Flying Lessons

For the better part of my life I stared at the planes any time I drove by Executive Airport in south Sacramento. “That’d be neat.” And, in my younger years, that was probably more like “Vroooooom”. Flying was a fascination but not a likely reality. The similulator on the PC was a nice toy, but didn’t really teach anything beyond how to crash and burn into an imaginary ground using a joystick. It hasn’t helped that I have friends on the Wrong Coast that fly.

Of course, there is also that whole fear of flying. I don’t like getting on commercial jets and bouncing through the sky, ending up at the far end like a James Bond martini - shaken, but not stirred.

Our visit to Kauai may ultimately prove to be more costly than planned. We made use of the services of Wings Over Kauai, and chartered a Cessna by one of the locals. That views on that trip were incredible, and the personal service from Bruce our pilot was fantastic. He spent a lot of time describing what he was doing and why. He made us feel very comfortable on that trip. He made flying that plane look like it was easy. So easy, that..

Yesterday, I took the intro flight from our local airport. I flew takeoff to not-quite final approach. Flying actually _does_ appear to be easy. It is certainly easy when the flight instructor is managing most everything else :-). The views from the air were something. At 1500 feet, you can clearly see Mount Diablo looming in the distance.

I now have the study materials for learning to fly, and plan on starting to take actual flying lessons at the beginning of the year, weather permitting.