Tuesday, October 03, 2006

In the Event of a Water Landing...


This ladies and gentlemen is my "best" friend Josh Schmidt, him and i have known each other and managed to stay friends for many many many many years. Since i have no biological brother i would say that Josh is the closest thing i have to a brother, it has been awesome to see each other grow. Since i have know him i have always known that he wants to be a pilot, there has been a long line of pilots in the family and he continues a very proud tradition. i have been flying with Josh before and he always manages to have some kind of surprise for me up in there air that will scare the crap out of me. Well, about oh i dont know 2 years ago i think, the Flight school that he is an instructor for Grey Eagle, just happened to acquire a small plane called a Citabria. Its a small plane made specially for acrobatic maneuvers.........and its made out of cloth............................yeah, you read it right.........CLOTH!!!!! well you can imagine what would go through a persons mind hearing that, yeah all of those things went trough mine. Josh was all excited when they got this thing in and starts telling me how he wanted to take me up and do some.......rolls, stalls, loop de loops and all that wonderful stuff that makes your brains go into your feet. All the time "when are we going up?" to which i would proceed to say "let me get this straight........you manage to scare the crap out of me when we were in a plane made out of metal, and now youre telling me that you want to take me up and do "acrobatic" manuevers" in a plane that by all intents and purposes is a glorified kite?!?!?!" "ummmmmm yeah........yeah i guess i am" "youre out of your mind, i can just see it now. You pull some freaky maneuver I crap my pants and panic and manage to kick a hole in the side of the plane!!!! Shes falling apart captain!!!!!" "oh no worries" he says "we have parachutes" "oh well how comforting!! and if the chutes dont open?" "hmmmm then i guess we would be in for a bad day" So he never gave up and always tried to get me to go up, of course i refused. For my birthday this year, Josh comes up to me and says "your present is coming" of course i ask "what is it" all he does is take his hand and makes the motion of a plane going inverted...........well now i had to do it. On Monday, i finally got in the plane.................................. and it was an incredible experience that i will never forget. We werent up for long, as my stomach isnt exactly the iron gut and i came close to losing whatever i had in there. So instead of trying to tough it out i decided that we should land before i hurled all over the cockpit. I would tell you all about the day, but you would be here reading all day so instead i will leave you with some pictures. Understand that the cockpit is tiny and so the fisheye lens was the only thing wide enough to capture it all. Also, i apologize fot he lack of creativity with the shots, but it was my 1st time doing this...............but i hope to try again soon muahahahahahah. Josh you rock brotha, thanks for an awesome day and an incredible birthday present.









2 comments:

blaine said...

totally stinkin' insane! um ya, yer crazy. when is it my turn???? :)

Anonymous said...

oh man I want to go up too....i promise I wouldn't throw up!