I met Romeo

About two years ago, our friend Vince started studying for his pilot’s license. We were walking our dogs when I said,  “I’ll go up with you when you get it.”

Well, he got his license about two months ago, and Romeo is the plane he flies.

So I went up with Vince in Romeo this weekend. On a Sunday morning, I got up at 6:15 because of something I said, mostly without thinking, two years ago.

That’s the kind of person I am.

For better or worse.

I had no idea how small an airplane could be.

This is how Vince gets Romeo the rest of the way out of the hangar.

He picks up the tail and pushes. You’ll notice he’s not pushing very hard, either.

Here’s the interior:

This is all the space there was for the two of us. It was smaller than any car I’ve ever ridden in. This made me plotz a little bit, but I kept it to myself. I wasn’t able to keep all my plotzing private, but that part comes later.

There was, technically speaking, a bench seat for two more people  behind us. If they were midgets with anorexia.

You’ll notice there are two sets of controls. One on the left for Vince and one on the right for me. He gave me very careful instructions about what to do with the controls on my side. Right here, he’s saying, “Don’t touch anything.”

Shortly after this, we both actually got in the plane and Vince gave me the rest of my instructions.

In addition to the hard, hard task of not  touching anything on my side of the dashboard,  if we were headed for an “unanticipated landing,” I should unlock and open my door a little bit. This would make retrieving my corpse easier. (He didn’t need to say that part; I knew what he meant.)

Then he handed me the map and told me I was the navigator.

Stay tuned.

Tagged as: adventure, travel