I call it the 'Spruce Moose'

One hour down

I was feeling rather rambunctious back in November when I bought this flight lesson. The kind of spur of the moment type of thing that prompts one to say "Sure, life is short...I will add guac, and yes, I'm aware its extra." Or "yea I drive a car, I'm sure a plane is no different" or "yea, I could use a good flight lesson to prep for the impending zombie apocalypse."

So I met with my flight instructor at the airport hangar in Long Island. Nice guy. Lets call him "Bill" for the sake of simplicity. Bill was maybe a year or two younger than me and had about 650 hours under his belt (holy fuck that's a lot of hours). Bill was working on his commercial license, somewhere upwards of 1500 hours, and getting there by doing these flight instructions. Bill was a nice guy, but besides the reflective pair of aviators he was sportin', it looked like he had just rolled out of bed after a long night of jäger bombs, threw on the first pair of pants he could find (which were burgundy by the way), some winter boots, slicked his hair back and said to himself "lets be fucking Maverick today" in the rear view mirror of his 2005 Honda Civic.

We then hopped on the wing of this single engine Piper Cherokee and climbed inside. It was a brisk 20º F that Saturday morning (lucky me) and we couldn't get the engine started. Not to worry though, Bill was on it. He spent an additional 10 minutes "priming" the engine, but was careful enough not to flood the engine.

"Yeah, [the plane] hasn't flown in a few days", Bill declared casually.

About 10 minutes later, the engine was chuggin' and rotors were a spinnin' and we were ready to go, but not before making a rookie move. All my years of playing Ace Combat did not instill the basic knowledge that the steering wheel in front of me did nothing while the plane was on the ground (cue Patrick Stewart face palm). Steering on the ground is controlled by the left and right foot pedals which control the left and right rudders. Braking on the ground was accomplished by depressing both pedals. ~~~~*The more you know.

Since we were the only ones crazy enough to fly that brisk windy morning, there was literally no one else on the runway and we had been cleared for takeoff. At this point I started playing Space Odyssey by David Bowie in my head. The nose of the plane lined up with the runway. Throttle up. Engine louder. It was so windy the plane lifted effortlessly in the air. Pulled steering wheel towards myself to pull up. That's all it took to get in the air.

In case you're saying to yourself "Wow Jon, you should totally become a pilot and you'd look badass in a bomber jacket." Yes, I definitely would look good in one of those sweet jackets. However, here's a few things to consider:
1. The going rate for a private pilot license training course (not including the tests and fees) is about $9K. My pockets aren't that deep, they're mostly full of lint and frozen yogurt punch cards.
2. There are about 1500 aviation accidents per year (according to the N.T.S.B.*). Keep in mind this is a statistic related to private, non-commercial flights. These are mostly pilot error related, but weather and mechanical failure are also factors in this statistic. Still though (gif: Homer pulling his collar nervously).

* source: New York Times