Arlo Gilbert's Blog

I’ll be blogging as much as possible over the next few weeks to make up for my lack of posting.

I tend to be somewhat of a workaholic and it became clear that I needed a hobby to take my mind off of work and to give me something to talk about other than work.

Whittling, yoga, underwater basket-weaving… those all seemed a bit boring so I decided that I would learn how to fly airplanes.

What better way is there to spend time (and money)? Plus I am not a big fan of commercial flying and avoid it whenever possible… Yes, this could be the hobby for me, I can go visit people, get a $100 hamburger and a $500 piece of keylime pie!

While flying is certainly not inexpensive, small single engine planes are only a few hundred dollars per hour to operate at most… so I went to the guys at Performance Flight and took an “experience flight” where they take you up in a Cirrus SR-22 Turbo, get you up to about 4000 feet and let you actually fly the plane.

My experience flight was a bit of a mixed blessing, it made me a bit nauseous, and the summer heat did not help, but the prospect of being free of TSA security lines and having alternatives to the $2000-$4000 per hour jet charters was too much for me to pass on.

So I signed on the dotted line and began my lessons the following week…. more to come.