A zillion years ago I decided to learn to fly, and took a course that involved ground school and flights in Cessna 150s. Every flight cost a week's salary — I was making $55 a week.
I found out soon enough that flying was not for me. I could slip the surely bonds of Earth and dance the skies on laughter-silvered wings — if the carburettor didn't freeze — but I'd kiss the ground every time I returned to it. I could never have been any more than a hack — safe, probably, but never doing more than a workmanlike job. I stuck it out until I soloed, then walked away.
ABD probably has seen too many of that kind of pilot who stayed with it. But I've never regretted learning to fly, because I had always wanted to, and if I never had, I would still be wondering.
I had no instinctive feel of an aircraft, and I knew I never would because even then I could compare it to my abilities driving a car, which, corny as it sounds, does become an extension of myself — any car does, though I prefer those with rear-wheel drive and standard transmissions. Driving a car is like slipping on a glove. Cars do what I want them to — mostly — before I tell them what to do. A plane never would. Motorcycles don't, either.
Trucks are like cars to me, though the bigger they are the less one can or should do in attempting to take advantage of any "natural" ability — for lack of a better term — to pull an iron out of the fire — that is when it isn't your fault the iron is there. A good driver wouldn't put himself in that spot in the first place. This, I don't doubt, is the case with anything that flies.
Five-cent philosophical rant: A natural ability at anything and the confidence it engenders — playing pro ball, for instance (though I'm not saying this was the case with Cory Lidle, just that the possibility exists) — doesn't extend automatically to anything else. Maybe it was obvious to me because I could compare one mechanical contrivance with another. My flying lessons taught me a lot, though piloting an aircraft was the least of it.
Too bad I forgot it when I tried skydiving. Oh, God, that hurt. Ha ha ha ha ha.
