Flyboys

As much as the news networks are questioning whether the late New York Yankee Cory Lidle should’ve been reconnoitering over Manhattan’s airspace, Lidle, in all his interviews on the subject, was right: Flying a plane is an utterly exhilarating experience. I only did it once, two decades back, but the memory remains vivid to this day.

I did it in my early 20s in Texas, as part of a fairly inexpensive Learning Annex course. There was an evening spent in armchairs discussing a whole lot of (for me, at least) intellectually insurmountable physics, which I can’t vouch that many in the class paid a whole lot of attention to, but it was followed by what everyone paid their money for: the chance to sit in a small plane’s cockpit for 45 minutes and traverse Dallas/Arlington/Fort Worth’s airspace.

My instructor was in charge of the plane, obviously, but once we were in the air (back then, at least, you manipulated your vessel on the ground with your feet, not with your steering wheel, which was vaguely disorienting while taxiing the runway), he relinquished control of the plane to me for some of the most purely fun minutes of my life. Soaring over the local traffic, the inevitable gridlock, while drinking in what was a gorgeous view of even the dreary Texas flatlands – the Dallas skyline looming ahead of us; Texas Stadium and Six Flags beneath us – well, it literally puts you on top of your world. My instructor even cut our plane’s engines for a brief time, putting us in a mild free-fall; it felt like the safest daredevil stunt you could ever attempt. Ostensibly putting your life on the line, you were as safe and as feeling as comfortable as nominal “danger� could ever make you feel. Soaring over Manhattan, as Lidle was, would be even more breathtaking.

In the ’80s, a mere two grand could garner one a pilot’s license, but I was cash-strapped at the time and couldn’t even make that commitment. Once I could afford it, the price had elevated exponentially, so yet again I couldn’t afford it. Funny, that; yet just as well: Who needs me blithely fluttering about the skies of L.A.? Well, OK; since John Denver is gone, at least you’d be guaranteed no dogfights.