It was the Fourth of July. I thought I knew what I was doing. But looking back, I really didn't. I had been interested in flying for a few years before then. I played Flight Simulator on the computer for a few years, and while it helped me learn a lot, I thought I knew everything, but I hadn’t even flown a plane before. I didn’t like rollercoasters. Everytime we went over a quick hill in the car my stomach churned. Part of me loved the idea of flying, and the other part hated it. And I knew before I even got in that plane the first time that I would be feeling nauseous, and I was scared. I had tons of hours on the computer flying, but I had only been on a few airliners. And trust me, small planes aren’t for the weak-stomached.

Anyways, it was the Fourth of July, and my mom had signed me up for a discovery flight in Superior, Wisconsin. We stopped at a gas station on the way to get some dramamine. My mom said that I needed to take one, and I refused at first, being the tough guy I was, I ended up taking it. My mom was definitely right. We walked into this tiny airport with a nice terminal, but really, only a few seats, a desk, and a big window, and the runway was right there. I sat down with my instructor. We went over where we were flying, calculating the heading, and the wind correction angle we needed to fly to get there, and not to get blown 20 miles East of there. I remember being really excited, nervous, kind of tired. We hopped into a small Cessna 172, from the late 70’s. It had a red interior, and was a 4-seater, but the back seats weren’t very roomy. I did the start-up with some help from my instructor, because I was the expert who practiced flying on his computer for hours, but couldn’t stop shaking when he got in a plane. I started it up, my instructor walked me through a few things and I started to taxi to the runway. We did a run-up, a procedure where you throttle up the engine and check a few things to make sure you’re all good to takeoff. Then we made a radio call, and taxied onto the runway. By this point, we hadn’t even left the ground yet, and I was sweating through my shirt.

I remember my instructor explaining the takeoff procedure to me more than a few times, and I asked him a few more times after that. I slowly pushed the throttle full, contrary to what my body was telling me to do, stop. Some people explain the peace you feel right when you lift off the ground, and how quiet everything gets, those aren’t guys who are talking about their first flight, or if they are, they have stomachs of steel. I was shaking like a leaf, and I think the plane was too when we were accelerating to takeoff. I pulled back on the yoke, at 60 kts, about 68 mph, and the plane tilted back and took off. You see the ground fall out below you as if you stay level and the ground is descending. I wasn’t looking at the ground that day after takeoff, I was looking straight ahead trying not to shake. It was a sunny day, which sounds like a good day to fly, but man it was turbulent. We got up to cruise altitude, probably 4500 feet or so, and the plane would drop, my stomach would rise, and the plane would jump up, and my stomach would fall, I was super scared.

We were flying to an airport, a private airport called Voyager Village, a runway on a golf course. On the way down, we flew over the lake that my cabin is on. It was pretty cool. But over the lake my instructor asked us, “Do you want to feel some G’s?” and I said no, but my instructor misheard me and banked the plane to the left and pulled back and I was pushed into my seat. I hated that feeling, and it definitely didn’t help me with my nervousness. We flew down to the airport, and my instructor landed for me because it was a skinny runway. We stopped and had lunch at the golf course. It was really cool landing there, people stop golfing to watch this plane come down in the middle of the golf course on a small runway. We parked next to a few other planes, and one of them had golf clubs stuffed in the back. That got my interest. I realized that this wasn’t just for a career, you could take your plane out to a golf course on the weekend, or take a trip with your family, and there were endless possibilities. We got back in the plane, took off, and I noticed I had become less shaky, relatively speaking, and that it was easier to concentrate on flying. I was still uneasy, and probably green when I got back on the ground. We headed back to Superior Airport, and my instructor told me I was gonna land this time. I think I responded with, “Wait, what?”. Let’s just say my landing was not perfect, I felt bad for the plane after that one. But some say any landing you can walk away from is a good one, so I guess it was a good one.

The drive back, and a for a few days after my first flight, I questioned if my dream of being a pilot was really good for me. I thought if I couldn’t handle flying in a small plane, I could never fly for the airlines. But persistence is what separates people who quit and people who don’t. I knew I couldn’t just give up a dream of mine based on one flight. I had to make a decision, to keep faking it that I wanted to do this, or to give up. I kept faking it. I flew again a month later. I was still shaky, and nervous. I flew again a few weeks after that. The shakiness started to go away. I started to get comfortable flying. And that’s when I knew I made the right decision.