OK, ok. Not really…. WebWorks Roundup was last week here in Austin, Texas. I spoke on Tuesday about developing a paperless home office system to help combat the piles and piles of paper in your life. I also learned a bunch of great stuff, including something I’m going to try to implement more in my own writing, at least.
At the end of the conference, there were some prizes (for things like “first person to pick up their name badge” and “first person in the bar”) and a drawing for a few goodies. The grand prize was a 1-hour introductory flight in a small plane.
Guess who won?
Jennifer is the WebWorks employee who had chosen the prize and set up the flight for me. She’s a private pilot who learned here in Austin, and I told her I’d rather do it here before I left, if I could.
We extended our stay here in Weird Austin for 2 days so I could fly on Sunday at 2 PM. It was rather windy yesterday, and I was very nervous. The instructor, George, was very helpful and calm, and confident. Which only helped a little….
About 45 minutes into the flight, I started to feel nauseous. Really, really nauseous. Part of that was the ride– there were a number of updrafts and I was, simply put, scared half to death. George was very calm and reassured, though, so I should have been more at ease. I wasn’t, sad to say.
At one point, however, I couldn’t take it anymore. I had that “aura” you get when you know you’re going to lose your lunch, and I told George I needed him to take over. I spent the rest of the flight (including a bump that I’m sure George thought would mean some pretty massive cleanup in the Cessna!) with my hand over my mouth. As we were coming in, I felt a lot better, and my stomach settled down somewhere around 1800 ft.
I do believe if it had been my first flight, I would have felt so awful, I wouldn’t fly again. But since I flew 4 years ago in Watsonville, I accepted this flight as “part of the range of normal,” and yes, if the chance comes my way again, or if I ever can afford both the time and the money at the same time, I would do it again!