from ground to sky

Welcome to my blog documenting my progress into the world of the flying traveler archetype. Flying became a dream when I began meeting people who fly across continents. In 1997, I met 2 women in belize who were on their way flying to south America. When I was traveling in Africa, I heard stories about people flying across the dark continent – thru Namibia and continuing north. Having traveled on a horse in mongolia, sailed across the Indian Ocean, and traversed the African continent on an off-road motorcycle, I knew that flying was the next vehicle of choice.

So I started investigating. And I found that normal little pipers and Cessnas didn’t really fit my bill. For starters, they’re bloody expensive. And secondly, I wanted something that was small enough to land anywhere and get me into those situations that sparked the traveler’s experiences that I longed for. For this, I think you have to go where no other planes go. You need either floats or need to be super small. For this, you need an ultralight or a microlight.

When the dot com world collapsed like a squashed krispy cream donut, I wondered, what was I going to do next? Aha, I know, I’ll move to a tropical island and start a school of sorts to teach people how to travel. Moved to Maui with ideas in my head. Turned out that it’s a windy and expensive place to live. Screwed that one up, I’m afraid. After eking out a living peddling websites, and not being able to afford a plane that I’d have to buy outright (because at the time in 2002, you couldn’t get insurance easily for semi-illegal planes, and finance companies need things like that). So with my dreams on ice, and missing the culture of the mainland, I journeyed back to San Francisco. For the next 2 years, I kept my eye on the ski, and gathered my financial nuts in the corporate marketplace, for what looks like an impending revolution in flight culture.

The sports pilot ruling. Looks like you can now get insurance, and the damn is breaking for the accessibility of the sport to people. From 75,000, it should explode to over a million in the coming years, and there’s gonna be a huge number that are going to use this as a vehicle to discover the world and their own inner strength. So within the next few years, I’m going to chart my progress to the goal of spreading this dream – a traveler community with a world view, where control of ones own destiny and path, that transcends political boundaries and economic road systems. This is a community that can rely on each other and find their own path, in their own way.

To do this, I must:

• choose a plane.
• figure out how I can make money with it.
• finance it.
• Buy it.
• learn how to fly it.
• chalk up a 100 hours to become an instructor.
• Fly across continents (from Indonesia to the Serengeti, from Alaska to Argentina).
• Open up an instruction school.
• Build airports.
• Get other people involved with the teaching.
• Build a travelers support network.
• Build an organization that can bring people from learning to fly, to traveling with a safety net, to going out on their own.
• Cover the planet with this safety network.

I’ll do this in the context of finishing this nut gathering phase (2 to 24 months), and building a retreat in Bali (2 to 20 years). Indeed, in spite of the fact that I now have enough money to un-tether myself from this world, I have to do this in context of 1) not overextending myself financially and 2) setting up a sustainable landbased project that will feed me while I am away.

My next set of entries will be about selecting a plane, figuring out a first business model out of it, financing, and buying it. That chapter will launch me into the next adventure of a first flight business, and fulfilling my dreamquest to travel in a way only a few have dared. Then onto settling down and getting to work on showing people the path and supporting them along the way. The close to this story is my setting it free to cover the earth and continue without me. Please wish me luck on this journey, I’m sure I’m going to need it.