The wild, blue yonder

Well thanks to my wonderful friend Christine, I was able to go flying twice in less than a month. It was out of respect for my mom that I didn't post about this sooner, as she had asked that I didn't tell her about it until I was all done and safely back on the ground. Well, that time is now.

Christine had originally given these flights to her ex-husband as a gift a couple of years prior. He never used them and found them while he was getting packed to move. These flights were no cheap gift and Christine didn't want them to go to waste, so she gave them to me, knowing that I'd definitely make the most of them.

On December 19th, 2006 I went on the first one; an aerobatic adventure flight. This was a lot of fun, as I learned how to make a plane do flips, spins, and all sorts of other maneuvers. My stomach got all queasy by the end, but I didn't lose my lunch. That was some crazy stuff!

The second flight was on January 12th, 2007 -- the dog fighting flight -- where I had the opportunity to fly up against another pilot as though we were trying to shoot one another from the skies. He had a little bit of former flight experience, but years ago and I had the recent aerobatic flight as my experience to go by. As it turned out, we were both French Canadian - he was from Quebec, but living in Texas and me being born in Winnipeg, Manitoba. We found this to be an interesting coincidence.

After some practice maneuvers we went in for 6 rounds against one another. This was some intense action, I tell you! The first round I lost very quickly. I just couldn't figure out where he was and how to react. That sudden defeat kicked me in the ass, I have to say, so I went after him with all due aggression. I managed to win all 5 remaining rounds against him!

While the action as going on, I was ignoring the effects that all the maneuvering was having on my equilibrium. What I seemed to have forgotten came back to me as we started our flight back home. Yep, I admit it: I had to make use of the air sickness bag. But I felt much better after!

I have both of these flights on tape and will be putting them together into a video as soon as I can convert the recent one from tape into a format I can edit on the computer.

Thanks again, Christine!

This entry's call sign is "BuzzKill"... oh, yeah!