When Old Friends Reunite

I know this isn't about me flying, directly, but it does pertain to my growing passion for flying. The AOPA has a program called Project Pilot to encourage people to become interested in learning to fly. It has a mentor program that encourages people to find someone and mentor them through their flight training. I am still just a student but I have been feeling so passionate about what I am trying to do, I try to share it with everyone.

I mentioned this to an old dear friend that I have drifted apart from in the last several years and he said that he may be interested too. Unfortunately for all involved, I kind of blew it off because of the reaction I get from everyone else. I usually get the "That's nice dear. Could you get me a drink now?" response from everyone. I sent out an email to several people when I got started in this and got a lot of great responses but haven't seen much traffic through here. I even stated that I was going to keep this blog to chronicle my journey and I do my best to keep it current. About a week ago I got a call from my friend Chris asking me if I had started my flight training and I told him yes. He was very interested in looking into it.

Our flying club has a $59 demo flight where you get to go up for about a half an hour, fly in the left seat and get to experience the joy of powered flight. So I called our chief flight instructor (my neighbor and my flight instructor) to set up a demo flight for him. Everything had been put into place and today at 6 PM, we were going flying. As anyone who has lived in North Texas for any amount of time knows, once we get into June, we won't see rain until September or October. Not this year. We have set records for June and July for rainfall and it continues to rain almost everyday. Today was no exception. Luckily for me we had rain over McKinney most of the afternoon allowing me to get there a little late and no one was harmed.

I won't go into all of the details but Chris did great. He did everything asked of him made a lot of very smooth turns, learned how to control his pitch, throttle, trim, bank and speed. To be honest, I wish I were as smooth as he was. I'm hoping that since he is so enamored with this, he will continue to follow his dream and get that certificate. It makes me feel great that after all of these years, through all of our ups and downs, going our separate ways, and starting our own families and new careers that we are once again able to share something that we have so much passion for. I know that he will do very well at this. He always does.

Not to make light of this but I had another opportunity to introduce someone else to the passion of flying. I have another old friend that I have known a long time who confided to me that he wanted to do something for his son. His son is 15 years old and they are looking for a way to prepare him for a life after high school. He knew I had been going through flight training and asked me how tough it was. Tough is relative at my age so I told him it wasn't too tough for a 45 year old. Once again I went to the AOPA website and found all of the flight training schools near his house in Tarrant county and sent him and his wife the list.

I fixed a computer for them on Sunday and got an email back from his wife today telling me that all was well and she couldn't believe that they were considering letting him do it. I gave them a lot of choices that were within 15 miles of where they live. I'm going to try to arrange something for them to get him a demo flight soon so he can get hooked too.

So for a guy who hasn't flown since the beginning of July, I have been busy promoting the thing I am finding consuming my thoughts more and more every day. As much as I am enjoying this, I really need to go flying myself soon or I'll burst.