The Rabid Flying Cult

I’m finally back with a post!
It’s only been what, 6 months? I’ve probably fully alienated anybody who reads these posts. Anyway I’m back, and I have a private pilot license in my wallet!
On February 1st I passed my checkride and am now a fully licensed Private Pilot, Single Engine Land. It was an eventful checkride and it deserves it’s own post as well. Maybe later.
In short, my examiner showed up late with a shirt that said “Alpha Wolf” on it and his computer played recordings that were straight from a 900 number. I had to spend 4 hours with this idiot but I endured and now I have that little green card!
Life has been good since then. I have flown regularly and it has been very rewarding. It is getting expensive but I consider it well worth the cost. Whatever that means.

It’s funny though. I was at dinner with a few friends and one asked me, “WHY do you go fly?” I kind of get that question a lot. I guess people think it’s some kind of outrageously expensive and strange thing to do. Some just think it’s dangerous and others even call it “impractical”. Does the word impractical even have any meaning in a world full of luxury cars, jewelry, and High Def TV? I mean, does it REALLY?
I get stuff like,
Oh, you’re going to Palacios? I can get there faster in my car with all the preflighting and driving to the airport you have to do.


The conversation is essentially over as far as I’m concerned; there is no common ground that can be reached. It’s like talking about religion or politics. What moves me is simply different from what may move you or anyone else.
Of course the engineer in me knows it’s true, all two degrees of him. There are faster ways to get to point A to B. These are concrete facts based on wind speeds and taxi times. But the soul in me did not even bother to do the math. If anything I wish my plane were slower so that I could enjoy the flight more.
In fact just last weekend I flew a friend of mine to Galveston. We flew out there and landed with a gorgeous view of the Texas coast sprawled beneath us. After we tied down we went out to grab a burger at the hotel. Then after that we got back to the airport we saw a helicopter land dozens of feet away! The breeze was nice and we just hung around our plane and watched a few planes land. We then climbed back into my trusty Piper Warrior and hurled ourselves into the sky.
Crawling along the surface in a car is blasphemy.

Flying for pleasure is done by such a small group that nobody really has experience with it. I guess if I met somebody who loved to dogsled around I would think that horrendously stupid, especially in Houston. But hey, if the man loves to dogsled, who am I to judge? If he literally dreams of dog sledding, how can he be expected not to? What kind of man would he be if he didn’t?

In other news, I bought a robot! It’s this cool little fully programmable robot sold by the Parallax company. It’s awesome. I’ve already got it follow a flashlight and avoid walls with “whiskers”. The next step is to use infrared beams to navigate across a room. Learning stuff is cool.