We're getting old, folks...

What *is* it with you guys, all hanging around with gals who don't like to
fly?

There are a variety of reasons - one of them is that the pool of gals
who =do= like to fly is very small. This reduces the chances of finding
one which whom a long term relationship will work for any given person.

There really =is= more to life than flying (although there may not be
more to life than getting high A rewarding, long term, loving
relationship consists of many many facets. When I was younger I had a
girlfriend who wasn't really interested in singing. I was (I was
singing in three choirs at the time). She happily came to my concerts
and enjoyed listening, but to have her come and sit in the alto section
while I was singing tenor just didn't do it for her. I talked to
another choir member (whose husband was actually tone-deaf - music to
him was like an intellectual puzzle of random notes) about this, and she
said that in the end it just didn't matter. Not that it mattered but
they got over it, but that it ultimately =didn't= =matter=. Marriage
and that kind of loving relationship is much bigger than music.

Well, I eventually got married, and you know what, she was right. It
just =doesn't= =matter=. There are many things much more important in
how one shares a life together.

My wife isn't too keen on flying either. When we were dating, she put
up with it. We had some good times, but it wasn't really her thing.
When we got married, she stopped flying. She didn't stop me from
flying, but she wasn't interested - she'd rather drive halfway across
the country or take a commercial jet. This plus the financial load of
starting a household pretty much meant that I also stopped flying.
What's the point of flying alone across the country, and then meeting
your wife on a commercial flight?

Well, that went on for ten years, while she went through whatever she
had to go through, and finally I just decided that I would fly again.
So I trained again at the local rent-a-wreck, got current and certified,
and found somebody with a nice plane to rent. On my first solo flight
in that plane, my wife wanted to see where the plane was. Then she
wanted to see the plane. Then she wanted to see the inside (it was
really nice - back in 01 or so it had the Garmin 430 and new leather
seats). So, she decided to come with me on that flight, and she enjoyed
playing with the passenger entertainment device (that's what I call the
moving map). She started flying again, but only on short trips, like to
Block Island, which we both enjoy and to which we can't reasonably get
to absent aviation. Little by little we got to longer trips, and in the
end she's going five hours over mountains with me. She's even taken the
pinch hitter course our club offers and landed the plane by herself
(that course has made her more involved in aviation, and therefore more
interested in the flights)

If I had to choose between her and the plane, I'd choose her in a
second. It was always that way.

Jay, you are lucky. You have a wife that likes to fly, while flying is
very important to you. But if something happened and she could no
longer fly, or was no longer willing to, how would that affect your
relationship with her, and with your Pathfinder?

Jose
--
You can choose whom to befriend, but you cannot choose whom to love.
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