This month’s flyin
Kong Xinyan (we call her Tracy) was in Fancy’s back seat grinning and said “wow” as we left the ground at Dunn Airpark. A left turn out after taking off headed us for the swampy area over near the St Johns River. Upon arriving over one of the many lakes out there, one with an Island in the middle of it she said “wow, that look like Taiwan!” Interestingly enough, it does look like the shape of Taiwan! This was her first time in the USA. In China there is no private aviation and Tracy had not even ever seen a small private airplane until coming here to the USA. I’ve flown over two hundred Young Eagle flights since the beginning of the program and many other first time flyers, never have I ever had a passenger who was more excited about the flight! We flew down the river looking for alligators. She amazed me by spotting so many before I did. (Young eyes I guess) Around Lake Harney we flew and she oohed and aahed about the scenery. We flew along near the western shore of the lake and there were quite a few gators about a hundred feet from shore and there was a man standing in the water up to his knees about fifty feet from shore. She saw the man and the gators which were not far away and said “he very brave man, I hope he not get eaten.” It sounded very funny to me. When we got back to our hangar we entered the flight into my logbook. She wrote in Chinese and made some kind of statement about how she enjoyed the flight. The statement ended with smiley face after an exclamation point, or maybe these are Chinese characters, I don’t know. Guess I’ll have to wait until another Chinese person comes out and can read it to me.
