You Always Remember Your First (Trip) … A Return to Travel — II
Airline: Eastern Airlines MIAFLLMIA 22SEP
Pilot: Solo: 16 years, 6 weeks
Hot-Air Balloon: Napa
Cruise: Barcelona
River Cruise: Amsterdam
Overnight Train: Shanghai, Beijing to Lhasa
I started traveling shortly after I was born.
The story is that my father was serving the US Coast Guard in the U.S. at the time and due to return overseas for his next assignment. My mother was six months pregnant (with me) and not about to travel. At that time, military members traveled either by ship or propeller planes, or both, that could take a week or longer even with good connections (that must’ve been something to write home about). My mother, father, brother, sister and I traveled to Greece a couple of months after I was born.
During my travels of late, I’ve met people born into rich lifestyles and those born into families of exceptional talent. I spoke with people who made a significant lives out of poverty and those who ruined lives of great potential (although ruined seems too finite). There are some who find their gift regardless of how they are raised, and that gift becomes their life for the betterment of themselves and others.
There are those who would say we choose our life. To others, we make best with the cards that life deals us. Still others would have it that we live as the hand of fate predestines us. Perhaps chance and luck play a part. Somewhere along the way, we meet with the results of choices we made.
My family, including two additional brothers born in Greece, returned to the US and my father retired from the Coast Guard.
And, years later, I met a plane.
The first flight I remembered, I took when I was 13, was in a Cessna named 9G through a school friend whose father owned a flight school. The smell of airplane fuel, the walking around the plane, the cramped space inside, the bouncing around while we taxied, communicating with the control tower, the line up and take off was not what a seventh grader could fathom. But, I met a plane.
When I was 15, I took my first airline flight, 30 miles from Miami to Fort Lauderdale and back. Taking the bus to the airport, walking to the ticket counter to buy my ticket, walking to the gate, ticket in the ticket jacket with a seat number written on the outside by a magic marker. The smell of airplane seats and smoking on board, the window seat, taxiing, takeoff, landing and all over again on the return.
When I got home, my parents asked me what I did that day. “Uh, nothing.”
I’m sure, that night, I dreamt about meeting a plane.
Shortly thereafter, I started flying lessons (yes, at 15). I made my first flight alone at 16. The instructor somehow put a rubber band around the microphone just in case I got into trouble. After we took off, I looked out the window and exclaimed, “I’m really flying alone!” The control tower guy asked if I was OK. I undid the rubber band. I was flying by myself before I had a driving license. I met a plane.
My next flight would be to San Antonio for Air Force training, and on to Japan where I lived for 3 years. I flew on Air Force military cargo planes around the Pacific, then for my last year in the military, flew on Navy planes. Each plane was a new meeting, a new adventure.
A few years later, I met Gabe, a hot-air balloon pilot. Gabe flies tourists around Napa Valley. When I asked him how he came to be a hot-air balloon pilot, he told me that as a kid he woke early to watch the balloons fly over his house. He ran after them as far as he could. As a teen he became a ‘chaser,’ securing the balloon after it landed. He learned to deflate the balloon and meticulously put the balloon and basket in the trailer. A few years later, he earned his certificate and became a pilot.
Gabe told me his story while we were flying over a small town. Looking down, I saw a boy pointing up, squinting and running to follow us.
I met a hot-air balloon.
I’ve learned that dreams find us in different ways, and we get to choose if we follow them.
Travel seemed to find me.
I followed.
Jim
See you on the road!
