Day 7

We got Dad home today! he didn't need any pain meds in the hospital, and he has quite an appetite.

Well, I believe Alyssa would be a great pilot also! Jessica brought up a good point about the comparison of how I would of scored when I was a new pilot compared to now. The scores would definitely of been different. Now I scored fairly high on the Invulnerability and anti-authority, well, I think they were in the high 20's, with Macho coming next and impulsive and resignation being very low. The purpose of getting the pilots to see how they score isn't to have them correct their attitudes so they will score all zeros the next week, but rather for them to recognize when the high scoring attitudes rear their heads and then correct them.

I believe that early on in my flying days, and I mean really early on, like before I was 20 y.o, I probably scored really high in the invulnerability column. But after my first 9 months flying in Bethel and having 3 of my fellow pilots die in some pretty ugly crashes, I started taming that attitude. I thought of a story that actually involved a friend of mine that gives a good example of the invulnerability that both he and I experienced in our youthful enthusiasm for flying:

My friend that worked at Henley Aerodrome with me was named Rob Cheeley, Rob was a year or two older than me and we got along very well, he had gone to Alaska one summer and worked in a logging camp and he helped fuel my enthusiasm to go to Alaska. One day Rob was on the ramp visiting with an older guy that was kind of an odd duck who had a little homebuilt airplane called a Smith Termite. It was made almost all of wood, it was a high wing single seat tailwheel airplane with a small 65 hp engine. I had been warned, as Rob had, that the aircraft probably wasn't built real well, and we should not get involved in it. Well, Rob was talking to the owner and pretty soon, Rob was obviously getting ready to fly it.

After Rob was in the open cockpit and about ready to have someone start it for him, he motioned for to me to come over, he wanted to talk to me. When I got over he made sure the owner couldn't hear him and then he asked me: " How do you do a loop?" he then explained that the owner wanted to know if his little airplane could do any aerobatics and Rob had convinced him that he was experienced at such things and could go try it out for him! I gave him a 30 second description of how to do a proper loop in an underpowered airplane, reminded him about doubts as to how well the aircraft was built, then gave him a prop ( that means I went out and manually spun his prop so it would start, the common way to start an airplane with no electrical starter). Rob went on his flight, came back in one piece, and told me he had accomplished the loop, although it didn't sound very pretty!

If something had wings and fuel, there wasn't much reason not to fly it! Rob became a Christian, got married to a Hawaiian girl, became a doctor, and started a medical ministry in remote China! I believe if you google his name you can find out about it. Sounds like he is accomplishing a lot of good!