Wednesday, February 08, 2006

I miss flying

Last week I attended a training course and the other attendees were all from a company that does aviation-related work. At the breaks they would talk about planes and helicopters, and swap stories about test flights and all that.
It's been several years since we moved from America to Australia, and I haven't flown at all since then (except in commercial airliners but that's not real flying). I had forgotten how much I missed it. Not just the flying, but being part of the aviation community.
The flying was so great, what an amazing feeling to see the world from a different perspective... but the friends I made and the feeling of belonging to a really tight-knit community was what I enjoyed most. Being active in the flight club, "hangar flying", washing the planes, going off to new and weird airports that we found on the map and never went to before, just to see what's there. Whenever you get 2 or more pilots together, the conversation immediately shifts to flying stories and they will be happy to talk for hours and hours.
General aviation just isn't as developed and wide-spread as it is in the USA. There are fewer airports, planes, clubs and instructors. Flying is much more expensive. In California I could get in my car and be at the airport going over my pre-flight checklist in 20 minutes. Here I'd have to drive an hour and a half to the nearest GA airport. And then there wouldn't be a whole lot of places I could fly to just for fun, or for the proverbial "$100 hamburger". It wouldn't be anywhere near $100, and there would probably not be any veggie burgers either.
It's just not the same unfortunately. Australia is a wonderful place to live, but there are certainly some things that I had to sacrifice for the privilege of living here.

No comments: