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Baseball is 90% mental; the other half is physical. – Yogi Berra From the Flight Deck Don’t Quote Me Pilots and ballplayers: If you say it, they will listen. by Kevin R. Dingman Flying may often require a modi- cum of depth perception and oc- casional Jedi-like ref lexes and hand-eye coordination, but usually it’s 90 percent mental; the other half is physical. Some mountain-moving strength might be needed in getting the airplane out of the hangar and into starting position, but once in f light, there would have to be ugly turbulence or a brisk crosswind during takeoff or landing for us to get physical. Unless that is, our copilot has frozen up, and we have multiple system failures. Nor- mally, however, on any given flight, we have lots of time to meditate. The gull sees farthest who flies highest. –Richard Bach Typically, pilots anticipate and al- leviate, plan and plot, estimate and guesstimate, check and crosscheck, brief and debrief. But once at cruise, we often contemplate. Sometimes our minds theorize, hypothesize and philosophize. And it’s during these existential moments that the philoso- phies of pilots, ballplayers, even (gasp) politicians, can be virtuous words to live by (even if their fuzzy math doesn’t permit the percentages to populate properly). So, what do these 20th and 21st-century prophets have to say about the true meaning of f light? You can observe a lot by watching. – Yogi Berra I had to explain to my editor that this article would arrive late. Because, like ancient relics or modern-day petroglyphs chiseled onto the media of our times, these virtuous words to live by took hours, days, even months, to delicately and selectively excavate from the modern-day archeological library: the internet. Such disciplined research certainly shouldn’t be held to a deadline. But now, and finally, thanks to the painstaking and tireless research of this Indiana Jones-like T &T writer, we can pursue enlighten- ment vicariously through their pearls of wisdom. Let’s begin with the over- riding philosophy of our job as PIC. The one that has been pounded into all of our pilot-y brains since the beginning. Taildragger pilots emphasize it by say- ing, “Fly it until it’s tied down.” It’s the adage in which we are reminded to aviate, navigate and then communi- cate – fly the airplane first and to keep f lying it until it stops moving. You do what you can for as long as you can, and when you finally can't, you do the next best thing. You back up but you don't give up. –Chuck Yeager If you’re faced with a forced landing, fly the thing as far into the crash as possible. – Bob Hoover It ain’t over till it’s over. – Yogi Berra Of course, what would our philo- sophical discussion be without ac- knowledging the monetary component of our passion. When asked how much money flying takes: Why, all of it! –Gordon Baxter A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore. – Yogi Berra In previous columns we’ve talked about our pleasure, passion and even love of flying. These next quotes re- mind us that not all of us had a straight or smooth path into aviation. Some had to transition from another endeavor and struggle or make significant sac- rifices in order to pursue the dream of f light. And oftentimes, difficult choices had to be made because in aviation, like life, seldom does a right or a left turn put you in the same place – unless you live on a large cul-de-sac style road as Yogi did. 28 • TWIN & TURBINE / April 2020