Flight Lesson #11 Prologue – Back in the Saddle Again!
Well, it’s finally here. The first lesson after Stage Check 1, which as you can read below, was a less than optimal experience. I’ll write more about this lesson later, but here’s proof that I WAS smiling after my lesson today.
Thanks to Certified Flight Instructor, Chris, for snapping this upon our safe return.
“Back in the saddle again” an entertaining choice of words, no doubt meaning a return to an activity that was once put aside for that mysterious and highly elusive “some other day”. It’s interesting how life seemingly ducks and weaves itself through (and sometimes around) what we had imagined for ourselves. Just when one had, or maybe it’s just an illusion of having things all figures out, some variable changes and inevitably turns things on its ear. Didn’t you hate that about algebra – those stinking variables that conspired to ruin your GPA. Bastards…
Any ways, I digress, the point of all this is simple. As odd as it sounds, I’d like to invite you to reread your Flight School Diaries blog. Remember those moments of entertainment, and maybe a few moments of compete terror. The pride you felt when you accomplished a maneuver that was once thought to be “MAGIC!”. The times when you lost yourself watching the world slip by under wings you studied, inspected, and commanded. Your greater appreciation for the world: the wind, with waves like the sea that crash over every earthly thing, yet it was never given a second thought until the ground wasn’t there to steady you. The day you soloed. … Perhaps the single greatest moment in aviation. Sure, that plane came back to terra firma after a quick ‘round in the pattern, but how long did it take for you to come back down? Did a part of you ever come back down?
Flying evoked a great deal of emotion from you. It challenged you. It thrilled you. It humbled you. But most of all, it changed you. A once intangible dream, relegated to the recesses of the mind, confined by the constraints of “life”, made real by you. Wouldn’t it be nice to return to the sky, and find rediscover a part of you that was left up there?
Yep, this is all an easy thing to say – with life dictating our reality it makes action much more difficult. But remember, there was a time when this was just a dream. Regardless of life’s choices for you, you can again make your dream a reality again. Enough said.
Your saddle awaits.