Page 24 - Twin & Turbine January 2018

22 • TWIN & TURBINE January 2018
over the PA on the plane) or on purpose, and I try to never repeat them. When I do make one, the Mickey song pops into my head and I feel a humbling, reflective and head-shaking sense of disappointment. You may even hear me, in a submissive and apologetic moment of Orwellian double-think, hum the Mickey song and say, Kevin you moron.
“Up, Up and Away”
Rocky Mountain Propellers Inc. Sixth Page
B/W Ad
www.rockyprop.com mailto:rockyprop@rockyprop.com
A mile of road will take you a mile.
A mile of runway will take you anywhere. Author Unknown
Pilots are by nature an intelligent, independent and free-spirited bunch. An Orwellian existence rubs us the wrong way. The morons and dips in our group are extremely sparse, and if any segment of society can recognize the trade-off between licensing, monitoring and freedom, it’s us. We recognize the value of professionalism, accuracy, relationships, careers, hobbies, the freedom of flying and the use of proper grammar in a sentence, often to a fault. We voluntarily submit to a long list of regulatory controls and ID verification in order to facilitate our ability to ride our motorcycle to the airport with our concealed pistol, fly to just about anywhere on the planet and partake in almost any activity that our hearts desire.
Whether in a beautiful balloon or airplane, on the water with a fishing pole, in the woods hunting or camping or on a secluded ski slope or golf course, it’s one of the reasons we became pilots: the freedom to get up, up and away. We enjoy engaging our surroundings unmonitored, unsupervised, oftentimes even unobserved. Most of us still enjoy both the up and the away parts of aviation. But for some it’s more the up, and for some it’s more the away.
After a career of interacting with 400 people every day, a few of them badly in need of that Mickey song, I still enjoy the up part while at work and in the Duke. However, the away part is becoming appealing. The up part, looking down on the world, has a very different meaning and implication than the common
The 5th Dimension, 1967
Janitrol Aero 1/3 Page Square 4/C Ad
www.janitrol.aero/SouthWind