Well, let's see...
I could tell you that my very earliest memory is of flying to Holland with my dad at the age of two (scheduled airline; none of my family were pilots); I remember looking out of the window of the aircraft at this much bigger one, shining with the sun on it, and calling out: "I want to go on that".
I could tell you about cycling up to Biggin Hill as a child, sticking my nose through the wire, and wondering how you got to persuade someone to take you flying.
I could tell you about discovering the father of the kid down the road was a glider pilot. I stopped beating her up and throwing sand in her hair, thinking maybe if I was good he'd take me flying...but he never did.
I could tell you about getting stranded in a village in Bolivia while trying to travel down the Amazon just after university; I caught the once fortnightly flight out; it acted as a sort of bus service landing at roughly cleared strips in the jungle, and as the only foreigner I got invited to do the whole trip on the flight deck. I absolutely loved it.
All of the above are true. And I maybe considered flying, but never seriously; I had no idea it was possible really. And I was always doing too many other things, and permanently broke. Until one day in 1997, having just had a windfall and paid off all my debts, when I screeched to a halt outside my local airfield, having taken a scenic route home, and booked a trial lesson in a PA38, completely on impulse. Had no plans even to get a PPL...but I just kind of never stopped.
So I won't re-write my personal history and pretend it was planned...even though it might make a better story.
