Quote of the Moment

"Beep Industries currently has no openings. This is a good thing. Any number of career paths are better than game development. Lots of jobs are more lucrative and far less work. We hear marketing and animal husbandry are filled with potential."

Friday, March 21, 2008

Introductory Flight

On Tuesday, March 18th, 2008, a second entry went in my logbook. At around 3pm local time, Keith, my instructor for the day, and I took off from Boeing Field in a Diamond DA40. Amid mostly sunny skies, we looked into Safeco Field (home of the Seattle Mariners), turned west to fly over Bremerton, then headed back south-east to overfly SeaTac airport before returning back to Boeing Field.

It took me two days to stop smiling.

I was impressed (and very surprised) by the amount of flying Keith let me do. He handled all the power management, and was never far from taking control when necessary, but for the most part, he let me do the vast majority of stick and rudder work. It’ll be interesting to see how that compares to actual lessons.

The most valuable thing for me though, was that the whole thing just felt right. Sometimes you worry that when you’ve wanted to do something for so long, when you finally do it, reality fails to match your expectations. Not this. For me, getting off the ground and playing with the birds, even if only for a little while, felt good.

I’m really excited for my next lesson, happening next week, weather permitting. As a side note, this should guarantee at least one blog post a week, as I write about my training experiences. :)

For those with wings, fly to your dreams.