Hi dlombard,

Thanks for the post!

I've always been fascinated by flight. When I was a child, I arranged scrap wood in the back yard to spell out "Hi Pilot"

I'd have to look in my logbook to see when my first flight actually occurred, but it was in the late 60's. I clipped a $5 "Discovery Flight" coupon out of an issue of Flying magazine and took my first flying lesson.

My air time was few and far between the next few years until I scored a summer job on a salmon troller. I took %15 of the catch, less expenses. That job gave me the funds to complete a dream and become a private pilot the following year. It must have been 1972.

My first commercial flight was in 1970 from SFO to SEA to meet up with my dad. Like PremEx, I was well dressed. That's how it was in those days, youngsters My dad had taken a new job in Olympia and I followed him by air to my new school. My mom finished selling the house in the SF area and drove to Washington with my dog. She hated that dog... It was true parental love.

I don't remember much about that flight, except that I had my nose pressed to the window the entire time - and such has been my practice to this day.

My third commercial trip was SFO to NRT to train the staff at Apple's Japanese repair center how to do module level repair of Apple II computers and disk drives.

My fourth flight was to Mexico City when an official in the Mexican government paid me to come down there to replace a chip in his Disk ][. He didn't want to wait while the drive was shipped to California and back.

After that flying became more frequent for me, both for business and pleasure, though never more than 10 times/year at it's peak.