Thanks to a $99 Living Social deal, I was able to find a great independent CFI, Tommy Holley of Colorado Takes Flight out of Erie, CO (KEIK). Tommy and I immediately hit it off and I described to him what my "flying" had looked like for the previous 11+ years: Lots of sim time, lots of virtual ATC time on VATSIM, lots of looking up at the sky and wanting to be back flying a small plane. Tommy provided a pretty darn accurate assessment of where I was skill-wise and we wandered the skies north of LMO performing stalls, slow flight, and getting me acclimated to the PA-28-180.
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| Me, following my first flight in N4878L - March 2013 |
First, a brief overview about where and how my quest to become a private pilot started out...
8/17/95 is the first entry in my logbook; a fairly standard first flight, 1.0 hr intro flight around KGRI - Grand Island, NE. I was 15 at the time and pursuing this crazy dream to be a pilot. Not old enough yet to drive myself, I had my parents drive me to the FBO, Grand Island Aviation, until I had a car of my own. Lessons were sporadic but fun and a great way to spend the fall and the following spring. But, life happened and flying had to take a back seat to other priorities. In total, I logged 8.6 hours in 1995/1996 before hanging up the headset.
Fast forward to February 2002 and I logged another handful of hours at KLNK, Lincoln, NE. At that time, I was a college sophomore and an aviation major and looking forward to a career behind a yoke. But, I would soon realize that in a post-9/11 world, my dream job might not be as much a dream as I had hoped. I changed majors, graduated with a business degree, and proceeded to not log any time for the next 11 years as life's priorities shifted and were reordered; jobs, girlfriends, which gave way to a wife, which led to kids, etc. etc. Which brings us to present.
Total Logbook Time: 10.5 hrs (1995)
Total Logbook Time: 11.6 hrs (Counting today's flight)
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