How long have I been flying?

So, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine earlier today, and it struck me that most of the people in my life now, and certainly everyone who knows me from sailing, only know me as a pilot.

This is interesting, as I started flying professionally in 2000 (at least, I was in ground school in October of that year,) but I did not start sailing until the summer of 2001. Obviously my sailing friends would only know me flying.

I am still not up to the total time that I spent fueling airplanes for AA; I am about a year short. I pumped gas for AA for 11 years, 1 month. I am just coming up on my 10 year anniversary flying for Eagle, so I am not even yet.

Remembering back, of course, it seems like I had lived 3 or 4 lifetimes before AA, but in reality, I had pumped gas at Midway, for Monarch Air Service. This I did for 2 and 1/2 years; I met lots of famous people there, since we had the corporate side of the airport, too. I shook Sinatra's hand, traded quips with Steve Martin, missed meeting U2 by about 10 feet, met a couple dozen presidential contenders in 1988; lived, loved, and lost.

I started at Monarch as a summer job after freshman year of college, and I was making so much money, and having so much fun, and I was already flying, that I dropped out of college. Pretty sad; I always thought I would go back. I have not set foot in a college in... well... I fly over bunches of them every time I fly! That's about as close as I have gotten to returning.

When I was a new guy at AA, I met up with a couple of guys I fueled with, and we started a band. That band was the first in a series of not very good bands. I tell people we had 1 trick up our sleeves... we were loud. We played hard rock, rhythm and blues, punk, country, whatever felt like a good time to us, but we always played it loud. I am pretty sure the acoustic songs we played were at a "12" on a "10" scale.

This is reason #1 why I have fairly strong hearing loss. I used to be able to hear much better; In fact, I used to be able to eavesdrop in on conversations that were going on in the background of the phone conversation I happened to be having. Realize, that this was in the days of "Ma Bell." The phone company breakup was in 1984, and it took a few years for the Baby Bells to get their act together, and then telecommunications took a major leap ahead. Look at everything we have now! But I still don't have my hearing back.

I rocked out, worked in a tremendously noisy environment (the ACM fan on a 727 was head high under the wing next to the fueler... joy!) for years, and flew single engine airplanes without modern headset. No wonder I can't hear crap.

Funny, the way your thoughts take you.

Cheers!