Remember, with personal flying, it's the journey, not the
destination, that is important. Once you understand that, getting there
isn't so important, and the stress simply evaporates.


Exactly! Remember though, that when you accept the above as the reason
for making the trip, you no longer are using the airplane as a "utility"
for transportation. The fact that you are traveling is now incidental.
You are really going out to enjoy what you encounter during the flight,
and not just trying to get somewhere specifically.

When we started out, we had the silly notion that the plane was going to
be a faster car that could take us to specific places we wanted to go
(farther away). As you said, you will be happier if you accept that the
place you started out going to may not be where you end up.

But the public contemplating flight does not handle "adventure" well. In
this world where people are afraid of every little thing, the flight
schools battle the "dangerous little airplane" syndrome. Their defense
it often to sell the airplane as a safe tool for serious transportation.

I think some of this stems from people who genuinely WANT to fly needing
some sort of sane reason to justify the time and expense. When the plane
is proposed as a transportation tool, these folks tend to focus on that.
In doing so, they lose the real value (as you stated above) in merely
FLYING.

Mike