Brain of Dane

Yesterday, my friends and I decided to go to the 2009 South Plains Air Show in Slaton. It wasn’t really a planned trip, I just wanted to see some planes and I asked my friends to tag along. So we headed out to Slaton and found our way onto the concrete runway, where the show was already in progress. They were reenacting what a bombing run would have looked like at Pearl Harbor. It was very exciting to watch the Japanese Zeros and our own American fighter duke it out over the airfield while explosive charges detonated on the ground. There were quite a few acts, but one really stuck out to me. Bob Carlton and his jet powered sailplane put on a dazzling show of aerobatics that would normally cause a sailplane to take a nosedive.  Apparently, Bob Carlton decided one day to mount a Super Salto jet engine to the top of his plane, just behind the cockpit.  I can only imagine what it would feel like to have that much power just behind your noggin.  That act got me thinking.

A few posts back–read: months ago–I wrote about how I wanted to experience longboarding down a nice, sloping hill. The movement seems so graceful and peaceful.  I love the accessibility of it.  As long as you have a hundred dollars for a board and a decent sized hill, you can jump on and carve your way down.  Well, here I am months later with no board, and not a single hill in sight.  I guess that’s what I get for living in one of the flattest places on earth.  So, in this venture, I had absolutely no success.  While it’s still a dream of mine, I might wait until we go somewhere more hilly like Austin *crossing fingers*.  While that dream gets set in the ‘I’ll do it sooner or later’ pile, another dream has risen from the ashes of my childhood.  I want to fly.

I am not just saying that I want to fly, I really want to get a license, get a plane, and become a recreational pilot.  I want to…

(oh no, here he goes again)

I want to…

(dear lord, make this poetic crap end quickly)

I want to feel the vibration of the turboprop as I zip down the runway and into the sky.  The power of the 1.5 ton aircraft will be at my fingertips.  The flick of a wrist would send me this way and that, no roads to direct me, and no cops to tell me I’m flying too fast.  I would practice stalls, just to feel weightless and watch the world around me tumble.  I would jump to the skys and be anywhere I want to be in mere hours, even minutes.

(and what does your wife think of this nonsense?)

Well, I would say she’s not too keen on flying in single engine aircraft, but she is more than supportive.  When I mentioned to her that it has always been a dream of mine to fly, she told me I should do it.  At that, my eyes got wide.  You see, it takes a lot of cash just to get off the ground, and then it costs even more to maintain the aircraft.  I didn’t think it was realistic to even dream about, which is why I have suppressed it for so long.  But instead of agreeing with me, my wife just said “let’s do it!”

So, here is my goal.  In 10 years, I will at least have a pilot’s license, and I would like to be well on my way to owning an aircraft of some sort.  My dream would be a single prop fixed-wing, with enough room for at least me and one other passenger.  I’ve priced some of the older used models, and they appear to be about 20,000 USD, which ain’t too bad when you’re rollin’ in green.  However, that is still pretty far in the future.  For now, I will focus on a pilot’s license, and take the rest as it comes.