Clear Prop!

“Flying a plane is no different from riding a bicycle; it’s just a lot harder to put baseball cards in the spokes.” – Capt. Rex Kramer (“Airplane!,” 1980)





Alas, as I found out on my first day flying, Cessnas don’t have spokes. So I guess my Manny Mota rookie card is safe. For now. However, there’s a lot of truth to those words. For those who have mastered the skills of piloting, I’m sure it feels as natural as riding a bike. But before any of us are led to believe that flying is easy (or in any way natural), we need to remember the skinned knees, broken wrists, and goose eggs on the noggin which tended to accompany our childhood attempts at first riding a bike. No new skill is easy in the beginning. A student pilot is well-advised to keep that in mind, because no matter how book-smart one is—no matter how much theory the new pilot has absorbed and understood—it doesn’t matter one bit once you open the throttle and the plane starts moving. Putting that theory into practice is an entirely different kind of flying, altogether. (And yes, there will undoubtedly be many more Airplane! references throughout this tome.) It’s with that spirit which I am going to chronicle my journey to flight. It has been a lifelong dream for me. 

I grew up right next to Andrews Air Force Base, now called “Joint Base Andrews” after the Navy decided it needed to expand inland. Not a day—not an hour went by without something flying low overhead. We learned to just pause whatever conversation we were having until we could hear ourselves think again. It’s hard not to catch the aviation bug watching the never-ending airshow in your own back yard. The thought of becoming a commercial pilot always sat in the front of my mind, at least until I was getting ready to graduate from high school and had to make a decision as to what I was actually going to do with my life. A family friend and airline pilot advised me that getting a four-year degree in something other than aviation was the smart course of action so when I got laid off from flying, I could fall back on something. It was the emphatic nature of the word “when” which struck a chord, so I shelved my dreams of flying for a living in favor of something more practical. (At that time, engineering, though that would change to journalism in due course.) Still, the dream of flight lay just below the surface—stirred up after college for a few years by a friend with whom I flew around upstate New York in his Piper Warrior. Fast forward another 20 years and life’s pieces have fallen into place. My dream of taking to the skies finally has a chance to become reality.


Join me if you will, for a rather unpolished look at one person's journey to achieve his goal of flight. This isn't a retrospective on how I did it. I haven't done it--yet. You get to sit in the passenger's seat while I work through the process. No doubt this is presenting itself as a daunting task. I'll probably run into things that are just going to kick my butt. I'm writing this because I'm a journalist. I'm writing this because putting thoughts on paper (computer screen) helps me remember them, and there's a lot to remember. And I'm writing this so other aspiring pilots who may come across this will hopefully see some of their own experiences reflected in my own, to know they're facing similar battles as other student pilots. So welcome aboard. Please bring your seatbacks to their full and upright position, fasten your seatbelts, and enjoy the flight.