Intro: I’m going to start a 31 day writing challenge with this blog. Off-track is explained in a quote I read from Anthony Robbins prior to this adventure beginning, that an airliner is off-track 95% of the time, hence if we fail, we shouldn’t beat ourselves up, every time we are off track, it’s a chance to correct, or improve, as long as we are moving towards our goal, we are succeeding. And sometimes we may need to divert, but, as with an airliner, a diversion is not a failure, the only time an airliner fails is when the number of successful takeoffs exceed the number of successful landings. With this in mind, I’m going to blog about some of the happiest days of my life: the journey from home to Africa, to follow my dream of flying to wherever it would take me, and to fulfil my greatest hopes of becoming a Safari pilot, and airline pilot.
The adventure began on the day I first started working. This was the day I began following my dream of becoming a pilot. Many people ask me what it takes to become a pilot. The answer is, primarily desire. Secondarily a degree of basic ability, however the ability is something most average people have, like most things it’s not terribly difficult if you study hard and are committed 100% to being the best you can at what you are doing.
I was never sure if I ‘had what it took’ since I had no family in aviation, I knew absolutely nothing about it really, except that I had a burning desire to fly. My first job was the ticket to begin. It was 1992, and I was 17 at the time, I was finishing high school by correspondence, since the flexibility suited me much better. I’d decided I wanted to fly, and the airforce required 4 subjects in year 11, so that is what I was taking, and this allowed me to get a full time job. My first pay cheque was around 150 dollars for a weeks work as a waitress/kitchen hand. I was excited, and I’d already been phoning around to find out about trial flights, my aim for the hard earned cash.
I don’t feel old, since beginning flying I feel I’ve managed to live a life relatively free doing absolutely everything that I loved, but I’m going to sound old now, as I report, we didn’t have internet back then. I’d heard some adverts on the radio, and looked up the old fashioned hard copy ‘yellow pages’ and phoned around to arrange a trial flight.
At this point I’d sort of found out that flying lessons were best taken weekly, and cost around 135 dollars an hour, which was a large chunk of my pay cheque for sure if I was going to make weekly.
But, I made a plan. I moved back home, Mum and Dad helped tremendously with free board and food, and cut down on all my expenses. I even recall a time I was counting on a petrol station promotion of free cheeseburgers to get through the weeks (I was a vegetarian so these were actually free buns with cheese and tomato sauce, alas). I needed petrol to get to the airport, but any food during the day not packed from home was a bonus, and days were long.
It took me two years to get my private license. A promotion of jobs, an internship as a mechanical engineer combined, I passed the first stage, but failed the second stage of my airforce interview (they only took one of the twelve, it was tough, but the experience was awesome). Another two years and a lot of hard work later I had a commercial license.
Many of my instructors asked me what I wanted to do with my license and my answer was, -I’ll keep going til I run out of money or I stop enjoying it. I was quite under confident, and afraid I would not make it so did not have any grand plans, also I knew a commercial was just the beginning. However from barely being able to afford flying lessons to getting a professional license, I was somewhat proud, and we celebrated in style that night.
This is not the adventure, however, the adventure was the next step: African Safari pilot. An image I’d had in my mind for a long time, but was afraid to share, was being a bush pilot in Africa. I imagined all the animals and the african plains, and it just felt like something I so wanted to do. That is my adventure. And the commercial license, self-funded, and completely paid off now at 21, hard worked for and well deserved, was a beginning.
I learnt a great deal from this time. I learnt about hard work, I’d taken on extra jobs to pay for lessons, and still passed all my college and flying exams. I’d learnt about managing money on a budget, by the time I was 21 I’d spent around 50,000 dollars on my licenses, and I was extremely proud to get to that point, without debt. But now onto the next step – trying to get a job. I was so bitten by the bug, I couldn’t handle not being able to fly.