This trip was my first flight into North Las Vegas, and it was busy even after the tower had closed. I was very focused on flying the departure procedure so I hadn’t given any thought to where the procedure would take us relative to the city.
I had missed it. I missed flying deeply, badly, in my bones. Hearing the radio chatter, the way pilots talk to each other and with controllers, being immersed again in a world now decades in my past, I was suddenly and keenly aware of how I had loved flying; how it was still such a part of me; how I still loved it and how I always will.