AU_James
Pre-takeoff checklist
My wife is the runner. Not me. But I can hang a bit and know I need to run more so we've started to combine our passions.
Recently we looked around at relatively short flights from home to airports where it could be nice to take a scenic run from the FBO to or around somewhere else. This past weekend we successfully did our first running adventure at Venice, south of Sarasota.
This is a beautiful trail! There's sidewalk and a bike trail pretty much the entire way around the airport and it's beautiful. The path parallels a canal, goes along the approach to all four runways, goes by a golf course, runs alongside the Gulf beach, and even goes by a nice seafood restaurant with a pier. It's 5 miles in total. This past Sunday we saw so many bicyclists, boaters, golfers, beach-goers, and air traffic the entire time.
I could get used to this.
The really nice thing is that it's really getting my wife excited to go fly with me. She's taking more of an active interest in what's going on with my instrument training (she even asked if she could ride along for a lesson) and during/after the flights she's asking more intuitive questions about why we entered the pattern differently than when we lived/flew out of a pilot-controlled field. I love it.
Last fall she was on board during a fuel emergency (water contamination) and she has struggled to get back into my passion, understandably. She understood what happened, how it happened, how I'm confident it will never happen again, but the experience naturally scared her. I made a post on here about it, if you're curious.
I'm just SO happy that she's excited to go again. On Monday she even wanted to just go to the hangar to hang out and have a beer because after our Venice flight she couldn't stay and relax.
If anybody else desires to get their spouse/significant other more interested in what you're doing, think outside the box to see how your combined passions can line up. I think this will pay dividends for a long time!
Recently we looked around at relatively short flights from home to airports where it could be nice to take a scenic run from the FBO to or around somewhere else. This past weekend we successfully did our first running adventure at Venice, south of Sarasota.
This is a beautiful trail! There's sidewalk and a bike trail pretty much the entire way around the airport and it's beautiful. The path parallels a canal, goes along the approach to all four runways, goes by a golf course, runs alongside the Gulf beach, and even goes by a nice seafood restaurant with a pier. It's 5 miles in total. This past Sunday we saw so many bicyclists, boaters, golfers, beach-goers, and air traffic the entire time.
I could get used to this.
The really nice thing is that it's really getting my wife excited to go fly with me. She's taking more of an active interest in what's going on with my instrument training (she even asked if she could ride along for a lesson) and during/after the flights she's asking more intuitive questions about why we entered the pattern differently than when we lived/flew out of a pilot-controlled field. I love it.
Last fall she was on board during a fuel emergency (water contamination) and she has struggled to get back into my passion, understandably. She understood what happened, how it happened, how I'm confident it will never happen again, but the experience naturally scared her. I made a post on here about it, if you're curious.
I'm just SO happy that she's excited to go again. On Monday she even wanted to just go to the hangar to hang out and have a beer because after our Venice flight she couldn't stay and relax.
If anybody else desires to get their spouse/significant other more interested in what you're doing, think outside the box to see how your combined passions can line up. I think this will pay dividends for a long time!
