As we taxi off of runway 18-36, my flight instructor tells me to pull over and stop. "She's finally snapped," I think. She has ultimately come to the conclusion that I am not fit to clean the windscreen on the Cessna 152 I'm training in and is about to inform me, in her very matter-of-fact way, that I must go away and never return.I sigh into the Davis microphone brushing my lips and prepare myself for the blow. "Okay, I'm getting out and you're going to take off, fly the pattern, and land. You'll do it three times," she says with a grin. I'm not ready, I think. "I'm not ready," I say as she turns to walk away from the plane. "You're ready," she says. And that's the end of the conversation. Of course I'm ready. I've been practicing takeoffs and landings for days now, both in the Cessna 152 and at home on the flight simulator. I'm ready. I call the control tower and tell them I'm ready to taxi to runway 18. On the runway I push the throttle all the way in and off I go. Alone. It's the first time in my life I've ever been alone in a moving aircraft. How strange. I take off and land three times, talking to myself and my instructor the entire time. Only I can hear what I'm saying, as Julie doesn't have a radio on the ground. But I talk to her anyway. She tells me my first landing was too far to the left of the runway centerline. My second landing was good, but I needed to keep the nosewheel up higher. As I takeoff she tells me to watch my airspeed and keep the plane flying on a straight line off the runway. Don't let the plane fly you, you fly the plane. I'm glad there aren't black boxes in these small aircraft as I was also belting out the lyrics to every Jimmy Buffett song I knew. Jimmy and I flew the plane around the pattern three times. After my third landing I taxied back to where Julie was sitting and picked her up for the ride back to the flight club. "Good", she said. Wow, I thought.
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