On Saturday morning I headed off to Arizona. The last April version of Ironman Arizona was heald on Sunday. It will be switched to November this year and I will be competing. Way back when, before I knew that the race was being switched to November, I planned on going so that I could sign up for the at the sight and ensure myself a spot. You can look back on the first post of this blog here to review how those plans changed. In any case, I still thought it was a good idea to observe the race and see if I could glean any wisdom from being there.
It took about six and a half hours to driver to Chandler, where I stayed with my cousin, Allan Tellam. I figured that door to door it would take about four and a half hours to fly there, so for the price of spending another couple of hours in the car, I would have a lot more freedom to come and go when I felt like it. I remember the olden days when I just loved to fly. I miss those days. Allan is a Captain for Southwest Airlines and lives in a community, Stellar Airpark, that is next to a private runway. In order to build a house there, you are required to have a hangar. You don't have to have a plane, although almost everybody does.
Allan offered to take me up in his plane on Sunday morning. I had to do a quick evaluation of what I wanted to do. The whole reason I was even there was to observe the Ironman. It would be a lot of fun to watch 2000 athletes do a mass swim start. There is a bridge over the swim start that would make it especially good for viewing. On the other hand, I have never been up in a small plane. The thrill of flying that I used to love on major airlines would be even more intense on a small plane, with the pilot right beside me. I would miss the swim, but heck, the fastest guy out there is going to take more than eight hours to complete the bloody thing. I went flying and boy, I'm glad I did. It was really quite a thrill. Allan even let me have the stick and throttle while we were taking off. His feet were on the rudder, which I sure is the hard part, but it was a lot of fun to make that thing take off!
We took about a five minute flight to Chandler Airport and had breakfast at the Hangar Cafe. Then we went flying around the desert. Allan flew low over the desert, which was a great deal of fun, then did a "touch and go" landing. Also a thrill. And then we finally landed and came back. It would have been fun to see the start of the Ironman, but it could not have compared to flying!
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