PADDLES!!!!! GIMME THE PADDLES!!! CLEAR!!!!!!!

And all of a sudden I have too much stuff to do! My bank account is going to be on life support real soon.

Here’s how this all played out:

I emailed Mike Goulian many months ago. He wrote back and invited me to fly with him once the season wrapped up.

I cooked up the plan to fly with Greg Koontz in Alabama. The goal of this is to fly with the Decathlon Jedi and come back with the tools needed to teach tailwheel and acro. Koontz wrote the book. Literally.

Greg had surgery that knocked him out of the cockpit for awhile. Not knowing when he would be back up, I contacted the Tailwheel Jedi Paul Santopietro. We agreed to do some flying when he gets back up to Rhode Island. This was Monday.

Wednesday I found out from Greg that he is booking students in March and that I should schedule soon if I want to get down there in March.

Today I got an email from Mike Goulian. We are going to fly…soon.

To sum up, I am going to fly with Paul, go to Alabama, and fly with Goulian. As I said, my bank account is going to flatline in no time at all.

Despite the prospect of being flat broke, I’m pumped. This is going to play out well no matter which way you slice it. I have to fly with either Greg or Paul before the school cuts me loose with students. I don’t begrudge that one bit. I need the training. Flying with Paul first will focus in on my basic, backseat tailwheel flying. With Paul’s blessing I’ll start doing tailwheel instructing on the weekends, earning some extra cash perhaps avoiding bankruptcy in the process. The experience gained in the process will be the perfect primer before going and flying with Koontz in BAMA. I’ll get much more out of that than if I went into it cold. I can come back and starting making some real progress on things.

Somewhere in all that is flying with Goulian. What can I say about that? It’s flying with Goulian. He and Tucker have always been the two pilots I admire most.

Remember, the goal is in the process.