The one about flying

Somewhere in one of my journals is a bucket list. And I can guarantee you that "flying a small plane" wasn't on it. But now, thanks to my obsessive list-keeping, I will put it on there just for the simple pleasure of crossing it off.

Yes, you read correctly. Crossing it off. Yes, that means I flew a plane.

The technical part of me wants to specify that I more temporarily guided the plane because in reality I had nothing to do with the preflight routine, the taxi-ing on the runway (which I always want to spell as run-away), the TAKE-OFF (hello! pretty important!), reaching cruising altitude and speed or just ensuring the overall safety of my passengers.

The non-technical part of me will show you this picture, PROOF that I did fly the plane!

My eyes are intently watching where we were going and the control that indicated our altitude. While the pilot snapped the 'proof' pictures, I gave myself a headache (not really) trying to maintain our altitude of 6,500'. And not turn too violently to the left or the right.

6,400.

6,300.

6,200.

I think around the 6,100' mark I started panicking because I couldn't remember in which direction to manipulate the joystick to gain altitude. This would be a serious problem in my piloting skills - not remembering at critical times what I'm supposed to do.

"I don't remember how to get us back up," I said. Thankfully, he did.

Here's the runWay and you'll be glad to know that at this point, I was no longer in control.

Daniel, for one, was very glad about this. He told me after we landed that when I took over, he was veryVERY nervous.


"The first thing we started doing was veering to the right and to the ground," he said. It took me a few moments to get adjusted to the control.


But, just in case, we did have a parachute that could be activated upon emergency. A parachute for the whole plane. Genius.

Some thoughts (in list form) I had when landed:

1) the take-off and landing were so.much.smoother then what I was expecting.

2) I actually believed we would make it back alive, which were not the thoughts I had when flying in a small plane at the age of 12 - an experience I don't clearly remember except for fear.

3) it was nearly as comfortable as riding in a car.

4) I never once thought we were going to crash.

5) my town looks even smaller from the air.
6) I am definitely not smart enough to actually fly a plane.

7) there's probably not a lot of people brave enough to get in a plane I was flying!

8) the one picture that didn't work was of me and the pilot

We were pumped; it was such a neat (unexpected) experience.

So, check. On something I didn't even know was on the list.