A father, husband, business man, and pilot; he has been these things for most of his life. There is something to be said about being an aviator. It is a small group of people that take to the sky. But yet my father taking flight is something I have known my whole life; for he has always flown. Flying mostly as a means of transportation, what we took for granted as children was really a unique experience.
While most fathers loaded up the family car, my father loaded the kids in the airplane. Others flew from airports with paved runways located miles from their home; we flew from the dirt road outside ours. When returning it wasn't other airplanes we concerned ourselves with in helping my father on his approach and landing, we were on the lookout for errant cows and other obstacles on the road most favorable for the wind conditions. All the while my father was so nonchalant about the whole affair. As an adult I appreciate the gift that flying with my father gave to me. This was especially true when I became a pilot.
Early in my days as a pilot my father and I would take trips together in his airplane. In less than ideal weather conditions, my father tended to stay close to the terrain, well away from the clouds. I was inclined to fly higher, farther from the mountains. And asphalt was all I knew to land on. That is before my first trip by air to the family farm. I never did get comfortable flying an approach and landing to the dirt road. There was something about the proximity of the power lines and the narrowness of the road that made me apprehensive. I was as nervous about the dirt road as my father was about the clouds.
However, while our aviation backgrounds are different, it is truly special that my father shares aviation with me, his daughter. It is what I hold dear in my heart, alongside the love I have for my Dad.