The Flying Bug

I’ve been on the road a fair amount this month. One of the nice (or not so nice) parts of being an immigration lawyer is the frequent opportunities to travel. I’m composing the text portion of this entry in seat 1B of a Northwest Airlines 757 bound for San Francisco.

Just like my bassett hound (whom I can’t take outside to relieve himself unleashed for fear he will wander off somewhere and not be able to find his way home), I love to travel. There are very few places in the world I do not want to go to. I love the smell of jet fuel, crossing time zones, meeting new people, and seeing new sites. I attribute this wanderlust to a ailment known as the flying bug.

Aren't we pathetic looking?

I can thank my uncle for the flying bug. When I was very young, my Uncle George flew out to California from Pennsylvania in his Mooney to visit. During his visit, Uncle George took me and my siblings for a ride. My brother and sister were scared out of their minds. I loved every minute of it. I was hooked.

As I grew up, flying fever did not dissipate. Other kids wanted to be doctors, firemen, or garbage collectors, I wanted to be an airline pilot. Growing up in Southern California, it is not unusual to look up in the sky and see a plane flying overhead. My head was cocked at a permanent 45 degree angle, looking, and if low enough identifying all the planes as they flew by. I was probably the only nine year old in the USA with a subscription to Flying magazine and Plane & Pilot.

After earning my private pilots license at Orange County Airport, I enrolled in Trinity Western University’s aviation program. TWU was something of a compromise school. It was sufficiently religious to satisfy my parents, and it had an aviation program. I was on track to graduate with a commercial pilots license and an instrument rating when six of my classmates (and two very close friends) were killed in a plane crash.

After being handed a sobering wakeup call that people get killed flying planes, I changed majors to history and graduated with a BA in History/Political Science, a private pilot license and about 200 hours of flight time. At graduation, I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted to do with my life, but I was reasonable sure that flying an airplane was not one of them.

Last month, I went up to the U.S. Consulate in Montreal, Canada to assist a client obtain a U.S. visa. Since Montréal is relatively close, I decided to fly myself up there.

A left seat self portrait, an air traffic control radar trace of my flight from Flightaware.com, and a shot out the windshield threading the needle between the Green Mountains of Vermont and a stratus cloud layer.

After a fifteen year of remission, the bug came back. I renewed my pilots license. I was invited to join the Raytheon Employees Flying Club by a friend from church. REFC is not very exclusive. Unlike the name implies, employment at Raytheon is not required. You don't even need to be a pilot, but is sure does help. The sole requirement to join the club is to know how to spell R-A-Y-T-H-E-O-N. I got a lot of practice at this as I get to write it on the many checks I send to them.

I now fly fairly regurarly now. I do not fly as much as I did in shcool, as airplane time is $80 an hour.

Flying fever is genetic, and I've passed the bug. At the tender age of three, and against my wife’s better judgment, I took my daughter flying in the club’s Beechcraft Sundowner.

The Sundowner

The virus has been passed. Although she was scared half out of her mind during the simple flight around the airport, upon landing, Joanna cried, “Lets do it again Daddy!” If you ask her what she wants to be when she grows up, she will tell you “airplane pilot”

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Joanna the business traveler: Bose Headphones, iPod, NWA safety instruction card (Lets do that! as she points to the picture of the people going down the inflatable slide) and Bear.