Paul's flying adventure

Note: I am not an airplane enthusiast as some of our friends are, please bear with my awkward verbiage in this post :)

As I've mentioned before, our temporary quarters at the Old Dairy are located next to an air strip. The same family owns the holiday cottages, the farm, and the airstrip/airplane hangars located on the property. One of the family is an expert airplane pilot -- you can read about his business, etc. here: http://markjefferiesairdisplays.com. Our first weekend here, we heard airplanes that sounded like they were swooping fairly close to our cottage -- because they were! Mark and friends do stunts with their airplanes, flying in tight formations and performing fancy loops and dips. They apparently take their shows all over the world. Pretty cool to see an airshow from the field right next to your hotel room!

After Paul was enthusiastically talking to Jenny, the cottage manager, about how much he had enjoyed the "show," she asked him if he'd like to go flying with Mark. To his credit, he asked me before saying 'yes,' -- my eyes widened but I knew this was something he really wanted to do. So on Sunday, Paul went flying!

It wasn't a great day for it -- overcast with 30 mph winds and gusts near 40 mph. I was definitely nervous as Paul got dressed in warm clothing for the trip. I bundled Charlotte up to walk out to the field to watch them take off. Paul climbed into the cockpit with Mark, which he said was extremely narrow with a tiny bench for them both to sit on. It was the smallest plane I've ever seen, besides model airplanes you hold in your hand. I was trying to stay calm as Charlotte and I huddled behind a building out of the wind and listened to the airplane preparing to take off -- trying not to think the worst. Ugh. I was so glad when they finally took off and everything looked very smooth -- we watched until we couldn't see them anymore. 

Paul says (paraphrased): We took off in the small, single-engine prop plane and ascended, passing through the clouds which were at about 3000 feet. We got some condensation and ice on the windshield as we went through the clouds. We got up to 6000 feet, where it was -6* Celsius outside. We flew around for awhile, it felt like the opening scene from Back to the Future 2. We then dipped back below the cloud level, and we could see the air force base where I work. Mark could talk to me through the headset, and he was pointing out various things -- Graham Water [where we went a couple of weekends ago], a herd of deer, the prison, some other small towns including St Neots. He offered to let me take control of the plane, but I said no, my wife was already worried enough about me and she'd probably kill me if she knew I had agreed to fly the plane. [Ha!] I got my camera out and started taking pictures, but as I was looking through the viewfinder I started to feel nauseated. I told Mark I wasn't feeling well, and he reached over and unzipped my jacket, telling me to throw up into my jacket if I needed to, as it would be easier to clean me than to clean the airplane. He offered to go further, but I didn't want to continue on, feeling as sick as I was. I pretty much focused on not throwing up on myself for the rest of the flight. 

So he burst through the door about 30 minutes after he had taken off, surprising me as I thought they would be gone longer. He lay on the floor for about 2 hours, then said the motion sickness was mostly gone. 

Mom, is he ok?

He was really glad he got to go! Then on Tuesday, Mark came to our cottage in the early evening and asked for some help. He was packing up his airplane for travel to India, and needed some help holding large pieces as they disassembled it. Paul had a good time helping with that as well. It's been a fun place to stay, but we are definitely looking forward to moving to St Neots tomorrow!