Gezellig wrote:
Last Friday, I went up for an introductory flight lesson out of the San
Carlos airport. WOW!!!!!! I have been dreaming about learning to fly
since I was in my teens. All the time I was in the air the lines of
that famous poem kept going through my head "Oh, I have slipped the
surly bonds of Earth.........". When we landed (I didn't want to ever
come down :-)) the instructor asked me if I thought I would be
interested in flying and I told him that wild horses couldn't stop me
now and proceeded to sign-up for two flight days the following week. I
had my second flight day, this afternoon, practicing a variety of turns
while maintaining (or making attempts to) altitude.

One question I had for the instructors out there - what I seemed to find
more awkward than anything was steering the nose wheel using my feet on
the rudder pedals. The people in the control tower must have thought I
looked like a wounded bird taxing out to hold position before takeoff.
Is there some 'trick' to getting the hang of this, so often I would be
tempted to reach up and turn the control yoke but resisted the
temptation (due to its futility).

Once again, thank you all for your posts on this newsgroup. I finally
just made myself go out and start. I fly again, on Friday and will keep
you posted. Meanwhile I am going to pour over some of the aviation
training books to review some of the things I learned today. Just
starting out, but I am so excited!
My instructor made me put my left hand on my knee for the first lessons
to get the hang of it. You will have to be carefull when you get into
doing landings in gusty conditions, you might find yourself going back
steering with your hands when under a bit of stress.

James.