I got to fly today.

Well I got to fly in the Bonanza today. It started off pretty much like a normal work day. Same old crap. At about 7 we were moving airplanes and Ben came up looking for someone to go along on a quick test flight to check if one of the instruments was working. Jason wanted to go pretty bad but he told me to go since I have never flown in a small plane before and Jason has done it in the past. Some of the other guys didn’t want to go and I think others have done it before. We jumped in and took off. The first time around we did a sort of figure eight over Memorial Stadium, my apartment and over the rest of Lincoln. During this time Ben let me fly the plane. Let me tell you I was nervous as hell becuase I didn’t really know what the hell I was doing. I had a white knuckle grip on the controls trying to pay attention to what he was telling me about the insturments and what they should be reading. After the figure eight Ben flew back into the airport and did a quick touch and go so show me how a landing is supposed to go. We then took back off and he let me make the loop back around to land and put it away. He asked me if I wanted to land. My survival instinct was saying “HELL NO! YOU DON’T KNOW HOW TO LAND A PLANE” but my mouth said “yea I guess”. He handled all the throttle stuff and talking to the tower and I for the most part flew it in to land. I know he gave a few nudges to the controls to get me back where I needed to be, how many I don’t know because I had a freaking death grip on the controls trying not to mess it up and my brain was going “holycrapholycrapholycrapholycrapholycrap…”, or something like that. It was a nice landing. It was pretty neat. I think I could be able to fly pretty well once the newness was over and I got a feel for what the plane was going to do and I relaxed a little. It didn’t seem that hard to fly really. Thanks to Ben for the quick trip and Jason for letting me take his spot. Sorry for the crappy quality of the pictures, all I had was the camera phone.