Funny, it doesn't feel like 100 years...
Dec. 17th, 2003 06:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpMy first airplane flight took place at about this time of year, albeit in January. I was headed off for boot camp at Parris Island, and I sat in a window seat on the right side of the plane as the plane took off from LaGuardia Airport in Queens, New York. I don't know what made my heart pound harder, the occasion of my first flight or the fact that I was headed out into The World for the first time, albeit to a very, um, supervised environment. It didn't matter.
A couple of years later, I got a job as a "field expediter" for Gibbs & Hill, a New York engineering firm. It was a great job for a kid who liked to travel. My typical week would start by showing up at the airport on Monday morning and flying to some exotic destination such as Chicago, or Mankato (in Minnesota), renting a car, and then visiting a supplier for a power plant being built by the company in Taiwan. I'd fly out that night, or the next morning, depending on my schedule, returning to New York on Thursday night. Fridays was for writing my reports and picking up paperwork for the following week's trips.
To tell the truth, after about a month, the constant travel got to me.
Some years later, I landed a job as a "tour escort" (euphemism for "whipping boy") for a US travel agency sending clients to the USSR. It was during that time that I developed the knack of falling asleep on airplanes almost as soon as the wheels left the ground.
I could go on, but I'm sure you get the picture. It was about this time that I began to view airplanes in the manner of some comedian whose name escapes me: you walk into this tube at location A, the tube vibrates loudly for some period of time, after which you walk out of the tube at location B. End of story.
In 1990, I was working at Borland, in Scotts Valley, California, and it turned out the company boss (Philippe Kahn) was a pilot, and was something of an inspiration to me to pursue my dreams. I had wanted to learn to fly when I lived in Florida in the mid-80s, but the closest school seemed far away and the prices... whooo! Expensive!
However, checking out the prices in 1990 revealed that there was hardly any possibility of instruction becoming any cheaper as time went on, so, I started shelling out the bucks for flying lessons just down the coast, in Watsonville. After the requisite instruction and practice flying with my instructor, there came a day when he told me to stop the plane, whereupon he got out and instructed me to take my first "solo" flight.
Flying solo for the first time is a little like simultaneous interpretation: you're really too busy to savor what you're doing. I do recall aborting my first two approaches for landing, which probably gave my instructor heartburn, as he might easily have concluded that I'd lost my nerve and could not land the plane. From where I sat, I was looking at a moderate crosswind that seemed to have arisen upon my solo takeoff, and I didn't like my approaches under those circumstances. I landed on the third try.
My association with Borland ended before I got my private pilot's license, and I was fortunate that a couple of pilots in Pagosa were running a small school at the local airport. Eventually, I accumulated enough skill and experience to have an examiner come by and test me. I passed, although I'm sure there were a couple of moments where the issue was in serious doubt.
All in all, I logged a piddling number of hours in my logbook, but do recall taking the family for a spin in the vicinity of Pagosa about a month after getting my private pilot's ticket. Then there was the time I flew Andrew and Natalie to Colorado Springs to pick up my former colleague Zack U. and bring him back to Pagosa for a visit. And the time a bunch of us flew to Farmington for breakfast, because we could. I enjoyed every minute of those and other flights.
I haven't flown in years as a pilot, but I did get to experience a bit of the wonder of being at the controls of an airplane. It's a grand feeling.
And now, back to our regularly scheduled translation. :^)
Cheers...
A couple of years later, I got a job as a "field expediter" for Gibbs & Hill, a New York engineering firm. It was a great job for a kid who liked to travel. My typical week would start by showing up at the airport on Monday morning and flying to some exotic destination such as Chicago, or Mankato (in Minnesota), renting a car, and then visiting a supplier for a power plant being built by the company in Taiwan. I'd fly out that night, or the next morning, depending on my schedule, returning to New York on Thursday night. Fridays was for writing my reports and picking up paperwork for the following week's trips.
To tell the truth, after about a month, the constant travel got to me.
Some years later, I landed a job as a "tour escort" (euphemism for "whipping boy") for a US travel agency sending clients to the USSR. It was during that time that I developed the knack of falling asleep on airplanes almost as soon as the wheels left the ground.
I could go on, but I'm sure you get the picture. It was about this time that I began to view airplanes in the manner of some comedian whose name escapes me: you walk into this tube at location A, the tube vibrates loudly for some period of time, after which you walk out of the tube at location B. End of story.
In 1990, I was working at Borland, in Scotts Valley, California, and it turned out the company boss (Philippe Kahn) was a pilot, and was something of an inspiration to me to pursue my dreams. I had wanted to learn to fly when I lived in Florida in the mid-80s, but the closest school seemed far away and the prices... whooo! Expensive!
However, checking out the prices in 1990 revealed that there was hardly any possibility of instruction becoming any cheaper as time went on, so, I started shelling out the bucks for flying lessons just down the coast, in Watsonville. After the requisite instruction and practice flying with my instructor, there came a day when he told me to stop the plane, whereupon he got out and instructed me to take my first "solo" flight.
Flying solo for the first time is a little like simultaneous interpretation: you're really too busy to savor what you're doing. I do recall aborting my first two approaches for landing, which probably gave my instructor heartburn, as he might easily have concluded that I'd lost my nerve and could not land the plane. From where I sat, I was looking at a moderate crosswind that seemed to have arisen upon my solo takeoff, and I didn't like my approaches under those circumstances. I landed on the third try.
My association with Borland ended before I got my private pilot's license, and I was fortunate that a couple of pilots in Pagosa were running a small school at the local airport. Eventually, I accumulated enough skill and experience to have an examiner come by and test me. I passed, although I'm sure there were a couple of moments where the issue was in serious doubt.
All in all, I logged a piddling number of hours in my logbook, but do recall taking the family for a spin in the vicinity of Pagosa about a month after getting my private pilot's ticket. Then there was the time I flew Andrew and Natalie to Colorado Springs to pick up my former colleague Zack U. and bring him back to Pagosa for a visit. And the time a bunch of us flew to Farmington for breakfast, because we could. I enjoyed every minute of those and other flights.
I haven't flown in years as a pilot, but I did get to experience a bit of the wonder of being at the controls of an airplane. It's a grand feeling.
And now, back to our regularly scheduled translation. :^)
Cheers...
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no subject
Date: 2003-12-17 11:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-18 07:19 am (UTC)Are you going to fly again soon?
Hahaha, good call bandicoot!
no subject
Date: 2003-12-18 08:04 am (UTC)My father was a pilot in the AF for 20 years and i'd always hoped to also learn to fly. When in AF ROTC i made my way to the flight program and was sitting in the practice eject chair for a short flight in a T-38. When i asked the instructor (we were in AF boot camp between our Jr & Sr year) if i had a choice of not flying fighter jets in Nam, he said No!
So i asked if i had any choice of where i flew if i became a jet pilot ... he again said No.
I said i wasn't willing to fly fighters in Nam ... there was a long pause and he said something like: "Well, you have to decide right now if you are willing to take what you get in flight school. If you don't want to fly in Nam, and without much doubt you wil, then i have to tell you, you are out of the flight program as of this minute! Please decide what you want to do."
I sat still for a minute of two-it seemed like hours-knowing that i just couldn't kill people with a jet and, taking a deep breath said i would withdraw from the flight program ... the IP said o.k., undid my safety belts (this whole conversation took place in that practice T-38 eject seat) and asked me, kindly, to please leave.
I didn't cry but i wanted to ... for, even if one washes out of the flight program, they will still end up with their private pilots license and i knew that if i didn't get it that way the chances were i'd never get one ...
Sigh, the twists and turns our lives take!