“They say the coldest place in the world is an airplane hangar in winter.”
A sharp wind whistled through the hangars and stung my face. I laughed. The flight instructor was right.
The sun was just glinting through an opening in the silver clouds as I climbed into Tim’s Diamond DA-40 and he pulled the globe-like top down over us.
Back in October, a good friend of mine had connected me with Tim, a pilot and flight instructor who owns a plane. Tim had volunteered to give me an informal flight lesson as one of my adventures, but between the weather and our schedules, we hadn’t found a good time until today.
“I’m actually a little scared of flying,” I told Tim as I buckled my seatbelt, carefully avoiding the control stick between my legs. “That’s one of my reasons for doing this.”
My casual tone belied the truth. I was terrified. Anyone who has ever had a panic attack at 30,000 feet will understand; your legs want the ground back – if only to run far away – and your mind starts telling you things are out of control.
I was already starting to feel a little shaky, but I had made up my mind when I’d gotten out of bed this morning. I didn’t care if I passed out; I was getting on this plane and staying on it.
Tim was reassuring.
“There are actually a lot of stories about people who overcame their fear of flying and went on to become pilots, or even stunt pilots,” he said.
We rumbled slowly toward the runway.
People made careers out of their worst fears?
An incoming plane soared in for a landing next to us.
These people didn’t just move toward the fear. They moved past the barrier of fear and found a whole new life. What would have happened, I wondered, if they’d never gotten on the plane?
Tim was moving the throttle forward and his voice came through my headset.
“You ready?”
“Yes,” I said, and in a flash we were tilted back, taking off toward the sky.
I had fully expected a wave of panic during the take-off, but I found myself instead engrossed in the horizon, the land fading away behind us, and the sunlit hazy sky ahead.
We took off toward the north and then Tim tilted the plane southward, opening my side to a sweeping view of the land below.
Tim pointed out landmarks; the Lebanon Correctional Institution, I-75, the little boroughs that dot northern Cincinnati. Tim pointed out the hazy outline of downtown and then showed me on the computer where its airspace started.
We were nearing Cincinnati when I confessed I needed a bathroom break.
“That’s fine,” Tim said. “We can stop and then come back up again.”
By the time we’d landed and taken a break, I jumped back in the plane and jokingly offered to handle the takeoff.
Tim laughed.
“You can take over once we get up there,” he said.
When we were back up, he told me to take my control stick and make a 360-degree turn to the left. I pulled the stick to the left and watched the ground open up beneath me as the plane tilted.
“Keep the nose up,” Tim said, which I interpreted to mean that we were helplessly nosediving. I yanked the stick toward me and felt the plane turn sharply up.
I was relieved to see that Tim’s hand was on his control stick, which was overriding mine.
“You’re fine,” he said, letting go again as we headed to the west. “It’s not going to fall out of the sky, I promise.”
By the time we made it over the line into Indiana, I’d made several 360-degree turns. I was learning to keep the tilt steady as I maintained altitude, watching the computer screen in front of me, as well as the nose and the horizon.
As we lowered altitude on the way back to the airport, the plane shook in the wind while I remained in control. That was an unnerving feeling.
Tim laughed as I steered us to the runway.
“OK. I’ll talk you through the landing. You’ll be fine,” he said.
I laughed and immediately relinquished the stick.
“Hold on to it just so you can see how it feels,” he said. Both sticks moved together as Tim steered us gently down until the plane bounced lightly onto the runway.
“One bump, but it was your first landing, so I’ll give you that,” Tim smiled.
As the plane taxied back to the hangar, I thought about how many people are afraid of flying, and about the people who overcame it to become pilots. I tell myself this all the time, but it deserves a repeat: limiting ourselves is always a choice. We can let our lives be small, or we can tackle what scares us head-on.
I laughed. A wall of fear had disintegrated today into nothing. I flew a plane to Indiana and back. I was pretty sure I could do anything.