Discovery flight and Happy Father’s day.
We gave James his presents this morning, missing Joel already, and he put the CD’s on his computer. Then we took off for Centennial airport. I think I’m getting used to this. Today was James’s discovery flight. It’s the first step to getting his pilot’s license and eventually training Joel to get his license. Now, he is also going to be in CAP as a senior member, but they don’t train you to fly like the cadets. You can fly when the cadets fly (and it’s pretty cheap) and you can log hours as such, but you don’t get to log them as instructed flight hours. So anyway, James scheduled this flight as a precursor to flight school.
They did the pre-flight check (but they were all the way down at the end of the hangar so I couldn’t get any pics.) Then they took off. He let James taxi and pull up. Then they headed to our house. They actually flew over the house low enough so James could see the slide on our play land and see Maisy running around! They circled the rec center and then headed back down 25. They turned again and came back to the airport. Total in air flight time was about 36 minutes. James said the taxiing was weird because you want to use the yoke, but you just use the pedals.
In flight was a little bumpy at times as the wind current would come up under the plane, but the landing was great.
The girls and I sat and read and watched out the window for him.
Finally he came walking up the path.
How neat and what a cool present for Father’s day to go on your first powered flight!
I just wish Joel had been there, but he’ll see him next Sunday when we go back. I guess if Joel was in uniform he could ride in the back of the plane while James flies - talk about pressure! The rest of the day we’re just cleaning up and obviously blogging. Then we’re taking James out to Cherry creek grill for an early dinner. I haven’t gotten any calls from the AFA, so I assume Joel went to chapel this morning and is doing fine. We’ll miss him this week as we do some girly things like: have a spa day and watch movies that make us cry. We’re also going swimming at our favorite secret swimming creek and doing a co-op called spy school. Since Joel is gone we also pushed back ‘Denver Day’ to next Sunday. (That’s the day we celebrate our return to Denver. The girls and I flew back up on June 11th 2005 and James and Joel came back in the moving truck a few days later. So we try to celebrate it on the weekend closest to the 13th.)
Happy WeekEND!
