Comments (0) I raelly haven’t forgotten about this blog. I fully intend to keep posting here as I get the time. I just haven’t had much going on in my life that falls into my main categories for this.
On the other hand, my plastic pilot’s license came in the mail about a week ago. That made me really happy.
More later when I have time and something worth writing about.
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about where I am now with respect to where I thought I would be when I was in high school. I think that until very recently I was getting farther and farther from my “core” dreams. Now that I’m changing my major to aviation, doing better in my classes, and finally (after 12 years!) have my pilot’s license, I feel like I’m getting back to the things that I have always been passionate about.
I recently came across a copy of a poem I’d all but forgotten about. I first read this poem while I was touring the Air Force Academy my senior year of high school and encountered it again while in ROTC and at Field Training. “High Flight” was written by John Gillespie Magee Jr. while he was serving as a pilot in World War II, back at the dawn of modern aviation.
The poem occurred to him while on a test flight, during which he took his Spitfire to 30,000 ft. He finished it once back on the ground and sent a copy to his parents in a letter a few days later.
“High Flight” by John Gillespie Magee Jr.
Written 3 September 1941.
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, – and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlight silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious burning blue
I’ve topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I trod
the high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
Pilot Officer John Gillespie Magee Jr.
No. 412 squadron, RCAF
Killed 11 December 1941, age 19
Hi!
I’m giving this blogging thing yet another chance, hopefully by limiting myself to just a few categories that I’m fairly active in I’ll actually post something regularly. Also, now that I have an iPhone, and the WordPress app for it, I can post from the hand-held when the mood strikes me.
At the moment, I’m finishing up my primary flight training at OU, and am taking my Private Pilot written exam tomorrow at 2:30… a little stressed about that, lots of studying to do. In true form however, I decided that this was the perfect time to get WP up and working on my website… go me. If all goes well, I’ll have my Private Pilot license around the middle of next week. Gee, it only took me 12 years…
I’ll be back tonight or tomorrow with something more interesting, like maybe something about the backtracking solver algorithm for sudoku I’m currently attempting to understand or my iPhone App I’m thinking about writing.
I’m off!
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