Day: April 18, 2014

You will never be able to get into any type of aircraft and be 100% certain that you will be unhurt at the end of the flight. So why fly? Because there are things in life worth doing even if they carry a known risk of death. If you are not willing to accept this, then you should not fly. A man said to me, “When I go to the airport, my wife needs to know 100% that I am coming home, so I shouldn’t fly experimental aircraft.” I told him if his wife’s requirement was to be met, he can’t fly in anything, because no aircraft can be made “100% safe.”

Upon hearing this, a second man offered that he will always be home after flying, and he planned to always drive himself home, but there was a very slight chance that one day his remains might have to be brought home. Either way, his son would always be able to look at him and understand that his father that was not afraid to live. The second man understood the timeless truth of the risks and rewards of flight. -ww.

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“I began to feel that I lived on a higher plane than the skeptics of the ground; one that was richer because of its very association with the element of danger they dreaded, because it was freer of the earth to which they were bound. In flying, I tasted a wine of the gods of which they could know nothing. Who valued life more highly, the aviators who spent it on the art they loved, or these misers who doled it out like pennies through their antlike days? I decided that if I could fly for ten years before I was killed in a crash, it would be a worthwhile trade for an ordinary life time.”— Charles A. Lindbergh

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To read the entire quote from Lindbergh, follow this link to my story on it:

The Quote, 1927, C.A.L.

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“If the goal of the captain was to preserve the ship, he would never leave port. Most people never do. The goal of the captain is to seek adventure, to meet all the challenges and still achieve the goals, to be In The Arena, not rusting at the pier in the safe harbor. Make your choice. If it sounds scary, it’s because consumer society has had decades to teach you to doubt yourself, your potential, your dreams and abilities. People who think for and have learned to trust themselves make poor compulsive consumers. Building a plane and learning to master its maintenance and flight is the rejection of these messages, and the replacement of them with the knowledge that you are the master of your own adventure. This is what building and flying is all about.” -ww.

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The words above are an excerpt from my story on the philosophy of Sterling Hayden. Read the full story at this link: Sterling Hayden – Philosophy

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If he were alive, Sterling Hayden would be 96 today. He has been gone for 27 years, but even from the grave he is probably more alive than most men walking around upright….

Sterling Hayden in 1950. He didn’t just look tough, he was. In WWII when other actors defended civilization by making comedies and VD training films, Hayden was an OSS agent fighting with the Joseph Tito and the Partisans in Yugoslavia.

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