About 4500 feet to be exact! After some pretty crippling depression that started last summer after a child I raised from birth was ripped from my life, I had to make a choice to find something productive to do with my time, or count down the days until all hope had officially abandoned me. I set out on my first step towards becoming a pilot on December 29th, and here we are at the end of April and I'm almost at 40 hours of flight time and raising the bar every chance I get.
I flew my very first solo flight on March 26 and have found myself struggling with confidence - which is a pretty common characteristic amongst folks like me. The self doubt has been loud lately and that's had me rattled. So I decided to stare self doubt in the face and raise the pot...
I went and found an aerobatics instructor here in north Texas and told him it's time for me to face some fears. For those who may not know a lot about aviation - one of the most insidious situations you can encounter is called a spin. It usually results from over correcting an airplane at slow speeds and trying to compensate by adding a bit too much rudder. When this happens, the aircraft tends to fall into a spiral dive. The tragedy in this is that it often happens when turning final to land, so it's low altitude. This is where things get dangerous because while it's recoverable, you tend to need about 1000 feet to recover. Anything less than that and it's almost always fatal. What I wanted to gain from today is being able to see, hear (yes you can hear an airplane stall), and feel what it looks like when this is about to occur so you can correct before it happens.
If you'd have told me nine short years ago that I'd some day be standing on the doorstep of a pilots certificate, and doing aerobatic maneuvers in a slick little airplane - I'd have stared at you with vacant, sad eyes and told you that you must have me mistaken for someone else.
Life is beautiful. Even when it's not. The pain we endure is sometimes a catalyst for us to focus on those things were supposed to grow in. Even when things look awfully bleak and doors close... Dare to believe that they closed so we can focus our energy into something that we were put here to do.
Being upside down and high never felt so amazing.
Stay in the fight and dare to believe that you're more than your past. Because there's still chapters that you've not yet written.
