Insanely jealous

I came back from my weekend away to some exciting news. D of Utah flight fame has decided, presumably on a whim, to set off on an epic flying adventure!

D is like many former PPL students from our little corner of the flying world and hasn’t really ventured much further afield than Muskoka. Well he plans to change that by heading down to sunny Florida.

I am insanely jealous, not just because he’s heading down to Florida at a time of year when the first snows are starting to hit, not just because he’s setting off on an epic 6 day voyage to places unknown. It’s his attitude I’m jealous of.

D is so….. laid back is the wrong word I feel but I’m lacking a better one at the moment. He is the polar opposite of me. He knows he’s bitten off an epic task. He knows it’s daunting and yet somehow he knows he’ll manage.

All of it at a time where I’m pathetically obsessing over stupid details about my tiny in comparison cross country flight where I’m not even leaving the one side of my chart. During my visit to D’s lab today our gaze kept wandering to the pile of charts and directories that had just arrived on his desk. Our conversation pausing briefly as we contemplated the mammoth task he’s about to embark on.

I think I counted 4 charts, his route covering them all, front and back. And he’s doing this solo. No co-pilot, no help with the navigation. D, ever the optimist, pointed out that the lack of an occupant for the front seat at least means he has plenty of “desk” space for this numerous charts.

I need to be around more people like this, people who are intimidated by the task in hand but go ahead and do it anyway.

As a parting remark D had one more piece of advice for me (he doesn’t seem to mind my inane ramblings about my flight failings), something I think Bob has been trying to tell me for a while now. I may be paraphrasing slightly but:

“No one ever learned to fly because they dreamed of doing circuits!”