Learning to Fly: Dreams
If I could do anything at all, I would buy a single engine plane (perhaps a Cessna) and fly from place to place forever and ever. The first career I thought of as a kid was to be a fighter pilot. But my eyesight wasn't perfect and I was told I wouldn't qualify. I was also discouraged for reasons of safety. A used old Cessna in working condition can apparently be bought for $50k or so. But there would be the additional cost of learning to fly. When I was 15 or so, I had bought one of those small handbooks you could buy (perhaps the Observer's Book of Aircraft) which listed every plane in the world with a picture and its specifications. I took pride in identifying the few planes that flew overhead where we lived on the IIT campus in New Delhi. We were close enough to Palam Airport (now Indira Gandhi Airport) so that planes would fly overhead low enough to be identifiable. Of course, most of what we saw was easy enough to identify. Boeing 747, 737, and the occasional 727 com...