There I was, at 30,000 feet…

Y’all, I did a THING today! I flew a damn airplane! Okay, so we weren’t really at 30,000 feet and it was a little Cessna, not a jet screaming through the sky. But still, it was a plane and I flew it! Count my new thing for May in the books and awesome!

I love the sensation of flying. Heck, when I was little I was convinced I COULD fly, and somehow have memories of floating along the ceiling in the hallway of our house. Out of body experience? Maybe. But being high above the rest of the world is just awesome. My Uncle Wade was a crop duster at one time, and I remember him taking me up in the plane and buzzing my grandmother’s house; I loved it! During college days, my pilot friend Steve took me and his girlfriend (later his wife) to the Air Force base and let us take a ride in a T-37 simulator.

But today — I flew the plane! Yay! Okay, so the flight instructor was with me the whole time and taking care of all the little buttons and knobs and radio stuff. But he let me taxi, take off, fly, and land. I didn’t park the plan when we got back because it was a tight squeeze to get in and while I think I did pretty well I wasn’t quite ready for that.

We flew from Gulfport (at the lovely Million Air facility) down to the beach and along the shore to Deer Island. If you were driving a boat back to shore near the Ocean Springs Bridge around 4 p.m. on May 31, that was me in the plane above you, the one that was likely a little more unsteady than usual. If you were on the beach wondering if that little plane was going to stay up, that was me. It might not have been pretty, but I was still up in the air! I don’t think I stopped grinning from the time we got in the plane until, well, I haven’t stopped yet.

A HUGE, enormous thank you and sloppy wet kisses to Tina and Mike who so graciously gifted me this experience! I can’t thank you enough. I owe you mountains of baked goods when next we see each other! Troy with Apollo Flight Training was a great instructor, and amazingly calm throughout the experience. He said I did great, then said he sensed no fear at all. Hmmm… you pilot types will have to tell me if that’s a compliment or simply relief on his part that he was firmly back on the ground. Ha!

A few pictures from the adventure are below. I probably should have taken more, but I was having so much fun I didn’t want to lose a minute of the experience. Came home and made a celebratory meal, Creamy Tuscan Chicken Thighs (also pictured) and am having a hard seltzer to wash it down. Definitely a banner day in the quest to make the Year of Being 59 a memorable one.

As we close, let me just say this has been a crazy few months. We’re back at work, but without students on campus, which is so weird. It seems our country and indeed the world is in a huge upheaval these days, and I wish I knew how the situation would resolve itself. But through it all, let’s all please remember the good days and the good people in our lives. Bad times will come, horrible things will happen, but life goes on and the best we can do is strive to do a little better each day. When I say my prayers at night, I always ask God to help me be a better person. I’m not where I want to be yet, but I’m trying. This year is turning out to be much more than I had anticipated when this quest began.