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Why do you fly?

Good topic.

I have three passions- surfing, motorcycling, and now flying. They came to me in that order and I am fairly new to flying having less than 100 hours.

I have reflected on the similarities in the past. One thing they all seem to have in common is they force me to be 100% present while engaged in them. All the mind chatter stops when I catch a wave, turn a canyon road on my bike, or line up for a landing. There's no yesterday, and no tomorrow, just right then and there.

Some can do this with meditation- but it's not as fun and more effort to get the same effect. Cheaper though.

Part of it for me too is I'm an adventurer and a dreamer at heart.

My journey to a pilots license actually started on motorcycle trip through Baja with a buddy. We were somewhere in the high country. There was a ranch for sale that had something like 400+ acres. It was beautiful. I started dreaming about buying it. The problem was it was 7 hour drive from San Diego, but we saw an airstrip nearby. My buddy, who was a pilot said "you should buy it and get your pilots license. You could just fly down." That started me down the PPL path.

He then said, "you know, if you want to land dirt strips, you should really train in a taildragger. I wish I did." That started me down the taildragger path.

Never bought that ranch.
 
It was always a dream that I thought was unattainable. Then things aligned and a pilot friend challenged me to try it. I called it a mid-life crisis (cheaper than a new wife....well maybe...) Loved the challenge of learning the new skills but the best part was slipping the surly bonds of earth to soar above it all. Travelled for several years using my skills now my SuperCub is my dream plane and flying is just for pure enjoyment.
Why = The thrill of flight!

BTW, I recently bought a OneWheel. Coolest thing I've done since learning to fly. Best way I've found to have a really bad wreck! My wife loves it and I had to buy her one also. It has done wonders for my balance and coordination. If you try, wear a helmet and wrist guards!
 
It seems I have an unusual outlook on this.

The primary reason I fly is escapism.

Its no one but me. I'm entirely dependent on me - and only me. Sure there can be ATC and other traffic, but typically there's not. The reason I fly is there's usually not. In the airplane ( in the areas I prefer) nothing exterior can touch me. That doesn't happen any where else.

That, and I still haven't gotten tired of the view. But I've only been flying since 78. I guess it could happen anytime.

Yes I realize that's all very weird and I expect vilification but I thought to represent the oddity as a better picture of the whole.
 
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Sent from my iPhone using SuperCub.Org mobile app
 

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Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said it best.... "I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things."

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Last weekend I got to attend a WAD fly in down in PA. Got to go to the island airstrip in the Cheat River Gorge by Rowlesville, WV.
Really a super nice bunch of local folks waiting there. One of them is a Dairy farmer that i talked with extensively.
Hes kind of a thinker, and asked me this question

Why do YOU fly?

He wasnt looking for the answer becasue its fun or I like to. I didnt do a very good job of answering him, but have thought a lot of it since and I think I have my answer,

Id like to hear yours

Jim


Great question Jim! For me it’s the endorphin rush (“this is sooo cool”) I get when I perform the final cockpit review and line up on a beautiful grass strip and advance the throttle. The plane, like me, wants to fly.
 

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There are too many reasons to list really. On a practical level it gets me to or from our fish camp in about 20 minutes, which would be an all day venture in a boat. It takes us on adventures that are only accessible by air. I do it as a job because everything else sounds boring. It also focuses my mind in ways that not much else can, I love being in the moment and not being concerned about daily worries and distractions.
 
The following is part of a letter I wrote my daughter when she was having a rough spot in her life:


Tuesday, December 4, 2007


I have a vague recollection of my first flight.


There was little to remember outside of the extremely short take off and a split second later the bruising crunch of my vary first soft field landing; ok, not so soft. While I am not sure it was posable my mother might have heard my impact with the ground. Most likely it was the ensuing screams of pain that drew her to the side of our house where I was writhing on the grass alternating between choking with not enough air and howling when I had managed enough breath. I was six or seven years old. The old knurled olive tree was one I climbed regularly to survey all the land at hand in my world. That old olive tree provided the whole neighborhood with a mid summers ammunition of hard green rounds fired side arm or sling shot; half the kids on my side of the street against all those on the other. Mostly what the tree afforded though was the height to induce an imaginative child to flight.


According to my father, after he arrived home that evening, he was instructed to head up stairs to my bedroom and have a serious talk with his son. It seams said son had acquired this crazy notion of flight and in the process had acquired a number of bruises; but luckily no broken bones. More frightening to my parents was this new notion of invincibility. Looking back I have to wonder also.

My family was not one of those confidence inspiring Clever-esce clans, but there was always something flying around: dinner plates full of food, fists, belts, sticks, and brooms; you name it. It was too easy being disconnected and obviously one could only survive by being something special. Ours was one of those emotionally crippled families were kindness was abhorred; the positive shot down. Every birthday I left a long list of flying things attached to the face of our refrigerator in hope. My parents hoped to keep me firmly rooted to the ground and so all I received were along those lines. After years of disappointment I gave up on birthdays as they began to mean only another disappointing day of anger and violence.
Funny thing is I never knew when my dads birthday was. But then again he was not there when I was born to hold me before anyone else; like I had held you. I am sure he never walked me all night long when I was sick, He never read me a book, he never painted with me, he never took me to the beach to play in the waves, he never rode a bike with me, never helped me with my homework. My parents were divorced when I was ten so I really had no idea what a father could be until I became one.


The really sad thing I remember about my father is what he told me that evening long ago.
That I could not fly.
I told him, super things could fly dad and I am a super thing.
He told me, no you are not a super thing.

Now I fly almost every day. I climb up ten thousand feet and circle clouds just for fun. I am a super thing glued back together by persevering and hope; hope in humanity, hope in myself, and also hope that you find the strength to love both the beautiful and imperfect parts of yourself and in doing so seal up some of the splits keeping you from being whole.
I must be careful with my comparisons: my father, me, you. I know we never really understand but it is the being there and trying; even after falling down. I will keep trying. I will be here the best I can. I can make it. I know you can.
Would you like to hear my next great idea? Sure you do! I am going to stop being an airplane mechanic and start teaching people to fly. You know, turn other people into Super Things. I went down to Arizona this summer to get a couple of ratings and plan to go back this winter and finish up. How would You like to add a set of wings to your Super Cape? Actually I plan on specializing in float plane instruction. I hope to train people from down in America who want to have an intimate Alaskan experience and get their float rating at the same time. I have been talking about this for more then a year but this is the first time I have written it down. Weird really.


Another dream worth chasing; one more drop of emotional super glue.








Well, I never did get that CFI but a handful of kids, my hanger minions, have turned the experience into living the flying dream.


April of 2020 a young bull moose took me down in the yard, 21 pieces of titanium in my left foot, its been 18 months and I think Im ready to brave Dr. Petra and see if she will give me back my wings. I sold The Batplane, my pa22 with the skis and floats, to some young kid just starting his flying carrier, rather then watching her rot away on the village strip grass and buried by snow I couldn't clear.


I'm keeping a keen eye on barnstormers, trade a plane, etc for my next ride, don't laugh, after twenty years of checking all the AK flying boxes skis and floats and beaches and tundra landings, glaciers lakes and rivers, I'm thinking the mighty Cessna 150, manual flap kind, I can get in and out of her and with my bum foot I can swing her around on the ramp if need be, told my flying buddies I just need something to burn blue gas, make prop noise, while ripping air molecules apart.




Rocket



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<<<<<<The following is part of a letter I wrote my daughter when she was having a rough spot in her life>>>>>

Friend, I don’t know you, but let me take a moment and say thank you.

Thank you for overcoming. Thank you staying the path. Thank you for thinking of all your hangar minions. Thank you for obviously doing a great job as a dad. Your daughter is better for it.

I believe you have succeeded in life.

Peter


Transmitted from my FlightPhone on fingers… [emoji849]
 
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