Why do I fly?

When I was about 12 years old, my father's cousin who was an air traffic controller and a pilot, took me and my dad flying. He let me sit in the left seat of a high-wing plane, which I think must have been something like a Cessna 172. He let me take the controls and from that point on, I was hooked.
In the mid-eighties, I got my first computer - a 10mhz 8088 based PC-XT clone with a RGB screen. And the first software package that I paid for was MS Flight Simulator. Within a year, I had upgraded to the newest 386 clone with a whole megabyte of RAM and I added a joystick to the mix. I spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours "flying" all over the world. As my computers were improved, I improved the MS Flight Sim software. I currently have MS FS 2004 as well as all three Combat flight simulator packages. I still haven't bought a regular yoke, but since I spend so much time in the real thing these days, I might not buy one.

I spent years, ok decades, flying the simulator before I finally decided that I had enough time and money to learn to fly the real thing. A couple of years ago, my wife and I built a new home and when we moved in, we opted for Dish Network satellite TV rather than cable. One of the channels that I spent all my time watching was Discovery Wings. They kept running an ad for "BeAPilot.com", so one day as I was sitting in my office, I decided to hit the website. I discovered that Sterling Flight Training was right up the street practically, so I made an appointment to start my lessons. I didn't waste time doing the introductory lesson crap, I bought the books and tools and scheduled lessons for every Saturday. It took me about a year to get my Private Pilot Certificate. I'll write more about that as time goes on. Since I have work to do, I'll stop writing for now.