Die doing what I love
“I definitely don’t want to die doing what I love. But I want to live doing what I love.” Eric Tucker, in the amazing video short 26,000 Days
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Jack Kornfield on Paragliding
I had no idea about this. Listening to a repeat of a Tim Ferriss podcast with famed Buddhist writer and teacher Jack Kornfield, he expressed his love of … paragliding: “One of my favorite things is to tandem paraglide and go off the top of places like Grindlewold in Switzerland, where you can take the ski lift up 9,000 feet and then jump off and float silently, like you’re a bird among the clouds. The birds actually do come by sometimes and check out, what’s this big bird flying up here? You can catch thermals and go way up above the … Continue reading Jack Kornfield on Paragliding
I went into the sky
I pass right by Walden Woods on my way to work at Boston’s Logan Airport. I hear Thoreau’s words in my head mostly as he wrote them in 1854. The exact quote from his book Walden; or, Life in the Woods is: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” For me, flying is learning to live deliberately. Seeing the New England fall foliage … Continue reading I went into the sky
Robin Olds on Flying
Fighter pilot legend. Triple Ace. Multiple combat victories against Messerschmitts and MiGs. Married to a Hollywood actress. Son of a General, who became a General himself. College football star. Best Wing Commander in Vietnam. Hard-drinking mustached maverick, who eventually was Commandant of the Air Force Academy. Robin Olds had an amazing career. But let’s look here at some of his (almost sensitive) writing on flying. He first flew at the age of eight, in an open cockpit biplane with his father, a former WWI instructor pilot who became an accomplished aviator and Major General in the United States Army Air Force. In … Continue reading Robin Olds on Flying
The Disciples of Flight movie review
At the end of 2019 I downloaded a new aviation documentary— and it’s gorgeous. Beautifully shot crisp HD images of general aviation flying paired with insightful interviews from a bunch of pilots, including Patty Wagstaff, Rod Machado and NASA’s Dr. Dismukes. You can download it from Disciples of Flight directly for $15, or use Amazon Prime Video. Well worth the price for the visuals alone. The movie’s 93-minutes are all about personal dedication to aviation, about really loving and living flying. There’s no narrator, just lots of hangar interviews cut with super cool flying video. Both feel personal, close, real. … Continue reading The Disciples of Flight movie review