It came up recently that I’ve been flying a pretty long time. Since 1986, in fact, or 39 years at this writing. That’s a long time, and I know there are guys who’ve been flying even longer than that, which I really admire.

I started musing about what the highlights have been in my flying career, and since our editor needs content, I figured I’d write down the Top Ten.

Now, it’d be easy to simply do a list of firsts, but that misses the point. Not everything that is a highlight is a first. Thus, not every one of those made it onto my list. My highlights involve things that were epic adventures, major personal accomplishments, or simply super-memorable events. How lucky am I, though, to have to cull so many of them just to whittle down to ten?

By the way, these aren’t in any particular order. I’m not really sure there could be a criteria for ranking them that way.

I’m gonna skip the first solo. That’s too cliched, and we’ve all been there.

However, one event that really shaped my life happened very early in my flying career. It was when I took my now wife flying in a two-seat Spectrum Beaver and proposed to her. It was so noisy, and we had such a crappy intercom, that she asked me to repeat myself and my poetically crafted marriage proposal. I won’t tel you what I said, but I can tel you it was brilliantly romantic, both times. It obviously worked, too, because we’ve been married for 35 years now.

Easily the standout highlight of my flying career was my flight to San Francisco and back in 2012 with Geoff Pritchard. I flew my Merlin with a Continental O-200, and Geoff was in his Champ with a hand-cranked C-85. It was everything, and guys, I do mean everything, that a good adventure should be.

We had little airplanes against long distances and rugged landscapes over country where neither of us had ever been before. We had weather blockades, mechanical troubles, close calls, unbelievable scenery, and incredible people that we encountered. It’s an epic story that’s forever tattooed on me and is something I’ll never, ever forget.

Nor will I ever forget flying a Boeing 737 from the left seat. Well, actually it was a 737 simulator. It was a little more than an hour in one of Westjet’s that Wade Miller arranged for me. The sim is so realistic that guys can actually log time in it. I did three landings and takeoffs and got to fly it around Calgary for bit. We buzzed Kirkby Field at nearly 300 knots, too. A simply amazing experience for me.

Miller and I also flew our planes to Seattle together in 2009. I’d never flown into the US, but had always dreamed of doing so. It was just after the Americans started allowing Canadian ultralights to fly there so long as the pilot had a UL instructor rating or a higher license. We visited the Seattle Air & Space Museum and a bunch of other aviation attractions, and I saw my first major league baseball game. It was another unforgettable adventure and I got to fly my ultralight Merlin to another country.

I built and flew my own airplane, and I’m quite proud of that. It was a TEAM Himax that I put together after buying a set of plans, a pile of sticks and a case of glue. I built it in my basement and garage, then flew it all over Alberta and even into the mountains of BC, all on a Rotax 503 two-stroke. I highly recommend building a plane, but I wouldn’t anymore recommend flying a two-stroke in the mountains. I really question now why I did that.

The Air Adventure Tours that the club did back in the late 90s and early 2000’s were simply awesome experiences! To have the number of club members that we did have all involved together in the endeavor of touring our ground crew, planes and pilots around western Canada was utterly unbelievable. The camaraderie we shared, the adventures we had, and the friendships we forged are etched on me forever.

Another big highlight was flying my Cavalier to the other side of the continent to Washington, DC. I went with Bob Kirkby in his Cherokee 235. He carried Carl Forman and Al Botting with him. We stopped at Nashville, TN, on the way back because I’m a country music fan and Bob likes Dolly Parton. She wasn’t there, but we did get to see some pretty cool stuff in that city. And the year before that, we flew to Oshkosh. Well, not into Oshkosh. We stopped short, rented a car and hotel rooms, then drove in to the show each day.

Kirkby had been there before, but I hadn’t. Some folks think a trip to Oshkosh, the world’s biggest fly-in, is a sort of pilgrimage for aviators. I was never that philosophical about it, but it was certainly an aviation bucket list item. The whole experience left me totally gobsmacked. It was utterly saturating.

I won an award once for writing about flying. I’m still very proud of that. It came from UPAC, the Ultralight Pilots Association of Canada, and they sent me a really nice little award trophy. There was a cash prize that came with it, too. I asked them to donate that to the COPA Freedom to Fly Fund. The story was called ‘About Time’, where I pontificated on how I so enjoyed the low and slow aspects of ultralight flying, and how going fast just wasn’t for me. I’ve got to be honest here, that’s all changed now. I absolutely love going fast in my Cavalier and I don’t think I’d trade that.

Nearly all of what I mention above involves other CRFC members, so it shouldn’t be a big surprise that the final highlight I’ll mention is being part of our club. We’ve evolved steadily since the mid-80s, and have had a few different names. But whatever the name, it’s pretty clear to me that few, if any, of the other highlights of my flying life would have happened at all without our club members. My best friends are the guys in the club. Most of the best things that have happened in my life have happened with other people in the club. It is and has been a huge part of my life. I simply don’t have the words to express my gratitude for all that our community has granted me.

Do me a favour, please. Take a few minutes and jot down some highlights of your own flying career to send to Greg, our editor. You can do so anonymously, if you like, and you don’t have to list a dozen of them if you don’t want to.

Really, just list as many as you’d like in a few sentences. If you’d like me to help edit them, I’m happy to do so, also.

I think it’d be wonderful to learn what other highlights have happened in the vast experience of our community. After all, that’s the stuff that makes us the club we are.