For those of you who seemed entertained by the thought of me as a pilot, I dug out a couple of photos to share with you. The top photo is my flight instructor and me standing in front of the airplane I learned to fly in, a 2-seater Cessna. If I remember correctly, the photo was taken right after I made my first solo flight. It's the same plane I was in when the incident I described here took place.
The lower photo, a Piper Cherokee Warrior, is the airplane my husband and I bought into with several of my husband's cousins. A 4-seater, it was more practical than the Cessna rental we learned in.
How is it that I had never heard of this book or of this woman before Raven recommended I read it for the Africa portion of the Global Reading Challenge? I was missing out on a real jewel!!
Beryl Markham's memoir, West With the Night, tells of her childhood growing up in British East Africa (Kenya) during the early part of the twentieth century. Her younger years were spent raising and training thoroughbred racehorses, first with her father then on her own when he lost his farm and moved to South Africa. Always one for excitement, she later leaped at the opportunity to learn to fly and turned it into a second career as a bush pilot. Perhaps the crowning glory of her career was when she became the first person to fly solo from London to the U.S. (west to east).
I loved this entire book! It's filled with wonderful descriptions of life in Africa in the 1920s and 30s.... lions, elephants, Siafu ants, safaris, horse racing, and, of course, flying. It was actually the flying that first interested me in the book. Having gotten my own pilot's license when I was younger, I found it easy to relate to her descriptions of flying. The entire book is beautifully written and totally engrossing. I highly recommend it!
This completed the Africa portion of the Global Reading Challenge for me.
WhiteStone has a good entry at her blog today about the Northwest pilots who recently lost their jobs after overshooting their intended destination.
When I first heard about the incident, it brought to mind something that happened to me a long time ago. Those who read my 360 blog might remember an entry where I told about getting my single engine pilot’s license (VFR) shortly after I got married. My husband was bound and determined to get his and with a history of heart disease in his family, I decided I needed to have mine, too. I sure didn’t want to get caught up in the air with him and not be able to land the plane if I ever had to!
I have no idea what getting a license these days entails. At that time, one of the requirements was to plan a “long cross country” flight. It had to include stops at several different airports, one of which had to be a specific distance away. It was a lengthy solo flight and required refueling at one point. My flight plan took me from Arkansas to Texas, then to Louisiana before returning home. As I neared the final airport on my route, the tower put me on a heading for approach. I complied, saw the airport ahead of me, and then watched as it receded into the distance behind me! I called the tower again and it was obvious what had happened. They’d forgotten about me!! I could hear laughter in the background! I was already pretty nervous, so it was no laughing matter to me at the time (even though I can tell the story now and it seems funny). Once I landed, I vaguely remember getting my log book initialed by someone on the ground then getting back in the air as soon as possible to get back home.
My experience was pretty trivial in the big scheme of things. It was just me. But you think about the hundreds of flights each day carrying hundreds of people from one place to another. It’s important that pilots AND controllers stay vigilant and never get complacent.
