In order to understand anything in life, we have to look to it's origins - where it all started. For me, my love for flying started at an early age when I was fascinated by planes as I traveled to and from Ft. Lauderdale every winter and/or spring to visit my great grandmother. I can vividly remember days at Chicago's Midway Airport traveling on ATA 757's to and from South Florida, and my parents always let me have the window seat. I even specifically remember not liking the fact that we were on a 737 instead of a 757 because I liked the way that the 75 looked...
Surprisingly, not much has changed in the 16 or so years since my first flight (that I remember at least), as I still fly out of Midway, albeit on Southwest 737's instead of ATA's, and I always always have to get the window seat. Heck, I'll still take the chance to ride on the soon-to-be-retired 757 over the commonplace 737 any day of the week.
From there, I would always ask for little toy planes as Christmas or birthday gifts...or whenever. For some reason, I found a lot of joy in being able to hold the scale models in my hand and make those WHOOSH noises as I contorted my arm around and "flew" the plane.
Building small planes out of Legos was something else that I enjoyed - they were pretty good ones for a second/third grader if I do say so myself. I know I took pictures of a few of them somewhere along the way with my dad's camera, but they have yet to surface around the house. Thankfully.
Next came Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 - the one thing that really got me interested in possibly being a pilot as a career. I got the game about the time I was in fourth grade and played it as often as I possibly could. Many of my landings/takeoffs were unrealistic and some of the maneuvers performed would likely result in immediate license revocation and possibly death in the real world, but the fact that I was behind the almost-entirely-accurate controls of a virtual plane with real cities and airports was incredibly captivating.
I went on like this for the next few years until my computer broke and the disk was unrecoverable from the ancient desktop computer. I remember I was crushed but I remember moving on fairly quickly as well. A few years later down the road in grade school, Nike's shoes and products really started to interest me. Being a shoe designer/product test engineer for them was a dream of mine all the way up until my senior year of high school. It was halfway through my senior year in high school that things started changing... **cliffhanger**
That's where I'll leave it for now...more to come in the next post!
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