Couldn't help but think of the Beatles "re-union" song off the Anthology disk as my
WWII Trainer Plane proceeded take-off into sunny skies high above Kitty Hawk and Manteo off Roanoke Island. I've always been drawn towards WWII aircraft and the sexiness of a machine that is run by man and is not a slave to its system.
Modern Aviation is based on computer, charts and eeekk..gasp...Math.
Aviation of yesterday drew upon these things, but you didn't need to learn how to do calculations as much as you just had to have a feel for the machine and "work" yourself into it.
Flying in this war machine that eats gallons of the thick and sticky black remains of dinosaur bones every trip was the stuff that dreams are made of. Suddenly, certain ghost of the past or preoccupations just didn't seems relevant anymore. Certain hang ups I had 5 years ago seems trivial today. It was suddenly okay that sometimes things don't go the way you plan, and maybe the goal of life isn't to lock in "forever" and live through it, but to have fun LIVING "forever".
Yeah the best laids plans can fail, and people that you think are your life support turn out to be your cancer, but if you have the courage and strength to turn around, walk away, and say, I can do a little better than this shit, well, guess what? You can.
This all might sound pretty young, and maybe when I get over the 3-0 hill, I'll think differently, but what's the fun in living if you can't live. What's the fun of "being' if you can't "be". Thanks Capt. Challace.
"Whatever happened to
the life that we once knew?
Can we really live without each other?
Where did we lose the touch
that seemed to mean so much?
It always made me feel so...
Free as a bird,
like the next best thing to be.
Free as a bird."
