Psalm 119:18: Fly like a bird

As most of my readers will know, I have been interested in aviation for a long time, since I was around 11 years old. In high school I joined air cadets and had a lot of fun with that - gliding camps, tramping, 'Live and work' courses with the RNZAF. In my final year of high school (1997) I applied to become an air force pilot, made it through the local interviews and tests, and went up to Auckland for the Personnel Selection course, where I failed the co-ordination test. Thus ended my aspiration to become an air force pilot - but it didn't mean I couldn't be a normal pilot. The following year I went on the ATC national power flying course and went solo in a Cessna 152. I quit cadets a couple of months later; they didn't seem to be interested in promoting me and it was getting to be quite humiliating going to combined unit camps and having people whom I considered my peers at NCO courses and the like being two or three ranks above me. But my dream of flying didn't wane, and one day when I was looking through some of the material from the power flying course I noticed that it had my instructor's name and an address for a flying school in Paraparam. Sure enough, that was where he was instructing, so in July 1998 I started having lessons again.

I gained my Private Pilot's License in July 1999, one month after I turned 19. For the next few years I took loads of friends, family etc. on local scenic flights. Then in 2005 I moved to London for my post-doc, and made a conscious decision that the flying would have to be put on hold for a while. I joined the Imperial College gliding club while I was there. A year later when I moved to Stanford, it didn't even cross my mind to pick it up there - the thought of the reaction that a foreign passport and foreign pilot's license would elicit (not to mention that I had no free time) made that decision kind of easy.

Within a couple of months of moving back to NZ in 2007 I had bought a house. I'd tell people, 'Yeah, I have my pilot's license, but when I went overseas I let it lapse, and now I have a mortgage. But once I pay it off, then I can get back into it.' Well, that day has come. I'm now current again and a signed up member of the Kapiti Aero Club. So if you're in town and interested in going for a flight, just let me know!

The story in pictures: