My Flight Dream

As a 6-9 year old kid, I had always been looking to possessing a supernatural power and use it for the good of the world. Mainly that power would be in the form of being able to take big jumps effortlessly and kick ass those who are evil. I also had dreams of flying in a prone position, or typically in a superman style with hands forward, I wasn't keen on flying a big iceburg but the idea of leaving the ground and watching the neighbourhood get smaller and smaller was tremendously exhilarating. I was also attracted to those kids TV cartoons that included flight actions within (which they mostly did). However, that developped into a bad habbit of hunting down birds either with a pump-action shotgun or with a trap cage, prooving my superiority over the bird's world and at the same time feeding my curiosity by having a closer look at birds' aerodynamic bodies. So that counts as my first invasion of birds' privacy.

Later on when I turned 10, I took up cycling as a main aero-ground activity, I mean not just for the ability of traveling fast but also for the feel of the wind in my face and the sound it makes in my ears as I go quicker down the hill. I took my little sister on a tandem ride once where I lost control over the bike and and we both fell over with her breaking her front teeth, shame on me!! I do feel guilty about it but that was my the first and last tandem passenger I took with me uptil now and I hope I can make a better example of a tandem pilot later on. I had to find out other ways of getting real airborn on that stupid pusher bike, so I drifted to cycling on dirt humps, ramps, ditches and banks, pulling on as much speed as possible to make that hell of a big jump which was a few moments of airtime, I wished if that could last a bit longer but it just made my dream of flying become more and more intense with time.

I also started dreaming when I am asleep of flying like a cricket and landing on top of power poles, buildings, or doing a whole mounting in one go; these type of dreams where exceptionally appealing to me and had their own unique taste, which is not different than the taste of a real flight.

I had to put cycling down on hold for a fair while but nevertheless the dream of flying never stopped chasing me, whether in my sleeping dreams, or when I am left baffled by a passing aircraft up high in the sky, or even by birds sometimes when they stop flapping their wings and just glide through the air. I still do get the same bafflement up till this very moment, I can't help it.

In fact I don't care if I'm the only one walking in a crowd and stupidly looking upwards at a passing aircraft or a big puffy cloud pointing a strong thermal lift underneath it, I just can't help not looking at all.

And how do I know that I am such a hopeless flying nut? When you see me arguing at airport check-in points and insisting on having the window seat, sticking my head right through the window during take off and landing, or even during the flight; ofcoarse thinking why don't we have the same view as the pilots' do have at the front, "lucky bastards!"

I also remember once that I saw a helicopter takeoff about a 100 metres away from me and it occupied my thoughts for a fair while, I'd be talking weeks.

The flight dream got a bit distorted when I became a teenager, generally its a period of no particular interest except those commonalities between a bunsh of crazy teenagers. Nevertheless, I had proven to so many people my willingness to go to the extreme seeking thrill even if that meant that I am taking too much risk; which is that I enjoyed somehow. And thats the real me. I feel that I am enjoying life when I am bidding on it, the feeling that you have just passed a life threatening challenge gave that bit of ecstatic feeling that makes my mind racing and my head becoming all over the place. Oh I forgot to say what was it, it was car driving, but in my own twisted way. I even managed to get the car on two wheels for a second once.

Well these things do give me a satisfying answer as to what made me come out as a pilot from a whole heap of a pilot wannabes crowd. Its us who cast our own lives, and there is a rule of attraction that affects our lives. I believe that if we keep thinking on something we are charging our personal atmosphere to attract those incidents that coincide with our aspirations. Some people fall into a habbit of calling these occurences as coincidences, I call them spot on. How many times we thought of an old friend that we haven't seen for so long and it happens at that time they give us a call or send us a message. Even when we are walk down the road we seem to drift towards the side we look at. Its target fixiation. Amazing.

I've heard about a statistic once been conducted among school kids aged from 5-9, it turned out that more than two thirds wanted to become doctors, nurses, lawyers and etc. The balance went for those who wanted to step into aviation. At that stage I had the dream of becoming a jet fighter pilot, flying over my home town and filling the sky with my engines rumbling sound.

Life had to go through its turns and bends with me, some were tight others were broad, my love for flight has never slowed down. I might have drifted away from flying a fair few times but that did not wipe off the triggers I had, the sight of an aircraft, a soaring bird and things like that would get me greatly absorbed in.

That was pretty much the case until I met with a Norwegian bloke who spotted my enthusiasm about flying and he told me about his brother who flies hang gliders, and that was the moment that I was greatly mesmerized, and I asked myself a few questions like "its gotta be a damn coll thing those people do" and "how possibly could someone fly without an engine, how far could they get". Due to prevailing circumstances at that time I wasn't able to put my dream into action straight off but nevertheless I never exempted the idea of doing it one day.

First Blog

It is exactly 9:00PM Wednesday the 11th of October 2006, and I see myself writing my FIRST BLOG online (a few months back I didn't know what the hell that means). The main reason behind this is a nagging desire arising from the need to have a record of my personal achievements and what needs to be done in the future, it helps in doing a proper self assessment kind of thing when we don't really have much time to do that. So here we go.

I liked the years 2005 and 2006 so much that I was able to get done with most of my dreams, including childhood ones. And thats why I find myself having to write this down.