The first time you fly in a small airplane like a Cessna 172 or a Cirrus SR20, hear the engine whine and feel the control of the aircraft as it picks up speed to take-off, and then watch as the ground falls away as you punch through clouds and rise above them is an amazing experience. The most rewarding thing as a pilot is to hear my passenger’s excitement and later see the their gaze and huge grin because that is when I know that the experience is as memorable for them as my first flight was. That is my present “thing”.

My future “thing” is to get together a group of pilots and take a month to fly around the country, to see the country from 3,000 - 4,000. There are many interesting places that were by-passed by the Interstate Highway but still have a story to tell and airports where history played out yet have since been forgotten. Those are the places we would look for, the usual, the interesting, and the unique, to land and spend some time. Like the barnstormers of old, we would take passengers up so that they could see their world from above, get to the city for medical care, be reunited with their brother or sister, father or mother who they haven’t seen in awhile, or get a vet as far away from the horrors of the War and into a place of peace and solace.

Flying will not cure hunger or bring peace, but it can be a place and time when the cares of the world are far more distant as the plane is from the ground; sometimes that distance is enough to recharge our soul, a good thing in today’s world.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 27th, 2007 at 11:07 am and is filed under Do Your Thing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.