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Then:  When I was a boy, I lived close to Lambert International Airport in St. Louis.  On warm summer nights, my father would take me to a parking area at the west end of the main runways to watch planes taking off and landing.  We’d eat Lay’s potato chips and Dean’s French Onion Dip.  We didn’t talk, just watched as L10-11s and DC-10s drifted over us in an endless ballet that seemed to scoff at the laws of physics.  In reverence and appreciation, we’d observe from our comfortable lawn chairs.  Inexplicably, I never once considered actually being a passenger.  I simply took for granted that I was only supposed to watch.   

I remember the day that changed.   

When Ozark Airlines still operated, there was an open house at the airport and I rode in a plane for the first time.  The green and white plane stood brilliantly against the azure sky like something out of a brochure.  We climbed the rear staircase and strapped in, awaiting instructions from the aging stewardess.  Her brown, tightly curled hair bobbed with every swing of her arms as she pointed out emergency exits.  Once prepared for takeoff, we thundered down the runway and the earth fell away beneath us.  We made, maybe, three trips around the pattern and back down.  In my awestruck, 4-year-old wonder, I never took a moment to appreciate the joyfulness of what we were doing.  I was, however, hooked on flying, but would not set foot inside an aircraft for nineteen years. 

Now:  I made the decision to fly an aircraft.  I do mean fly, because I wasn’t going to be content as a passenger.  I had become an avid viewer of the now defunct Discovery Wings channel, much to my wife’s dismay.  An ad for BeAPilot.Com caught my attention and I realized that I could live my dream, in part, for little cost.  I visited the Flying Magazine website and on their forums met Robert (Bob) Meder, an instructor at Skyline Aeronautics in Chesterfield, Missouri.  He invited me to visit the facility and take a “demo” flight, logged as training.  I agreed and made the trek to KSUS on a foggy June morning in 2003.  I knew enough to realize that our first flight would have to be made under VFR since the plane I had chosen was not approved for IFR.  I prayed fervently and frequently to any god that would listen that the fog would lift by the time I got there.   

It didn’t.   

I met with Bob and we discussed my goals and intentions and patiently waited.  At 10am, flight services declared VFR conditions.  Bob and I had earlier completed our preflight check of the plane in anticipation of clearing skies, so we strapped in to our Diamond Katana (N227ND), completed our pre-start checklist, yelled “CLEAR” and turned the key.  Nothing happened.  Well, not “nothing” in the sense that the casual observer couldn’t tell the key had been turned.  It was a “nothing” that involved the prop making a half-turn and followed by a sound I once heard while driving past a Wisconsin dairy farm.  Bob, undaunted, tried again with the same result and soon came to the astute conclusion that the battery was dead.  Ok, fine by me.  Get another one.  Now! 

A young lineman wheeled out a battery cart and plugged it into the service hatch on the right side of the fuselage.  Bob climbed back in, cleared the prop, turned the key and we heard a POP.  Now, I’m no engineer, but I do know that there are very few inventions in this world will still work after the “Magic Smoke” has been let out.   

It is said that there are no atheists in foxholes.  Apparently there aren’t any in cockpits either, at least not on this day.  More fervent prayers.  

Bob inspected the cable and discovered it had, in fact, been plugged into the wrong port.  He consulted with the FBO president and AP, a very helpful man by the name of Mike Gaffney, and determined that we were still airworthy.  Correct connection made and prop cleared, again, the engine started with gusto. 

We conducted our run-up while Bob taught me all he could in the limited time we had, but I drank it all in as one who seeks water in the desert.  He offered to let me call the tower for permissions, which I now wish I had accepted.  Cleared for takeoff, we growled off down the runway.  I’d say we “thundered” but the 90hp Continental engine in the Katana neither breathes fire nor speaks with authority.  But haul us aloft, it did. 

Bob took us to a practice area to the north as I attempted, having learned from my mistake so long ago, to savor and commit every moment to memory.  After a time, he turned the controls over to me, instructing me in basic maneuvers.  As I ham-fisted the stick in clumsy semblances of Bob’s intended motions, he coordinated our turns and watched the gauges that I so deftly ignored.  After what seemed like moments, we returned to the tarmac and Bob asked me what I thought.  I was too overcome by my sense of completeness to be suave or eloquent.  But he nodded in agreement with the analogy I came up with, and which I must decline to share in print.  Enough said. 

Bob laid out the training requirements under Part 141 of the FAR/AIM and the costs involved.  My heart sank.  I didn’t have that kind of money and 822 days later (as of the most recent update), I still don’t.  But I spend every free moment of every waking hour trying to figure out a way to do it. 

Flying airplanes has been a core element of my life since I was old enough to know what flying was.  I don’t often admit to a belief in destiny, but I was meant to be in airplanes.  I am no more a complete person without them that a sailor without the sea.  I spent 42 minutes in the pilot’s seat on June 6, 2003.  For those 42 minutes, I felt like I belonged where I was.  For 42 minutes, my purpose in life was clear.  For 42 minutes, I was without want. 

Thank you, Bob.