Day 2 - Solo

Earning a pilot’s license is a life changing experience.  From the introductory flight to a private pilot check ride with an FAA examiner, student pilots are challenged to master tomes of information and for many, undergo a personality change to become a highly detail oriented and procedures based thinker. 

One of the more memorable points of my journey was the first solo flight.  After what seemed like not very many hours of instruction, my instructor told me to stop on the taxiway by the runway and let him out. As he exited the Piper Tomahawk (affectionately known as a “Traumahawk”), he told me to do three takeoffs and landings and come back and pick him up.  You might know the feeling, right after you signed for a car loan or mortgage, when it sinks in that the step just taken is not easily undone. Taking an airplane into the air, by yourself, leaves exactly one person in the world who can get the whole operation back to the ground in one piece.  Tag you are it.

Alone in the cockpit, I felt giddy, focused and a little sick to my stomach.  Intellectually, I was prepared for the moment, having taken every preflight step required to all but eliminate those risks capable of mitigation and having gained the confidence of a highly experienced instructor for whom a bad outcome would either end his instructing career or worse.  In reality, the stakes are pretty high. 

My solo went great – as we say in the trades, I “greased” all three landings and returned to pick up Charlie, who was all smiles and strutting like a peacock.  The Navy and the major airlines have proven time and again in studies that pilots fall back on trained procedures in high stress situations.  I can’t really recall any details of the flight, but I do know that Charlie’s voice was in my head, telling me exactly what to do at each step.  I was a complete novice, but I had tens of thousands of hours of flying experience in that cockpit with me.

I woke up this morning a little more sick to my stomach than giddy.  Tag you are it.  I still have Charlie’s voice in my head but I also have a chorus of voices representing a compendium of every life experience, positive and negative, that I have ever had. From Madison Avenue, to teachers, family members, friends, colleagues and bosses, individuals and organizations have each held up a mirror and told me what I look like and often what it would look like for me to be successful.  Many bumps and bruises later, I now see that some of these mirrors reflected crisp images but many were distorted by agendas and personalities and a whole host of other maladies that contribute to the human condition.  The trick is observing these voices, and figuring out where my voice is in the mix.

Today’s Goals

I have family obligations that leave me very little time to accomplish much today, so my goals are rather modest.

1.     Work on marketing materials.

2.     Review new website design proposals.

3.     Spend one hour at my new workspace continuing the organization process.