OK, I Lied.

I added one more blogger that I’ve been meaning to, but forgot: Skywritings. Written by a female ex-professional pilot, she’s been blogging since December 2005, and posts two or three times a month – but they’re good posts! Samples:

I remember offering a ride in my airplane to two French tourists who had come up for their idea of adventure, paying probably $10,000 for the privilege of camping out alone for a week, then a carefully orchestrated raft or hunting trip they could go home and brag about. Their flight out to their camp area canceled. Since I was taking my plane up that way to check out an eagles nest I’d seen from the air, I told them I’d drop them off on the sandbar. I couldn’t accept any money for it, but since I was going there anyway, they were welcome to a lift. I’d like to say that they were gracious, joyous people and we had a wonderful experience, but they were the rudest, nastiest people I’d ever met in my life. It got to the point I gave up being polite and started to burp and pretend to nod off at the controls muttering the phrase “boy I wish I hadn’t drunk that bottle of cough syrup”. – Saturday, 5/20/06

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As the door opened, the next candidate came in – 6′ 3″ and wearing a pink tuxedo. . the ruffly, kind that epitomized what was wrong with 80’s fashion. We could only look and stare. He held himself up straight, and sat down with pride. Then he opened his mouth, and out came a pronounced Oklahoma accent. He said

“Bet you’re wondering about the suit?’

We could only stare, and nod, silently.

“Well, it took me all day to get here, my flight from Tulsa canceled and I was re-booked, and when I finally got here late last evening, you’all had lost all my luggage, all I had was the jeans and t- shirt I was wearing. I raced over to the mall, just as the department store closed, The only thing open was the tux shop. . and this was all they had in my size”.

And he finished, head held up with pride, smiled, and just looked me in the eye.

All I could say was “that took one hell of a lot of balls to walk in here like this. . . . .
you’ve got yourself a job – welcome aboard. Now get out of here, put those jeans back on and have a cold one by the pool to celebrate”

That was the whole interview. He ended up being one of our best pilots. – 5/27/06

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I’ve felt fear in an airplane, shooting an approach to minimums in the mountains, snowflakes the size of postage stamps slamming into the window, my right hand on the throttle and sweat trickling down my cheek. I had never felt more present, more myself, more in the moment than at that time. The fear was right on the edge of either paralyzing me or propelling me into this place of being utterly engaged, that magic moment when I know I am honing years of practice into precision flying, and I’m suddenly out of the fear, into the light. I could manage the fear because I have faith. Faith in my training, faith in my mechanic, my copilot, my airplane. And faith that with needles centered, the runway should soon be straight ahead. For as it says in Hebrews 11:1 faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. – 7/7/2006.

Her name is Linda, yes, she’s a shooter, and she’s partial to Sigs.

Go spend some time over there. It’s worth it.