Airborn Adventures

It all started when my neck decided to explode aka cause me a lot of pain. after the fear that I had deadly Meningitis subsided, I had to go get X-rays. though that is not what I'm going to talk about (but if you want to hear that story click HERE ). As I arrived at the hospital to get said X-rays, I saw the Life Flight helicopter taking off and I thought to myself "now that would be an interesting career!" I went home and did a little research a few days later. What did I find out? not a whole lot, but hey, I was interested. All summer I thought about it and how cool it could be to have a job like that. It was around that same time that a guy named Ryan who climbs at the Quarry asked if he could put a flier on the cork board advertising the Helicopter flight school he works for. Now skip forward a little bit. School started and being a senior, I'm required to take Senior Seminar, a class where you try and figure out what colleges and stuff you want to go to. So I looked into Helicopters again. Finally I realized "well shoot! I ought to fly in one and see if I even like it". Skip forward to today. Today I went to the Helicopter school Ryan works at and had a little introductory meeting with the Owner/operator of the school. Found out a lot of information about how it works and all that jazz. But here's where it gets good: part of the introductory meeting was actually getting to go out in a Chopper for 30 min. So we drove over to the Spanish Fork airport and I hopped in with the owner John. My first helicopter flight ever. It was really exciting, got to have a fancy headset and all that cool stuff. Fortunately I didn't even get a little bit sick (lot's of people do in helicopters). But get this: I got to actually fly the Helicopter 80% of the time! Of course I was briefed on how to do it and all that, plus John had the other set of controls if anything happened. It was kind of a weird sensation. The controls are super sensitive and unlike any other kind of control ever. John said I was doing pretty good for a first time, and I essentially flew from Spanish Fork to Payson and back. Then John took over the controls again, killed the engine and demonstrated how to glide a Helicopter safely to the ground. Surprisingly that wasn't the least bit scary. I had a really good time flying It was super super fun and I'm legitimately considering it as a possible career. The down side is: It'll cost me $100,000. But the up side is, I could start tomorrow if I wanted, don't have to be 18. Not sure if I'm going to do it yet, but if I do, I'd start next semester because I won't really have any classes at school and I've decided not to graduate early. So I'd fly a few days a week and take a few fun classes the other days. We'll see what happens