Go FLY!
The closing of summer is marked by the beginning of school, Labor Day, and, finally, cooler temperatures. For me the end of summer seems to occur after Oshkosh is finished, although the Georgia heat and humidity are not quite ready to release its clammy stranglehold on my engine performance.
Fall is without question my favorite time of the year to fly. Living and flying in the southeast we peer through hazy afternoons, sweat each landing, and wait ever patiently for pop-up storms to pass. Fall releases us from those pressures, except maybe the landings – but I’m working on those. Fall is truly the season to fall back in love with aviation. It seems there are so many reasons to not fly these days. Even the most enthusiastic pilot can get caught up in the continuous stream of bad news. We hear about the cost of fuel, insurance, hangar rental, FBO fees, and threats of new government user taxes. That can spoil anyone’s lift. This fall use those flying machines we love to find the reason we fly. For me it is stumbling into moments where the airplane took us to not a new ground-based location but to a new place in the sky.
One flight that will always stand out in my mind occurred a few years ago. I was building time for my commercial rating and was flying a Cherokee 180 my flying club owned. I had quite an affinity for this aircraft as it flew sparingly and I really thought of it as my personal airplane. I was coming back from visiting the FBO candy machine at Centerville, Iowa. I sat on the wing eating my sugared delights watching the sun fall behind the trees in the west. After departing on my way back home I could not force myself to look out the front window. The view behind my shoulder was far more religious. The sun out in the west had found the perfect angle to show me the shine of those lovely fat wings. It was a perfect moment that only a pilot can understand. It is that moment when he is not of his past but only of his present. Everything other than the earth, the sky, and my little airplane ceased to exist. You can call it transcendence, that teenage feeling, or fluffy nonsense. When we reach apex moments like those how can we ever deny ourselves that very Earthly pleasure? It is only a pilot who can feel that religious sensation. It can be called nothing else. I think we often take for granted what we have accomplished in flight. We need to let those religious moments happen to us and take our breaths away. It is then when the real appreciation of flight is manifested.
I encourage you to use our upcoming season to frame new experiences for yourself and your loved ones. Don’t allow mere excuses to let you miss the season where those great moments occur with the most fantastic colors as a idyllic scene. Whether we can afford to fly once a week or once a month how can we justify denying ourselves such great moments in our lives?
By Nolan Wehr, Dalton, GA