Aviation is for everyone!

Aviation is for everyone!  That's what we kept telling all the kids we talked to during the Fly Kansas Air Tour and the Kansas Aviation Expo.  Never take no for an answer and never let someone else set limitations on what you can achieve.

Those are great messages. Hopefully it resonated with at least a few of those kids, because we certainly turned several heads.  It's hard not to look when you're traveling around the state with 40 different aircraft and 60 volunteer pilots.  It's hard not to notice when you're standing with two earth-rounders in Barrington Irving and Amelia Rose Earhart.

The last time I wrote a blog post I talked about creating an atmosphere that may foster chance encounters and hopefully spark the aviation bug in some of these kids.  I called it Planned Serendipity -- the act of putting someone in a position to discover something on their own and maybe experience something they weren't expecting.

The Fly Kansas Air Tour went to 9 different locations in 3 days and reached out to over 600 kids. Then we had another 300 kids in Wichita experience the Flying Classroom and heard some very inspirational speeches. That's nearly 1,000 kids in just 4 days of outreach efforts, thanks in large part to all the sponsors that believed in the vision and the volunteers that shared the passion.

But there was one little boy that stood out in the crowd, a 9-year old named Jack.  When we arrived at Pittsburg we were greeted by 250 kids, most of them around 13 years old.  There was also a reporter there who told me about her 9-year old son that loves aviation so much he reads WWII warbird encyclopedias to bed.

She asked me if this was an event that her younger son could participate in if she were to pull him out of school.  Of course I responded affirmatively and with encouragement.  When she returned little Jack got to experience the thrill of a lifetime...he got a ride in a Stearman bi-plane!  His mom wrote a great article about his experience and gave credit to the pilot for remembering what it was like to be 9-years old and discovering a passion for aviation.

And that, folks, is why we do it.  Not because we remember what it was like to be 9, but because we never really grew up.  Deep down inside, we're all still a bunch of little kids that get to run around and play with the toys we love.  Of course, some of our toys have grown in cost and unlike a kite that could take and survive a dive into a tree, we take great care in playing with, cleaning and putting our toys away for the night.

After so much planning, anticipation and nerves, the Kansas Aviation Expo 2014 has concluded.  What a blessing it was to have been a part of the third ever air tour to go across Kansas!  Making friends and enjoying the camaraderie of so many other pilots was amazing!  Reaching out to that many kids across the state was our goal but to see it come to fruition was incredible!

I even got to share a little of my own story.  I recalled growing up in an area of Los Angeles that doesn't look like Beverly Hills and told them that I once took a field trip to the local McDonald's.  There they gave us a behind the scenes look at working there and then left us with a simple message: don't do drugs, stay out of gangs and one day you can work here with us.
Some people asked me later if that was a true story and the answer is yes.  But even back then I never really listened to what others had to say about what I should be doing with my life.  I mean, really, who in LA would have thought that I'd end up in Kansas!  Here I am, though, living the dream.  Living my dream.  And when you do what you love, you're never really working.

At the end of the week I was logging all of my time in aircraft and I realized something.  My first discovery flight took place on September 25, 1993.  21 years later I was standing in front of a large group of students telling them to pursue their dreams and encouraging them to learn to fly.  It doesn't get much better than that.