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I got the fever
There are some things in life that you simply do: washing your hands, brushing your teeth, driving to and from work. These things you do mostly on automatic pilot: there's not much joy in them and sometimes you have a hard time actually remembering them. Can you remember each turn on your way home yesterday? Probably not.
Then there are those things that you fall in love with. Not people -- romantic love is an entirely different topic. I'm talking about your passions. These are the things you look forward to, the things you practice, the things you read about, the things you dream of doing. For me, it's photography, hiking, philosophy, swimming, reading, and flying.
Some passions are easy and cheap. Others are like crack cocaine: easy to get hooked but dang expensive to maintain a habit and impossible to ever quit.
I was thinking about crack-heads Monday morning as I walked into my local airport.
I've got the flying bug.
When I was 18, I sold a car and had an extra $600 burning a hole in my pocket. Never one to pass up a chance to do something cool, I went to the local airport and asked for $600 of flying lessons.
I think I got about 8 hours in. It was a long time ago, and I've lost that logbook. I remember sitting on the runway at sunset, gunning the little plane's engine and taking off into the night. I don't remember a lot more than that, but I definitely remember that I loved it.
It stuck with me, like male-pattern baldness, halitosis, or a bad haircut. It was part of me and there was no getting rid of it.
So when I turned 30 or thereabouts, my wife asked me what I wanted for a present.
"How about just a few hours of flying instruction?" I asked innocently. Hey. I can handle my flying problem.
Several years and 300 or so hours later, I was having a blast. I had all sorts of ratings: private, instrument, tailwheel, complex, high-performance, commercial. I had even started on my multi-engine and seaplane ratings.
That was early 2001.
What I found, however, is that flying is not like, say, stamp-collecting. You can't just do a little bit of it, stop, and then pick it up where you left off. That's a good way to hurt yourself. Flying is an incremental activity: each hour in the cockpit builds on all of the others. If you go 90 days without flying, guess what? You need some refresher work. A year? Some serious work. It's all in or all out.
Renting planes was not the way to go, and during one of my business slumps I decided to give up flying until I could buy a plane of my own. Surely, I thought, it wouldn't be that long.
Fast-forward 8 years.
I'm in town yesterday getting my cell phone programmed before my afternoon flight. The programming goes quickly, so I have a couple of extra hours to kill.
What to do? Let's see. What to do. What to do.
Well, it couldn't hurt to go by the airport and see how the new FBO building looks (that's the place where the little planes come and go). So I drove over and walked in.
It looked really nice.
It also couldn't hurt to pick up a VFR sectional and Instrument plates for the area. After all, it might be kind of a test. See how much I could remember.
Turns out I remember quite a bit.
While I was there, I mentioned being a pilot and flying years ago. A very nice man showed me where there was partial ownership in a plane for sale. A plane! For sale! And I don't have to buy the whole thing, only part of it!
I politely declined.
After all, I'm only there looking. No flying for old Daniel.
So now, of course, I have flying on the brain. As it turns out, this is a GREAT time to buy airplanes. The market has tanked, and you can buy planes for half of what they were a few years ago. That Piper Turbo Lance I wanted in 2001 for $140K? I can pick it up now for $70K. Or maybe even $60K if I talk the guy down.
That's like the cost of a new premium car. A six-seat, turbo-charged, T-tailed, IFR-capable, two-axis autopilot airplane for the cost of a pricey car.
It's enough to make you cry.
But I'm not getting back into flying. No sir.
I can quit anytime I want to.
Take two aspirin and call me in the morning;)