This post has been procrastinated for several weeks, and so it is guaranteed to be overlong — just a warning. To me, even the very idea of what I’m writing is staggering: I’m learning to fly! Let me provide a spoiler and say that I’ve currently logged 5.7 hours of lessons, but I’m going to start from the beginning, and will then try to stay up-to-date.

I’ve had an obsession with flight for as long as I can remember — as a kid, I wore out the tape in the space camp promotional VHS tape, flew flight simulators on every computer I owned, and loved trips to the Air and Space Museum. I explored flight training when I was nearing graduation from high school, but I ended up taking a different direction.

The day before I graduated from college, my friend Graham invited me and my buddy Zambo to see a few of his dad’s old planes. After gawking for an hour, and taking turns sitting in a P-52, Zambo and I talked ourselves into a flight in a T-6 Texan, which immediately became one of my top 5 college experiences. Nowadays, even a normal airline flight is still a thrill — something no amount of security overload or ticketing confusion can squelch.

This past summer, I had a chance to talk to my uncle, a helicopter pilot in the National Guard, and my grandfather, who learned to fly in ROTC, about their experiences. A few hours of their stories, (including one where my grandfather took my grandmother for a flight that dipped a bit close to a Ferris wheel) rejuvenated the dream. But even at that point, I was still thinking of flying as a pie-in-the-sky, “someday I’ll do it,” idea.

For Christmas, my parents gave me the starter kit to flight lessons: a discovery flight, and a few hours to get me started. It was just the motivation I needed, even though flying has always been something I’ve wanted to do, actually getting started always seemed “too big.” Even when I had the lessons, I ended up putting off my first flight for several, weeks — the idea of being so close to something so big was just intimidating!

I began by scheduling a “discovery flight,” with the Michigan Flyers, a non-profit flying club with a few Cessna 152s and 172s, based here in Ann Arbor. A discovery flight is offered by nearly every flight club out there, and is something I’d encourage everybody to try. For mine, I paid $60, which is approximately the club’s cost of renting a plane for 45 minutes. The instructor, Will, volunteered his time.

I found out that I got to hop in the left-hand pilot’s seat, and for nearly all of the taxi and takeoff, Will was explaining the gauges, procedures, etc. One of the most remarkable things about learning to fly is the smallness and lightness of the planes. This discovery flight was in a Cessna 152: a 2-seater plane built in 1980, weighing in around 1,000lbs with a 108 HP engine. Pushing it around on the ground, feeling the light aluminum frame, and climbing in, I’m constantly astounded that such a machine will soon be thousands of feet in the air. To me, that’s one of the most beguiling aspects of general aviation — that one doesn’t need jet engines or big airframes — only the nimble Cessnas and Pipers.

Will took us north over Ann Arbor, dipping the wing for a better view of downtown Ann Arbor, Michigan Stadium, and my house. A few minutes later, we were in a practice area north of the city, where I was thrilled to have a chance to try a few turns and climbs for myself. I began to realize why learning to fly was such a long process. Even the simplest turn requires many coordinated control inputs, as well as watching several gauges, the sky and the ground. I’m not uncomfortable with multitasking, but it’s much more difficult when each item being multitasked is also being learned! I’ve heard many pilots describe the process as getting information from a firehose, which seems pretty accurate — or maybe an understatement.

20 minutes later, we were returning to the airport for a flawless landing. It was a bit gusty that day, and I was learning how such a small plane feels in the sky. Unlike a jetliner that groans, creaks and shudders with the wind, this plane simply goes where the wind pushes it. Which could be more or less unnerving, depending on how you look at it.

Needless to say, I was hooked, and I now have six lessons and (a meager) 5.7 hours under my belt. I’ll be writing a new post covering the lessons that I’ve had so far, but an adventure like this needs an introduction. In some ways, I’ve been hesitant to write about it — it’s something that I get so excited about, but is so personal, I wonder if I’ll be able to effectively convey the thrill. I’ve been quite inspired by podcasts and articles from other student pilots (especially Bill Williams’ Student Pilot Cast), and I know that I should document the process. Hope you’ll stay tuned for the adventure!