Flight

It was a couple days past the full moon.  Watching the full moon rise is always a pleasure but the show goes on for days.  Not in the evening but in the morning.  Early.  I get up at 5:00.  Maybe earlier if I have and idea that wakes me with the urgency of a full bladder wanting to be relieved.  As the moon traverses its lunar cycle it is higher in the sky each morning brightly shining, casting shadows in the pre-dawn.

Each morning I go out.  Greet the morning.  Say out loud "Its gonna be a great day".  There is an Indian custom to rise from sleep and touch the ground to start the day.  Some people say morning prayers.  We usually say good morning to others.  When learning a foreign language it is one of the first phrases to be learned.

I always greet a special day with a special feeling of anticipation of what will happen as the day unfolds.  An adventure I plan to happen and the unknown that will happen when adventure finds me.  This is one of those days.

I am going to fly!

My first flight was with my sister in 1953.  I was 10 years old.  She was an airline stewardess for Capitol Airlines.  The airplane was a DC-3.  A work horse of WWII.  Flying cargo and passengers.  Mine was not a seat in the passenger cabin but the jump seat between the two pilots.  The best seat on the plane!  The pilots were both WWII flyers.  The captain in the left seat, the co-pilot in the right seat.  I knew that and much more about the plane and flying because I was an avid reader of books about flying.

Today I was going to be in the left seat.  The pilot in command.  Nominally and by tradition of the seat position.  The instructor in the right seat would turn over command and control of the aircraft to me, and regain it as necessary.  However for periods of time I was going to fly it.  Once long ago my father was in the right seat of a 58 Ford teaching me in the left seat to drive.  This morning recalls that fond memory.  A once in a life time experience.

I am in my trailer south of Bisbee Arizona writing of this adventure that I will experience today.  The first of 3 days training.  The lesson starts a 9:00.  Time to review the flight manual.  The flight manual gives me new appreciation for the expression "flying by the seat of my pants".  Flying is about numbers.  Dominated by numbers.  If the numbers are not right then the plane does not fly and me along with it.  Unforgiving numbers.  Numbers that do not stretch the laws of gravity.  Numbers that tell what I cannot do and still expect to fly like the numbers that tell me I cannot fly by running flapping my arms like a chicken as I did when I imitated imaginary flight when I was a young boy.

No longer I am a young boy.  This morning I have the same excitement that I felt when I was.