Yes - I’m a little late on this week’s shows but I promise you I have a really good excuse.

After 7 months, and 55 hours of flying it came down to spending the entire Memorial Day Weekend flying and cramming for my FAA Private Pilot exam.  In the words of Stephen Covey, this little flying goal of mine became the “important” focus.  Everything else needed to wait.

So, after a long weekend and a sleepless night, I met the examiner at 8 AM this morning at the flight school.  After a short Oral exam he decided to do the rest in the airplane and off we went. 

You never know how these things will go.  Sometimes they chat for 3 hours and fly for one.  In my case, it was the other way around.

Ken, the examiner had his way with me for just over 3 hours in the air. 

He ran me through everything he could think of until my head exploded and then asked me to clean up the mess and take him somewhere else.

I flew to 4 different airports - none of which I have visited before.  I flew in haze and even landed on a real grass landing strip somewhere out in the country – something I’ve never done.

I flew “under the hood” and couldn’t see a thing in front of me expect me instruments.

I steep turned at a 45 degree angle, stalled, flew flap-less and on final approach into Orlando-Sanford Airport, he cut the power and said, “now what are you going to do?”. Of course, I landed.

Arriving back at the flight school the examiner continued to complain about everything I did wrong, all the while filling out the certificate that makes me a Certified Private Pilot. 

I only found out I passed when other pilots started congratulating me.

I’ve said before, learning to fly is one of the single hardest and scariest things I’ve ever learned to do.  Today was no different – then again, it was.

When I began I would quickly get frustrated and overwhelmed.  Many times the instructor needed to step in and give me a hand – usually saying something like “What the heck are you doing”!  He certainly saved me more times than I can remember until I learned to get it right.  And slowly, I did learn to get it right.

To get here, I’ve spent hundreds of hours in study and ground school, flown 36 times and landed over 150 times.  I’ve spent over $8,000, flown day and night and spent countless hours trying to get it right all with a single goal in mind – to become a pilot.

When I began flying, it was as simple as that – a goal. 

In truth, I never really understood what it was going to take and how hard it was really going to be.  And it was hard.  It was also thrilling.

So today I became a Private Pilot.  My first phone call went to my Mother.  Mom’s understand things like this.  But in my case, it’s really true because over 60 years ago my Mother became the youngest woman ever to solo an airplane when she was just 15 flying the skies of Wilmington, North Carolina.  She never received her license but has relived her journey in weekly progress calls from me. 

So here we are, 7 months after envisioning an outcome and setting a goal.  Then the magic formula kicked in.

I stood up, took a step and repeated no matter how difficult it was until I got what I wanted.  Funny… today the world it seems just became a smaller place.

Told you I had a good excuse.  I’ll post the new show tomorrow morning.