Fear? What Fear?
Why am I driven to move from the passenger seat to the pilot’s seat? It’s a bit like asking yourself whether you’re the passenger or the driver of the car from your previous night's dream. is some significance. And there certainly has been a shift. What shifted?
The stakes are still the same, and if anything, they’re higher. I have two young children, now 4 and 7. I am also seeking a career. I left nursing without regret and I am slowly making my way as a writer, unpaid (as of yet). I am in a position where I still have a good 20 to 25 years of a career ahead of me. So what is possessing me take the leap to the next level and learn to fly?
When I turned 40, it didn’t happen right away, but I started thinking about my mortality. Heck, I could easily be halfway through my life! I started thinking of things I wanted to do before I died, or in other words, what things would I regret not doing. Learning to fly was one of the big ones. I have admired the pilots in my life for years and I felt that it was time to BE that person I admired.
So far I have met with a local FAA-rated flight instructor who would train me in his 1960 Luscombe, a taildragger. Well, I thought, I learned how to drive a stickshift in the hills of San Francisco, it is fitting that I learn to fly in a taildragger in the mountains. I prefer antiques. My style is classic. And my potential flight instructor is a classic. He followed in the footsteps of his parents who helped establish the local airfield. Learning to fly in his teens he bought his first plane, the Luscombe, at 20, and he’s maintained it himself ever since. Noting the library books on aviation I had stacked on his desk during our meeting, he liked that I was taking an intellectual approach (he had been more hands-on). In the stack was Neil Van Sickle’s 6th edition Modern Airmanship and the first two volumes of The Commando Decisions Series by Richard Taylor, Volume One: Aviation Weather and Volume Two: Pilot Proficiency. These were books he had literally put on the college library shelves when he taught ground school to packed classrooms in the 80’s. We joked, the best place to start is free. My favorite book of the bunch right now is Van Sickle’s. As I read it I take down notes in a spiral top notepad. When I come across a term I don’t know I search the internet, or text a pilot friend for more real life answers. I have so much to learn, and it’s thrilling!
(Originally published 1/26/19 by author on her blog The Passage.)