For over half of my adult life, I have somewhat mentally classified people into two categories: Airplane Owners (lucky) and those who do NOT own airplanes (perhaps equally lucky in some ways). Owning an airplane has been a sort of cachet, and although the three which I have owned have always been of the quite modest variety, it was still entrée into a world which I enjoyed and in which for the most part I felt at home.

There is an old joke -- that a plane only gives you pleasure two days: when you buy it and when you sell it. It has also been applied, equally applicably one supposes, to boats, and in fact it was demonstrably & undeniably true in the instance of one’s Divorce Present Eldorado, with its elegant ride and 8 mpg thirst for highest octane gas.

But such was NOT the case with my beloved Cessna 152. I owned that little bird for close to twenty years, and it only failed to start twice:…once for my Uncle’s funeral in Rhode Island, and once when I had undertaken to fly a photographer onto the airport itself at JFK airport. Both of those instances were colder than usual mornings and the failure to start was likely as much my own unfamiliarity with her cold weather starting needs, as any failing on her part.

In short, it was faithful and trustworthy, and just knowing it was sitting there, and that it could, if I chose, take me to look at the tops of nearby clouds, or have me in New England in less than an hour, was enough to keep my spirits up on dark days. I was able to be an honest member of the Airplane Owners & Pilots Association, cuz I was one of each, and it was a good feeling.

But times change. People change. FAA rules change. Airspace restrictions change. Availability of 100octane low lead fuel may change, and has appreciated alarmingly in recent years. ELT requirements change. VOR maintenance may change. Towers are closed or go part time. Airports close. Insurance premiums, tiedown fees, mechanics labor and parts, oil, radio repairs…all have increased a good deal more than a comfortable margin for a middle class pilot/owner. Medical examinations become more of a challenge with passing years, {particularly if one is partially bionic but has not always been overly forthright about the fact}.

And there is a bit of the ‘been there, done that’ element too, when one is so fussy that one refuses to fly if the visibility is 8 miles instead of 12, or if one goes out and doesn’t start the plane because the pattern is full of students, whose first language is quite apparently not English and one may be wary of mid-air happenings as a result. If one looks at the sectional map of New England and can not find a single airport where one has not landed, the feeling may be similar to, if not exactly burnout.

But changing a lifestyle comes with some emotional tumult, no matter how obvious the decision may be to vacate the first and migrate to the second category of people. The words of Ecclesiastes 3:1 certainly seem applicable.

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

I am so pleased that many of the people whom I love and who have been and are close to me have had the opportunity to slip the surly bonds with me. Those are cherished memories which I hope time will only burnish. We’ve had a good run, and been lots of gorgeous and magical places, and I would not trade those memories and experiences for anything.