There’s a thing going around on LiveJournal in which the poster picks seven interests from your user profile and you have to explain why they are important to you. I volunteered, and eeknight hit me with the with following: flying, freemasonry, half-life 2, libertarian, texas history, urban legends, and women. Bear in mind that these are seven out of 39 in my case. The original premise was to write about all seven in one post, but I’m going to take the long road and write about a different one each day. This is the first.
Flying
Who, as a kid, didn’t dream of learning to fly? For most of us, as we got older the idea of actually learning to fly a plane was only slightly less preposterous than becoming an astronaut. When I met my wife, I learned that both of her parents were flight instructors for a major airline and she practically grew up the back seat of the family airplane. These weren’t wealthy jetsetters. They were just an upper middle class family like mine. I realized that maybe learning to fly wasn’t the outlandish dream I’d thought it was.
A couple years after we were married, Mrs. Flametoad decided that she wanted to earn her pilot’s license. She started learning as a teenager, but at that age when anything your parents wanted you to do was automatically lame. She said she always thought she’d have time later, but somehow she graduated from high school and moved away to college before that ever happened. So we looked into it, and yes it wasn’t dirt cheap but at around $3,500 spread over it 6-9 months it was at least do-able. The agreement was that she would get her license, then it would be my turn. Mrs. Flametoad did in fact earn her private pilot’s license. We got to enjoy more than one "$100 hamburgers", so named for the practice of renting a plane and flying to nearby towns for dinner.
I then started on my turn, but it went less smoothly. My instructor didn’t seem very interested in actually instructing (or making money). At the end of the lesson I’d try to schedule the next one only to be told that he’d have to check his calendar. Days or a week would go by with no word, and when I’d finally catch him on the phone he’d say he was waiting to hear from me. So after a few months of that, I eventually had to drop him and find a new instructor. Unfortunately, there was a new wrinkle. Mrs. Flametoad became pregnant with our first tadpole. The new instructor and I hit it off, and I progressed fairly well, but the race was on. I needed to earn my license before the baby was born, because there was no way we’d be able to afford baby bills AND flying.
Unfortunately, that’s a race that I lost. I got to the point where I’d solo’d, meaning I was flying the plane by myself (under instructor supervision) and practicing maneuvers. Then it became clear that I wasn’t going to get in my hours before Ben was born, so I hung up my headset and prepared for daddyhood. Now we’ve got two tadpoles and a daycare bill that’s almost as high as our mortgage, so my license is in an indefinite holding pattern.
In a few more years when the kids are in school and money loosens up, maybe I’ll go back and earn my wings. I still feel like I know what to do in the cockpit at least well enough to land in an emergency. I suspect it’s like riding a bike…only from 5,000 feet.
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