I look at my logbook as the instrument of future nostalgia that I'll sit back and read when I'm old and can't fly anymore. My logbook is my diary. It recalls some of the happiest moments of my life - those I've spend aloft, sometimes alone, sometimes in the company of others. If I have any, I may even leaf through its pages to bore my grandkids with tales of flying and derring-do in my golden age of aviation. If I don't have grandkids, I'll borrow someone else's and bore them!
I'll remember the flights, the weather, the people I flew as passengers and the people with whom I flew in formation. I'll remember the things I saw along the way and how well first time passengers did with the controls or how excited they were to be airborne in a light plane for the first time. I'll remember the Young Eagle who, at age 12, loosed a sailor's technicolor vocabulary of excitement through the entire flight. I'll remember landing back at the club at the end of a long summer afternoon flight to nowhere and seeing the sun set as I landed on 28. I'll remember the night in front of the pub at Keyston when we celebrated our mate's first flight after regaining his medical. I'll remember that same weekend doing a demo over the strip for my friends and being the only one who didn't see the Spitfire that came from nowhere and jumped me. I'll remember the lump in my throat after my first flight in my Pitts, taxying back past the tower after my third and final landing to see the rooftop crowded with wellwishers and friends wanting to share that experience with me. I'll remember the names and faces of every person I took up as a passenger. I'll see precisely how many hours I logged in taildraggers, how many in my Pitts, how many spent in aerobatics, how many solo, dual, and cross country.
I'll remember all these things because they're all written in my logbook.
Pitts2112