Friday Photo: Sea of Lennies
It seemed as though they had simply appeared, suddenly surrounding me while I had been entering engine and fuel data in a performance/nav log. Flying above them, it was (eerily) smooth as glass.
David learned to fly in the University of North Dakota program while stationed at Grand Forks AFB as a B-52 crew chief. As a USAF flight engineer on C-130 E/Hs in Arkansas and E-3As in Oklahoma, he logged over 3,000 hours while earning a commercial pilot license with instrument and multi-engine ratings and a CFI. Currently a senior principal research scientist and technical fellow with an R&D company serving the government, David has over 500 hours as a pilot and is preparing for a CFII check ride.
It seemed as though they had simply appeared, suddenly surrounding me while I had been entering engine and fuel data in a performance/nav log. Flying above them, it was (eerily) smooth as glass.
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.
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