This past week my Sunday paper included a story you would have enjoyed. The photos were of three young women, each standing proudly beside an airplane. Two were beside a Piper Cub, while the third leaned casually against a Cessna 150. One is a CFI, the other two are high school students who just happen […]
Finding safety, longevity, and diversity in numbers
Living beings have a strong tendency to travel in packs, schools, prides, pods, or convocations. Whether they find a home in the sea, on the land, or in the air, living in a congregation is the norm more often than not. Even early humans lived and travelled in tribes for very good reason. This propensity […]
Are you experienced?
It’s been said for many years the private pilot certificate is a license to learn. The underlying intent of the statement holds that with a private pilot certificate we have the freedom to get out and fly, to gain experience, and through that experience we might become better pilots. That was the idea, anyway. In […]
Full Stop: An attitude check
When I was a kid, I had big dreams. Really big dreams. If you’re the kind of person who regularly reads General Aviation News, you probably did too. For years I thought I might play in the NFL. That was until I played freshman football in high school. At a diminutive 4’ 11” and well […]
Flying Clubs and FBOs: A match made in heaven
Not long ago Hurricane Hermine blew through Florida. This was a Category 1 hurricane. A relative pip-squeak on the spectrum of deadly storms. Relative in that it did result in a fatality, but for most of those affected it caused little more than an occasional tree blocking a road, stray limbs littering the yard, and […]
Let’s not go flying
I came to flying later than many. In part because I was sort of a hippie kid more attracted to the idea of playing guitar professionally than suiting up as a member of the military. And while those two paths might not seem mutually exclusive today, in the Viet Nam era they were often thought […]
Big dreams can come true
With enough imagination, dedication, perseverance, and help it’s possible to do almost anything. If you doubt me, consider that human beings designed, built, tested, refined, rebuilt, and flew rockets that landed us on the moon – and we did all that in an amazingly tight timespan of only nine years. As I said, you can do […]
For the love of pie…
As I perused the Body Mass Index chart recently, I was aghast to find that I have slid just over the line that separated the overweight from the obese category. Yikes! Sure, I can log 25 miles on my bicycle without undue discomfort. Even at my advanced age I can still do a dozen pushups without […]
It’s beyond understanding, I tell ya
Imagine the plight of the first ancient mariner to point toward the horizon and say, “No more hugging the coastline for me, I’m going direct.” I think his name was Harpolos. For the purposes of this column, let’s say it was. The townsfolk must have thought Harpolos was mad. Crazy as a loon. The rational […]