Don't let the door hit you on the way up

I was supposed to have a lesson this morning. However, my instructor sent me a text message saying he was sick and that I'd have to reschedule. This is the second week in a row that I've had to reschedule. Learning to fly can be frustrating sometimes. I'm taking one lesson a week, which is all I can afford at the moment, and so if any little thing decides not to co-operate that day, be it the weather, a broken car (yes, that happened to me two weeks ago), or sickness, etc. then I don't fly that week. I'm going to try to catch up in the next couple of weeks, but un-matching schedules is also proving to be a problem between me and my instructor. It's mostly my fault though, since I only have two or three hours a day in the early morning that I can dedicate to flying, the rest of the day I'm working. That's not taking into account my instructor's students and his schedule.

So, while my plan was to write about today's lesson, I do have four prior lessons I need to catch you up on. I hope to do that in a couple of installments. I'm still getting used to this whole writing about myself thing. Oh who am I kidding, I love writing about myself. Anyway, if I don't stop blabbering we'll never get to the first lesson, so here we go.

Lesson 1: Don't let the door hit you on the way up

This lesson was a long time coming. I'm taking my flying lessons at a small airport just North of Toronto called Buttonville Airport (CYKZ). Buttonville, as some of you may know, houses Canada's biggest flying school, and is also one of the biggest in the world. In fact, because there are so many take-offs and landings at Buttonville, the airport actually made it to the top 10 list of Canada's busiest airports a couple of years ago.

The down side to Buttonville being a big school, is that for some reason, they took their sweet time with partnering me up with an instructor. To make a short story long, it took multiple phone calls and nagging on my end to finally get someone to teach me how to fly. Yes, sometimes it takes hard work to let someone take $250/hr from you. It all worked out in the end though, as I like my instructor and I feel we have suitable personalities for the student/teacher relationship we're embarking on, which is a very important factor to consider.

So it was finally time for my first lesson. I met my instructor - his name is John Travolta, but we'll call him Eric form here on. Eric and I went into a small room for a briefing. We discussed what we'll learn in the aircraft today. A big part of the briefing and pre-flight preparations is doing weight and balance calculations. The airplane we'll fly is a Cessna 150 - a very small airplane that can easily be stretched to it's weight limits when two people are in it, so it's important to make sure the weight load doesn't surpass the allowed maximums. Balance is a whole different story. It involves complex math, physics, biology, graphic design, and some politics to get the balance of an airplane right. So we won't go into that just yet.

After we made sure we're within the weight and balance limits of the airplane, and talk about what I'll learn, we went out to the airplane. Eric taught me the walk-around that must be preformed before every flight. The walk-around involves checking the fuel, making sure the surface skin of the airplane is smooth and void of any bumps or bruises, and making sure all the nails and the nuts & bolts of the airplane are tightened. It also involves some back-flips.

We then got into the cockpit and performed all the check-lists for starting the airplane and readying it for take-off. Eric told me he would let me take off if the wind wasn't too strong, however the wind quickly crushed that dream. Thought I did get to taxi (drive) the airplane to from the apron (parking spot) to the runway. Eric told me I did a good job. Apparently people have a really hard time with taxiing at the beginning as the power comes from a throttle lever and the turning mechanism comes from foot pedals.

I stated in a prior blog that I had concerns about flying due to what I learned in ground school prior to my first flying lesson - a million ways to crash an airplane and how not to do it. However, as we lined up with the runway center line and Eric pushed the throttle to full, those worries gave way to excitement and an adrenalin rush. I was back, baby. Back with a vegan!

As we took off, however, Eric's door popped open. Yes, you read that right. We took off with an open door. Such is the reality of flying an airplane made in and around 1975. Apparently it happens more often than you'd think. It's not dangerous per-say, just don't unbuckle your seat belt and jump out and you should be fine.

The first lesson consisted of me just getting familiar with the airplane's controls. I got to fly the airplane for about an hour. Basically the only time Eric took control of the airplane was for take off, landing, and to demonstrate exercises in the air.

I don't remember the particulars of the lesson in the air. It was mostly a blur. All I remember is the feeling of flying an airplane all on my own, and even that's hard to describe. Since my fingers are numb and it's late in the evening, I'll go ahead and describe the feeling as incredible.

Stay tuned for my next update about lesson 2 - "10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 - take-off... but only if the wind co-operates."