Why is it that every time I write another post for this blog I first have to apologize for not writing posts for this blog? Oh, I see, it’s been a long time since I got off my ever sagging rear end and put something up. So…sorry…. again.
But this time I really do have a good excuse, sort of. Number one son Connor is coming home from Black Hawk Crew Chief school in two weeks and I’ve been promising him for years to teach him to fly. Not his body or parachutes but airplanes. Now I know what you’re thinking, why don’t I just send him to the local flight school where there are snot nosed kids flight instructors who teach young men and women like my son to take to the wild blue? Well, it seems that Connor wants to learn from his dear o’l dad himself. Touched I am, honored, slightly misty, and more than a little put out. The problem is that even though I’ve been flying for 31 years I never quite got around to getting my Certified flight Instructor rating. And that means, you guessed it, I have to go back to flight school! Argggg! I’ve never wanted to be a flight instructor. I do spend a ton of time teaching people how to skydive and you might think that that would be harder and more dangerous but when a student screws up badly during a skydive I can just let them go, open my own parachute and wish them luck. Ok, I might chase them below the hard deck in freefall, if I really like them, but I still have an automatic opening devise that will deploy my reserve chute in time to save me, I think. But when you’re teaching some knuckle head how to land a plane in a crosswind things can south quickly, sometimes faster than an instructor can grab the controls and recover from. That kind of pressure can wear on a man after a while.
But Connor wants to learn from me so I guess I’ll jump through all the hoops and get my CFI rating. After all I taught him how to ski, scuba dive, drive, hunt, fish, chase girls, and skydive. I might as well go all the way.
Anyway, like I warned told you here are some of the pictures I took while back country skiing in Canada last month.
Teach him to fly, then send him to a “snot nosed kid” to learn the FAA approved way before his flight test.