I will never forget either one.

July 1989, Princeton, B.C.

My first solo glider flight began full of apprehension and excitement; I had had plenty of time to build up to it, because I had been told the day before that it was "time." I was ready, I was pumped, I was singing songs while rolling down the runway. I felt like I was going to explode with excitement. Everything was perfect! I even followed the towplane through a little cloud with a Yahoo! (although I really had little choice ...)

We reached release altitude without any problems, and I released. Gained a little altitude with the excess speed, settled onto downwind, turned nicely onto base, still going nuts over the whole thing! I mean, there I was, in full command of a little piece of the sky, with nobody else there to tell me what (not) to do about it! The only people anywhere were insignificant little specks on the ground, when ... all of a sudden ... I saw IT.

I looked at the right spot on the ground, and saw my shadow - a sobering reminder of the significance of this whole affair. There it was, telling me that this was not some fancy illusion or fantasy - this was for real. I was flying, with nothing holding me up but sky. It also began to tell me, as I watched it traverse the ground rapidly moving towards me, that I was now late turning onto final approach and my airspeed was too slow.

A quick glance at my airspeed indicator confirmed the latter, so I punched the nose down and rolled into a steep turn to correct the two problems. (I was later told that from the ground, because of my slow speed, it looked like I had stalled and gone into a spin, which would not have been recoverable with my remaining altitude.) I ended up landing a tiny bit short (just cleared the tumbleweeds at the near end of the field), but as they say, "any landing you can walk away from is a good one." Too bad my flight instructor (and the Launch Control Officer, AND the Chief Flying Instructor) disagreed.

"I checked the brakes, meanwhile looking out the window to see the heels stop spinning. And all hell broke loose."

July 1990, Victoria, B.C.

I had been doing practice circuits with my instructor for about an hour, and we were taxiing back to the flying club. Out of the blue sky he turned to me and said, "Want to do your solo?"

I was dumbfounded. "Ah ... er ..." Sure, I felt okay, although I had had a few problems counting airplanes ahead of me on one or two occasions recently, and nearly succeeded in cutting someone off, but I was not expecting this at all, so I was just a little -

"I mean, if you aren't ready, that's oka-"

Quick decision time. "I'm ready!!!" You kidding? Give me an airplane, ask me to fly it, then take it away? No way, Jose. So I dropped him by the wayside and beetled off by myself. Soon I had the runway all to myself, which is pretty cool, especially at Victoria. Victoria has over 10,000 feet of really wide runway (that's over 3300m for anyone who learned to fly outside of North America), and in a Cessna 150 you only need about 500 feet to get off the ground (if that). Compare it to having the RCMP block off a section of the #1 highway so you can cruise down it on your trike. Same sort of idea.

So I finally peeled off the runway, and climbed at an amazing 60 kts. or so (gee, I really need to brush up on my aircraft specs ...) with my little 100hp Pratt&Whitney engine, made a pair of right hand turns and rolled onto downwind at 1000' altitude. Okay, time for downwind checks. One of these is the brakes, which are activated by pressing down on the upper part of the rudder pedals. It might seem like a silly check to make (like, what are you going to do about it if they don't work? Ask for a landing net?) but it's nice to know the brakes are there and happy with life. So I checked the brakes, meanwhile looking out the window to see the wheels stop spinning. And all hell broke loose.

Actually, it was the seat restraint that broke loose, and the seat deftly slid as far aft as it could. I tried to pull myself forward, but of course I was still holding the controls, and all that did was cause the nose to pitch up. Briefly letting go of the controls (which didn't help much, because the elevator was still trimmed for climb, and someone forgot to re-adjust it), I grabbed the door frame, pulled my seat back into position, regained some composure, and made my downwind call while reducing power to get back to circuit altitude.

"Foxtrot Victor Juliet," (that was me!) "you're number one for zero-niner, report turning final."

Number one??? I had never been number one before off the downwind call. What an ingenious stroke of luck! I listened to everyone else calling in, being told they were number two behind the blue Cessna (me) now turning base, number three behind ... and so on. I was the leader! I called turning final a little low at just under 300', but I added some power to smooth out the approach.

"Foxtrot Victor Juliet, roger turning final, cleared to land zero-niner. Congratulations on your first solo."

A year before, it had been more of a personal experience. While it was still so this time, those few words, from some voice belonging to a person I would never meet (but who would later have occasional cause to bawl me out for something silly I was doing), made me feel more like I had just joined a family that was proud to welcome me aboard. Indeed, perhaps that day I did.