Learning Experiences

I'm a student pilot, and though I don't think I was born with a love of flying, I did have lots of dreams in which I could fly. I've almost always been the adventurous type, often being the first among my friends to do new things - move away from home, travel through Europe alone, stuff like that. I've always enjoyed trying new things and I've generally been pretty good at them, catching on before most of my peers and becoming impatient with their slowness. I confess that I especially loved doing things that other people thought I couldn't or shouldn't do. Yes, I guess you could say that I've been something of a rebel and even worse, maybe a smarty pants.

I'm a student pilot, and though I don't think I was born with a love of flying, I did have lots of dreams in which I could fly. I've almost always been the adventurous type, often being the first among my friends to do new things - move away from home, travel through Europe alone, stuff like that. I've always enjoyed trying new things and I've generally been pretty good at them, catching on before most of my peers and becoming impatient with their slowness. I confess that I especially loved doing things that other people thought I couldn't or shouldn't do. Yes, I guess you could say that I've been something of a rebel and even worse, maybe a smarty pants.

Last year, I decided to learn to fly. I was looking for an adventure and I had ruled out mountain climbing, exploring the Arctic, or moving to Marrakech. Learning to fly, however, seemed just right. Most of the people that I told about my decision to become a pilot said I shouldn't do it. As always, that only made me want it more. Most people had some questions, too. They'd ask, "Are you crazy? Why would you want to do that? Aren't you scared?" Then they'd share detailed stories about how sick they get in airplanes.

Despite their questions and tales of airsickness, I began to visit some of my local flying clubs, sometimes with my husband, sometimes alone. The responses I got from instructors and club staff varied from encouraging to dismissive. One fellow even bordered on being rude as he took all of three minutes to show me around.

After doing the math on cost, time commitment, and my schedule, I still had that excited this-is-a-great-adventure feeling. The problem was that I had never actually been up in a small airplane and worried that, like the voices of gloom and doom around me, I would develop airsickness stories of my own. I wondered if the reason I wanted to learn to fly might be, in part, that I was afraid of it. I also wondered if my desire to fly wasn't just a metaphor for a wish to fly away from all sorts of responsibilities here on the ground. So, with all of these unsure feelings, I decided to go ahead and try it.

I chose a flying club that was not too far from my home so that, sometime in the future, I couldn't use distance as an excuse not to continue my lessons. I arranged an introductory lesson with a young woman who looked like a high school student. There's nothing wrong with that except that it made me think she couldn't have much flying experience. But I was already at the airport, and I thought, What the heck. She had no headsets, and we had to shout to one another. She talked really fast and seemed irritated that I had trouble hearing her. I had no clue what she was saying even when I could hear her. She didn't seem to want to introduce me to anything I wanted to be introduced to. At one point, the airplane banked steep-ly and suddenly to the left, and I may have uttered an exclamation that she was too young to hear. She told me not to worry, the airplane couldn't tip over. Oh sure, I thought, and you only see rolls at the bakery and spins at the laundromat. This wasn't going to work.

As it turned out, there was another woman teaching at the school, and she and I arranged to start my lessons. She had been flying for 25 years and was very encouraging. For me, she was a role model waiting to be found. She even kind of looks like Amelia Earhart, though she prefers to be called Kathy. A bonus is that she's my age - I'm 54 - and she appreciates the "specialness" of older beginners.

At times since starting to fly, I have thought that maybe, in some other life, I was a pilot. Way down deep inside I knew what it would be like to take off, to land, to aviate. But if I was a pilot in some previous life, I have yet to tap into that knowledge and experience. I have, alas, finally met my biggest learning challenge. Where before I was often the smartest, the foot's on the other rudder this time. I was not at the head of my ground school class. In fact, I was pretty much at the tail. The others had read so much about flying and knew so much before the class began that I knew I was in trouble. I have always been more or less math-phobic, and when I got a load of load factors and other number equations, my palms began to sweat.

But I made it through ground school, and I'll be soloing any time now. I'm feeling ready, and I can remember the moment during one takeoff long ago that I could first begin to picture myself taking off with no one in the right seat. Flying has given me the confidence to do so many other things in my life, things I wasn't too sure about before. Many times I have thought to myself, Hey, I can fly an airplane, so surely I can...."

I don't know what's in the cards for me as far as my flying future goes but I do know that I wish I had begun a long time ago. This past year of flying has been the best of the best for me. It's been a most excellent adventure.