THIS AVIATION LIFE STYLE
Life Lessons of Aviation Part1
Sometimes I am really surprised with how little personal contact a few people out and about in this day and age actually have with aviation. What would seem to be as necessary and ordinary as turning on a light switch, reaching into the refrigerator and starting the car- flying and being around airports- can still remain to some individuals more like Santa Claus’s once-a-year arrival than just another hopefully on-time gate arrival.
Being around aviation with both work and pleasure, it has become to me personally simply ‘part and parcel’ of my life experience as both an individual and as a large aspect of my marriage to James. It’s been very rewarding to us to integrate aviation into our daily lives and perspective and due to this, perhaps we take it for granted a bit more than we should. I thought about this when chatting with a friend of mine recently who can count the times she’s flown in airplanes on one hand; actually on two fingers. She’s in her middle-age years and has flown twice in her life with both of those times being for her job. She’s college-educated, has a good career, is very interested in the global world and cultures and…has flown once to Reno and once to Boston. There’s of course nothing wrong at all with that but in this day and time when hopping onto a plane to go somewhere is almost as automatic a function as hopping into a car- well, it’s surprising alright.
Back in my college days, I hopped onto a plane with a fellow sorority sister to go up to West Virginia to attend a wedding of a mutual friend of ours. It was her very first time on a plane and the emotional dualism of excitement and dread was interesting to watch cross over her face during takeoff as I reassured her that all the sounds she was hearing were quite normal and part of the jet’s mechanisms.
Her hands never left their white-knuckled vise grip on the seat’s armrests even as drinks and a meal, this was back in the late 1980’s mind you, were being offered around the cabin. Shakily getting off the plane as our journey ended for that day, she turned to me with a big smile and said, “Wow!” On our return trip, it was a much more relaxed atmosphere since she knew what to anticipate with taking off and landing then. I’ll never forget what it was like to see a person experience her very first plane flight. I wish I could remember my first time in a plane but having flown a lot since early childhood days, that amazing initial experience unfortunately has been lost to my memory.
I do, however, remember my first time up in a small plane and how much I absolutely loved it! James and I were out at a small fly-in up in North Carolina walking around under the searing hot summer sun some years ago when I noticed a cute, yes it certainly was “cute” to me, red biplane seeming to dash off and up in between various air show activities. It buzzed and swooped so merrily up there in the bright blue sky that I became completely entranced. So much so that James actually noticed this despite all of the other planes and people he had been interacting with around us and, as I was standing there mesmerized, he snuck over to the tent where people were signing up for rides and paid for one for me.
What a nice surprise even with me wearing a sporty short skirt and having to ungainly clamber up into the Stearman as James and the pilot turned their heads away. Buckled in with a strange-feeling headset atop my already wind-messed hair, I was ready to go and fearless. We shot down the runway and, after nicely asking me if I was game for it, spun and twirled as much as our time aloft allowed with my “wheee”, “wows” and “let’s do that again” encouraging yet more aerobatics and banking turns. Taxiing towards the grassy area off the runway once back on the ground, James said that he could see my wide grin underneath all the unkempt strands of hair I was trying to push off my face. Since then, I’ve had a few more wild aerobatic rides but that very first one, and the exhilarating experience it was, will be always remembered as one of the greatest highlights of my life.
Even before we got into the aviation realm as careers, I have always looked forward to plane travel and yes, still do today in our post 9/11 world as well even with all of the current challenges the airlines are facing economically. It’s still such a thrill to be flying around our nation and the world both on airlines and in small planes, enjoying air shows, bumming around fly-ins and yes, even hanging around airports to an extent.
A life lesson that being within the aviation world has taught me is to appreciate the wonder of airline travel and the exhilaration of simply flying through the skies. Each time aloft is a uniqueness that so many other people around this planet either never get to experience or only are able to once or twice in their lifetime. When we stop feeling the wonder of it all, it seems that we’ll be doing aviation and ourselves a disservice. From the myth of Icarus to the sketches of Da Vinci to the Wright Brother’s singular minutes that showed humanity, yes, it really can be done…for us to hop on a plane now and head on down the runway as an ordinary facet of modern living, is indeed as exciting as the fabled childhood fascination with Santa’s sleigh.