.. with my bird? Kind of.
Looking up wikipedia’s definition of “blind date”, I began to chuckle:
The date was set for 7:30 am, the day after I touched down at Boston’s Logan Airport.
Was I nervous? Naa, not really! After all, point #3 from above was a “check”!
Curious and excited would be the appropriate words to describe my emotions, no wonder after all these days, well, months of searching, and after those two weeks in limbo.
When I drive up to the hangar, the door is already open, Greg waiting.
“There she is” he says, “waiting for you and ready to fly”.
And there she was.
My One Seventy !
Beautiful!
Sure, I had seen photos, even a walk-around video which Greg had recorded and sent when it looked like I might be able to buy her.
But this was the real thing, now I can do the walk-around, can climb in, move the controls, check her out!
Great paint job, a beautiful design, big tires yeah!!, ….and the extended baggage – perfect!
I began to imagine all that space filled up with camping gear, a foldable bike, camera stuff and ready to go.
Admiring and dreaming were cut short when Greg asked: “Well, do you like her? Let’s go fly, you’ll like her even better!”
And then:” Do you think you can land her?”
The final call back to reality!
Although I had flown a couple of hours in the small Piper J-3 about a year and a half ago plus the exercises to get my tailwheel endorsement last August and everything went very well, there was always an instructor sitting next to me.
This was not only a different model, it was bigger – and it was mine! Sure as hell I didn’t want to damage it!
So I thought for a while, tried to remember my first touch down in the J-3, the T-craft and the Cessna 140.
I’d probably be able to get her down and stopped in one piece, but I sure wouldn’t want to chance it.
“Probably” I answered “ but I prefer you to teach me so I can say: of course!”
Then we climbed on board, I shouted “clear prop” through the open window and pushed the starter on 94VW for the first time.