Privilege

Today was a first for me. And one I'm not afraid to say I had a bit of anxiety about.

Our friend M has a pilot's license and he'd rented a plane for the afternoon. You know, like you do.

We were going to fly over the Zugspitze (Germany's highest mountain) but the weather in that direction was rubbish so we went with Plan B.

It's quite exciting getting a plane ready. Even if you're not sure exactly how you're going to fit into the thing when you're through with all the checks. And there are a lot of checks to go through - quite reassuring really. After 30 minutes or so of that and a quick better-go-now-pee/prayer, we got in and started the thing up.

To say it was quite loud is understating it a bit. But we had headsets and we could talk over the intercom. Sadly I didn't take the opportunity to say "Roger" at the end of every sentence. Next time.

So, on to the runway, clearance from Air Traffic Advice (not Control) and we were off. Quite quickly into the air and I thought "this will be a breeze".

I should have thought in the plural though. There were Breezes. From the side, from under us, from over us. From everywhere. It's a bit like being on a boat in a choppy sea where you can't see where the waves are coming from.

It was, um, interesting*.

We headed down to the Chiemsee and the mountains around there. Weirdly,
it was much calmer in the mountains and we had nothing in the way of turbulence.

It's quite something to be in a little plane and have two pretty huge windows on either side of you and a lot of down under you. Pretty magic actually. Even M's "Scheiße" as we were preparing to land wasn't a problem. Probably not something you'll hear over the intercom when you're flying.

These were some little lakes that I saw out of the window. I loved the colours.
*pretty scary at first. Actually ok after a while. Brilliant in retrospect.