Passenger number one: Joseph. Aimee said she wanted to be first, but we hadn’t updated our wills yet, so she decided to wait. Joseph wanted to go, but he seemed to have mixed feelings; he said he was excited about it, but he didn’t really act excited. He was probably just nervous.
I got everything together and Joseph helped preflight as I explained was I was checking. We got in, I went over the rules and showed him how to work the seat belt and the door in case of an emergency.
I think I was more nervous than Joseph at first. He had his grocery bag in hand in case of involuntary you-know-what, and neither one of us really knew how he would react. As soon as we lifted off, I could tell he was relieved; that wasn’t so bad.
We took a lap in the pattern for starters and he seemed ok. Joseph said he was nervous about the landing. I’m not sure what he expected, but I tried to make it a good one to calm his nerves and my first landing with a passenger could not have been better; the tires brushed along the runway in a genuine greaser. Again, he was relieved. “That wasn’t so bad”, he said. “Not bad!? It doesn’t get any better than that!” 🙂
We took off again for another lap and he was clearly doing ok. The second landing wasn’t as good, but since he had conquered his fear, it didn’t bother him.
I wanted to go wandering around so he could see the area, but visibility was horrible; the worst I’d flown in with or without an instructor. We fly a couple miles east and then turned around. Joseph said he could see plenty far and seemed to be enjoying it, but I was getting really nervous about the poor visibility, so we landed and parked it.
It was a 0.8 hour flight after which Joseph proclaimed he wanted to go again. Good news, and he won’t be bringing the grocery bag next time.