The most beautiful dream that has haunted the heart of man since Icarus is today reality.
--Louis Bleriot
I suppose it goes without saying that after years and years of yearning to be in the sky, my first flight was a highly anticipated event. In fact, that may be a gross understatement. I was so looking forward to my first flight that from the moment I found out that I was going to get to go up, I couldn't sleep. I would lay awake, staring at the ceiling, and wondering just what it would be like to be "up there". My anticipation even went so far as to affect my schoolwork. How this made me different from other college students who laid awake at night anticipating the next big keg party, I'm not sure.
My first flight was with James Williams, in a highly modified Cessna 180. And by highly modified, I mean highly modified. He had replaced the original 225 horsepower engine with a 300+ horsepower engine, installed a new three-blade prop, and a STOL (Short Take-Off and Landing) kit. Knowing James' interest in things that went fast and possessed inordinate amounts of power, all the modification was no surprise. James had in the past been a tractor puller, mud-bogger, and had somehow shoe-horned a 400 horsepower 350 cubic inch small block engine into a Chevy S-10. What would have surprised me would be if he had just left his airplane stock.
James' 180 was a taildragger, and he flew it from a short grass strip behind his shop/hangar. On the evening of my flight, I arrived just after he finished his preflight. We buckled ourselves in, and the butterflies came out in full force. My dad had always thought that James was a little on the insane side of the psychological charts, and all of a sudden I was having thoughts that went somewhat like, "WHAT THE @#&$@ HAVE I GOTTEN MYSELF INTO?!?!"
Before I could answer, James pointed the aircraft toward the far end of what all of a sudden looked like an extremely short runway. I managed to squeak out, "Shouldn't we back up a little?".
James just turned to me and flashed a grin that exposed that insane streak my dad had warned me about. "Just hold on," he said. Before I could protest, he firewalled the throttle, and I immediately was pushed back in my seat. Our takeoff roll couldn't have been more than 200 feet, and we were climbing at what seemed like a straight-up angle, but was probably more like a 45 degree angle of climb. We reached a thousand feet in no time, and the level-off was more like the reverse of falling off the edge of a table. In fact, it was more like an instant transition from a 2000+ foot per minute climb rate to straight and level flight.
My stomach, which had been left behind on the runway suddenly caught up with me, and kept moving upward until stopped by my tonsils. After a few seconds, all of my internal organs seemed to have settled back into their proper locations, and I was able to look outside.
I instantly knew that I was where I belonged.
Even from the height of a thousand feet, I could see for what seemed like forever. I could make out fields, ponds, roads, and forest. Everything looked like a patchwork quilt, and in my eyes, it was the most beautiful thing I had ever witnessed. As we drifted along, I tried to make out recognizable landmarks. I had lived in the area my entire life, and was intimately familiar with the features of the area, but only from the ground. From the air, everything took on an entirely different look. I would learn later that identifying familiar objects from the air is not as easy as it may sound.
We floated along for several minutes, and then James dipped the right wing and asked me if I recognized the location directly under us. When I replied in the negative, he told me that we were flying over my parents' house and farm. The place that I had lived my entire life looked foreign to me. That is, until I was told what I was looking at. All of a sudden, I started picking out recognizable objects -- my treehouse, my parents' house, my grandmother's house, and my dad's shop. I recognized the pond that I fished in as a child, and the fields that I rode my three-wheeled ATV in.
As we flew on, I reflected on what I had witnessed. For the first time, I had been on the other end of the picture. I had spent so many years standing in those yards and fields looking upward at the aircraft that flew over, and now I had finally been able to look downward at those fields and yards. The significance of this event was not lost on me. I knew that from now on, I would never be content to stand in the yard and watch as airplanes flew over. I would forevermore long to be in those craft, flying over yards and fields while children on the ground watched me.
We returned to James' runway and on approach, the butterflies that had been forgotten on take-off returned. The grass strip that appeared so short on takeoff looked positively tiny, almost non-existent, from this angle. I didn't question the pilot, though, and we touched down softly and taxied right up to the open hangar.
At James' direction, I got out of the airplane and went inside and turned on his runway lights. We were going to visit his flight instructor, and it would be after dark when we returned. After another stomach-swallowing takeoff, we made the short flight to the Statesboro-Bulloch County airport. I spent the flight marvelling at how different things looked from altitude. As we flew over the city of Statesboro, I started to be able to recognize the main highways. They didn't look like I thought they would. They weren't as straight as I had come to believe. This was a revelation to me, since I drove those roads daily, and to see them so differently made me wonder what else I was missing from a ground-bound point of view.
All too soon, we arrived at the Statesboro-Bulloch County airport and began our landing pattern. Everything that was happening was a bit foreign to me, but James tried to explain what he was doing. He explained to me the VASI (Visual Approach Slope Indicator) lights, and asked me if I could see "red over white". I would learn later that "red over white" meant "you're all right", or that you're on the correct glideslope. But try as I could, I just couldn't make out the lights, with all the other lights of the airport.
As we approached the runway, James decided he wanted to demonstrate the performance of his STOL kit, and with the flaps completely deployed, he slowed the aircraft to an airspeed of 35 knots, or about 40 mph. That's much slower than this aircraft should fly, and I managed to intimate that I was duly impressed.
We taxied up to the FBO (Fixed Base of Operation) and James shut down the engine. We exited the aircraft and walked into the FBO building. James was going to introduce me to his instructor. I was expecting a large, John Wayne looking, square-jawed figure sporting a leather jacket and silk scarf. Imagine my surprise when I was introduced to a feeble, very old man who looked very much like he could pass on at any time.
I would learn that Fred Adams had been in the Air Force during Korea, and after that stint in the military had been the corporate pilot for the Union Camp paper company for years. I just couldn't figure out how this feeble old man could be a flight instructor. Didn't the FAA have medical requirements? This old man looked like he would be well instructed to not buy under-ripe bananas, because they might outlast him.
The more I talked to Fred, though, the more I liked him, and my initial impression started to melt away. I could see in him the heart of a pilot, and the soul of a teacher. I saw someone with passion for aviation, and I felt drawn to him. I wanted to hang around with him, to learn from him. I felt as if he wanted to pass on his knowledge, and I wanted him to pass it on to me.
All too soon, our visit was over. We said our goodbyes and made our way back out to the airplane. James started up and took off. On the way back to his house, he even let me take the controls. "Be gentle," he said. That statement prompted a bit of confusion, because in my mind surely you would have to man-handle such a powerful beast as this. But I took his word for it, and found it to be surprisingly easy to maneuver the aircraft with the slightest of control movements. It was even more reinforcement that I needed to fly.
The ride ended much too soon, and as we exited the airplane back at James' hangar, I expressed my thanks. As I drove home, I replayed in my head all that had happened. As I drove those all-too-familiar roads home, they seemed different somehow. They seemed almost as a stranger, as someone I thought I had known, and then realized that they weren't who I thought they were. That short flight changed my view of the world around me, and it filled me with the desire to learn how to do it for myself. And the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to learn to fly from Fred. After all, if he had been able to keep himself alive in aviation for as long as he had, surely he could teach me to fly without killing myself.
It would take several more years before my first lesson, but it was always in my mind. My break came when I graduated from college and got a job that was paying enough that I could afford lessons. It was then that my life truly changed forever.
