I spent hours taping and glueing various bits of cardboard boxes together to create the perfect airplane cockpit. A papertowel roll with a cardboard steering wheel (yoke) on one end, the other slid into a round cutout in the cardboard instrument panel. A morass of switches and dials scavanged from past Christmas and birthday presents acted as radio controls, ignition switches, missile arming switches and auto pilot dials. My very first record player served a higher purpose as its internal bits magically transformed from workaday electronics into high-tech aviation components.

When a computer was first brought into our home in the early 1980s, the very first thing I did after taking it apart was to program a simple, text-only flight simulator in Basic (with a bit of machine code to make appropriate sounds). I spent hundreds of hours flying with that computer. There weren't any flashy graphics or 3d simulations of airports and planes, but I didn't need it. I had the best digital instruments an eleven year old imagination could buy, and I always flew at night, through treacherous thunderstorms. There wasn't anything to see; just keep your eyes on the altimeter, airspeed indicator and artificial horizon and fly.

Of course, when color graphics technology had advanced enough to become affordable I became addicted to the Microprose Flight Simulator. I flew hundreds of hours between New York's Kennedy and Boston's Logan airports. I once flew from Martha's Vineyard to San Francisco. It was a long flight and I had a few problems with finding fuel since nothing existed between those two airports at that time. Not in computer reality, anyway.

I had even flown a real plane, though briefly, some years earlier. I was nine years old and my family took its first, and last, Great American Family Vacation. Perhaps someday I'll write an article about that, but not today. Part of our vacation took place near the Grand Canyon. And what does every red blooded, American dad want to do when he's near the Grand Canyon? Take his entire family, including his six month old daughter flying through it in a six seat airplane. Of course, being the only family member who knew how to fly, I took the co-pilot's seat. And, while in the Grand Canyon (actually in it; below the ground) I took the yoke for a few glorious minutes and flew the plane. Actually, I flew half the plane since I couldn't reach the rudder controls at my feet, our pilot took care of that.

So today I'm cycling towards the realization of a life-long dream. I'll let you know how it is when my feet hit the ground.