For Father’s Day, I wanted to give Toby something that he would really love. He’s always done so much for Kaia and I, and I wanted to find a perfect way to say “Thank you”. I remember once when we were taking a road trip, Toby mentioned that there were two things he really wanted to try before he died, one was Subaru rally car racing, and the other was to learn how to fly. So…
Here he is taking his first flight lesson. It’s called a discovery flight. You get the basic info about planes and the controls, and then you go up in the sky for ~30 minutes to see how it all feels. The instructor has the controls most of the time…
Here they are, getting strapped in. They talked for ~1 hour before taking off. This is a C-172 Cessna Skyhawk 4 seater.

And off they go…

Wait… here they come again???

They taxied down the runway, and turned around and came right back… I thought maybe the weather wasn’t good enough (it was sprinkling), or maybe Toby got cold feet. Turned out there was smoke coming from the control panel!!

So, the instructor decided to take Toby up in his personal plane. It’s completely different to fly than the cessna, so he got another little lesson. This plane is a 1946 Aeronca Champ. The center of gravity in this plane is much farther back, so it’s harder to control and land (yikes!).
Kaia couldn’t have cared less about what daddy was doing…. there were puddle to jump in!

And off they go, again:

They flew over downtown Hendersonville, where some friends of ours live. So, I called them up and they said they could see them from the house. Cool!
And here they come, in for a landing:

We all had a blast!