Yes…we FLEW

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While ?? they all were here….we tried something…which may be considered a once in a lifetime experience! YES…WE FLEW!

Daddy was the one very enthusiastic about the whole thing. He had made arrangement to bring us for the expensive thrill. Daddy had wanted to do this for quite some time….that is put Mummy up in a plane…and LET HER CONTROL! Mummy was the one not so keen cos other than expensive, Mummy can have terrible motion sickness. Few years ago, her experience with the seaplane ride in Maldive did not turn out very pleasant too. Up in the sky for less than 1/2 hour and she already felt air sick! But this time, other than Mummy, Uncle Eddy and even ?? tried too. Uncle Eddy was the one who shown much interest.

It was scorching HOT and we were the 1st customers who were there. Mummy was a bit skeptical about this whole thing…looking around at the hanger to have a closer look at the engineless flying machine…hoping to see how safe these things were…while the rest went inside office. Mummy stayed behind at the car also because Mal fell asleep on the way there and was still sleeping when Mummy took the ride! Kinda wasted that he missed out so much…but maybe if he was awake, he would not let Mummy try.

Soon Daddy and the rest walked out and it was for REAL…we were going to try it. Very soon, Uncle Eddy was getting ready to take his 1st ride! It was supposed to be a 20 minutes ride with an instructor behind him. Next will be Mummy’s turn….

The instructor was an old man who used to be from the UK airforce and he joked about being nervous doing the ride. He however looked experience…maybe was due to his head of white hair and beard. This was enough to calm Mummy’s nerve. Inside the cockpit , the setup was very simple…a stick, altitude meter and that was just about it. Was given some instructions on what are the dos and don’ts such as
1. pushing the stick down when u need to descend and up when u need to ascend
2. step on the pedal, either left or right to balance the plane
and soon we were at set to go, Mummy in front, the instructor behind.

We were being towed by another plane,,a propellar one with engine…all the way up into the sky. At around 1000 feet, the line was cut and we were on our own…the engineless flying machine. We were up over the mountains and due to the hot air…as Mummy was told, we continued to climb up even higher into the sky. We were kinda spinning up and soon Mummy felt sick. Mummy was given the chance to control the plane fully but only for a while as Mummy told the instructor that she was feeling sick and the instructor was quick to take over control of the plane. He continued to tell Mummy to look out straight into the horizon and take deep breath and he assured that he would try to fly as smoothly as possible. He explained that the air sickness was probably due to the quick change in the air temperature. The air up there was hot.

We continued touring around the top for like 20 minutes…the instructor was very keen in showimg Mummy the view from the top, explaining the landscape we saw below but frankly speaking, Mummy was too sick to really enjoy the scenery. The only thing Mummy could think of was…’When are we landing???!!!’ as this time, Mummy really felt like throwing up and the instructor was quick enough to hand me a bag. It was a horrible feeling…trying to fight off the puke!!! Finally the instructor said that we were descending and Mummy was relieved to hear that. But due to another glider taking off…which he could see with his naked eyes…We had to do a detour and land at a different area, and we were delayed further in our landing. However by this time, Mummy was feeling much better as I think the air become cooler when we descend. It took like forever before we finally touched the ground…

If you ask Mummy how she felt…hmmm…sick! I guess the best part was the taking off part as Mummy was still feeling fresh and the feeling of speeding down the runway before lifting off into the sky was quite thrilling. Think this was definitely a once a lifetime experience for Mummy as she is not going to pay for such sick thrill again

the engineless flying machine in the hangerthe run way…

other higher performance gliders…the tow…Uncle Eddy getting in the cockpit…Mummy being straped on
the instructor explaining to Mummy the dos and don’tsall set to go…see us being towed from the ground…into the sky…think we broke something during landing…. finally Mal woke up…just nice to watch ?? take off