Peter R. wrote:

On 5/11/2007 2:26:52 PM, Ron Hardin wrote:

I have 1200 hours, from many years of flying, age 16 to 30, when
I gave it up out of boredom.

Two words: Angel Flight

Many have expressed that volunteering for Angel Flight has reinvigorated the
excitement of flying.

--
Peter

In other words, in fact, mostly it becomes pointless, particularly when compared with
other uses for your time.

Points of contact between actual flying and what the childhood idea of it is, are
very few ; occasionally they meet again, but very infrequently, and in ways hard to
repeat.

Setting some goal is a help in maintaining interest. In my own case, I got really,
really good at gusty crosswind landings, and incredibly steep slip-to-landing approaches
when that wasn't available. But you run out of things you can perfect without killing
yourself, eventually.

Ham radio operators have the same burnout. The surviving ones often imagine themselves
serving in some vastly important communications role, which is hard for me to imagine but
they convince themselves, which is all that counts, I guess.

I happened to find that long distance bike riding was a better use of weekend time -
after a couple hundred miles on a weekend, which was typical, you actually feel you've
been somewhere.

Adding things up, I've accumulated about 100,000 miles flying and 300,000 miles biking.
The biking has a sort of build-in goal that you can commute to work with it, and do
every chore, just about, as well.

Hmm.. http://home.att.net/~rhhardin4/odyssy9.jpg

--
Ron Hardin


On the internet, nobody knows you're a jerk.