By IVY McIVER. “I got my LoToJa start time, did you?” my husband casually asked one day when I arrived home from work. Hmmm, no I hadn’t seen an email. Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen any emails from the LoToJa headquarters since I registered for the event back in April. I made a mental […]
Pure Adventure
Withdrawing from the luck bucket
By IVY McIVER. “I’m OK! Are you OK?” As I hung upside down, shoulder harnesses digging into my collarbones, I tried to make sense of the broken glass, bent metal and wet sand that surrounded me. Just 60 seconds prior, I had been rolling down a beautiful grass strip in the Cascades. I watched the […]
A bucket full of luck
By IVY McIVER. They say that pilots start out with an empty experience bucket and a bucket full of luck. The trick is to fill the experience bucket before your luck bucket is emptied. Though one can make deposits into the experience account without making a withdrawal from the luck account, it would be foolish […]
Changing lives one flight at a time
By IVY McIVER. Taking someone for their first flight in a small aircraft is always rewarding, but making the flight to an airport I’ve never visited makes the reward even sweeter. I had the chance to fly two of my new co-workers to a private airstrip on a golf course in Wisconsin, and it was […]
A primal passion
By IVY McIVER. I could answer the question “Why should I learn to fly?” with very practical answers: The business benefits, the convenience, the ability to find better weather in which to bike and access it in a matter of hours, or visiting multiple clients in one day. All of those things are indeed benefits […]
FBO tales
By IVY McIVER. Talking about flying with non-pilots reminds me of just how foreign the concept of general aviation is to most people. The ease of traveling in one’s own airplane is wildly different from most non-aviators’ experiences of flying. I remember being in the front row at a comedy show, and the comedian began […]
Formation flight
By IVY McIVER. Formation flight has intrigued me for as long as I can remember. Seeing the Blue Angels for the first time as a child, I remember thinking not just about how cool they looked, but how disciplined and precise the pilots must be, and how well they worked together as a team. It […]
A new adventure
By IVY McIVER. Three years ago, I relocated from Salt Lake City, Utah, to Seattle, Wash. Though I had a lot of experience flying in a variety of weather conditions and in mountainous terrain, I didn’t have a lot of hard IFR flight time. I viewed this not as problem, but as an opportunity to hone […]
The Spin Doctor
By IVY McIVER. I have a confession to make: I have been flying for 17 years and until this year I had never been in a spin. I began my pilot training well after the requirement for spin training had been eliminated from the FAA private pilot curriculum, and none of the planes I flew […]