller, less complicated, and less expensive variety of brass, that doesn’t mean I can’t sit back and enjoy the performance of someone else who can play it well.

So although this is a business trip, I am hoping that there will be an opportunity for me to break away and go see this behemoth of pipes.

What’s that . . . ?  I have my cities mixed up . . . ?  The biggest pipe organ is at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey?  It’s not in Atlanta, Georgia?  I guess my chances of seeing it on this trip are significantly diminished.

So what else is there to do in Atlanta?  At least I still get to fly on an airplane.  And I have a window seat.