Today’s good mood is sponsored by flying.
Yay!!!! I am so excited that I am flying again after two weeks!
When everything seems to be going against you, remember the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it. -Henry Ford
I’ve had some of you asking me what’s going on; why haven’t I been flying.
Well, good reason: my instructor has been off to Winter Haven, Florida for amphibian plane training; see the plane below. I am so excited to share that after intensive training, he is now also a commercial amphibian pilot. Congratulations to Roger!! Walking a bit taller in those shoes, I bet! The place where he went also trained Jimmy Buffet and Alan Jackson on flying seaplanes. (The two of them did “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere” – which is very appropriate for today, don’t you think?) After finding out those things, I checked it out. Author Richard Bach lived in a house next door to the Base (but no longer is he there, the house is). People come from all over the world for training there. According to their website, they have trained over 17,000 seaplane pilots. Pretty impressive!
So, this morning I flew with the cool Roger and getting all the benefits. He’s the “plane whisperer”. He’ll be taking pictures and he instantly knows without looking if I’ve slowed a bit and know when there’s even a gentle breeze going on. The thing is I’ve had to watch and listen more intently to more fully appreciate his talents. As much as I’ve learned, I realize I have so much more I need to know.
Today all my takeoffs and landings went well (except the time I was taking off and still had the flaps down – but Roger used that as a teaching moment and taught me what to do in that case and no, it’s not jerking them up). I love the Cessna 152! I got to land on all four runways in Roanoke! I love it when the controller mixes it up. My favorite controller was there this morning. It makes it so much more fun! I even did alright on Runway 16. I tended to go too high for that one – the mix between the mountain feeling like it’s right there and the road right below you just before landing. Roger walked/flew me through the issue. When you come in at the altitude that you need to be, it makes you feel like you’re too low. On Runway 24, it felt like I hit something, but Roger pinpointed the problem: a manhold on the runway.
I know I have cross country training left to do. I know that I have soft field landings to do. I also know that I need to learn how to recover from stalls, spins, and spiral dives. But, for right now I’m having the most fun that I’ve ever had in my life. I enjoy every second of it. Why would I want to rush through it?
Cheers for the Cessna!! A Cessna 152 pilot was in the pattern doing takeoffs and landings, and the pilot looked up and saw a King Air overfly him, and the Cessna pilot said I wish I was flying an aircraft like that. Then the King Air pilot looked up and saw a Boeing 747 over flying the airplane and that King Air pilot said I wish I was flying an aircraft like that. The Boeing 747 pilot looked up and saw the space shuttle fly over and the 747 pilot said I wish I was flying that. And the space shuttle pilot looked down among all the aircraft and saw that Cessna 152 and said boy do I wish I was flying that, that looks like a lot of fun.
Pour me somethin’ tall an’ strong,
Make it a “Hurricane” before I go insane.
It’s only half-past twelve but I don’t care.
It’s five o’clock somewhere.
– Songwriters: Jim Brown / Don Rollins
All of the photographs were taken by Roger this morning in Roanoke. How very lucky am I???? It was breathtakingly beautiful there.
