My love affair with the sky started when I was born!
I think I fell in love with it since I opened my eyes, because since I can remember, I always looked at the sky, the clouds, the light refracting through the clouds at different times of the day ... in different parts of the world ...
I always liked flying too, my first flying experience was when I was 16 years old and flew to U.K. to go to Cambridge for a summer language course.
I still remember my ecstasy when the plane started taxing on the runway and took off, I never felt something so exilarating before in my life!
My love affair with planes was started.
I also remember looking at a poster that my father gave me during my teens of a tornado fighter and dreaming of flying with one of those one day ...
I always put on my goal list: learning to fly, but never really took active action about it.
I always thought one day I will do it ...
Then in September 2008 I was going through a very difficult period in my life when I was reconsidering everything I did and felt completely flat out and not knowing what next ...
I was sitting in the kitchen one morning with my head in the clouds not really thinking about anything specifically and then ... it struck me like a lightning!
My company name came to mind Flying Inpiration and I focused on the first half of it: flying ....
Flying means being in the air and, as I am not a bird, the only way to be in the air is with an aircraft of some sorts ... so, yes I have to learn to fly to become a real flying inspiration! That's what I want to do!
Since then a whole series of coincidences started to happen without me doing anything actively.
Four days later I was flying in a double seater airplane above Lake Como where few years earlier I had flown with a seaplane deciding that one day I will be seating in the pilot seat and would fly myself!
Funny coincidence isn't it?
A week later I was flying on an autogyro for the very first time in my life, wow, what a feeling!
After these experiences it became quite clear to me that I had to learn to fly sooner rather than later and couldn't postpone it any longer.
I started looking into the different types of licences for different types of aircrafts and I was wondering which one would be the right one for the Flying Witch ...
In January 2009 I improvised a visit to Turin to see my parents, both their birthdays happen in this month, my mother was getting 80 and my father 79 years old.
I wanted to give them something special that they could cherish in their memories later on, so I decided to take them on a short flight on a small plane to celebrate their birthday, I thought that it would be a different present ...
While we were flying I was feeling my heart beating faster and faster and thought that I would really like to fly my father who is an aeronautical engineer one day myself as a pilot.
I get such an adrenaline rush when I fly, there are no words to express the feeling but living it for real!
When I came back to U.K. I kept pondering how to make my dream come true and which aircraft to choose ...
The Air Games were held in Turin in June that year so I thought that I could go again to Turin and maybe I would get inspired by the show and I would become clearer about which aircraft I would like to learn to fly ...
On the last day of the event, there was an air show with several types of different aircrafts and among them also an aerobatic glider.
I knew about gliders and wanted to try it one day, but I was not considering it as a possibility for me as I have always been drawned to propellers, either in aircrafts or ships, therefore for me an aircraft had to have it otherwise it wouldn't juice me at all ...
When I saw the show though and saw that it is possible to do aerobatics with a glider, my jaw dropped and I said to myself: "That's what I want, period!"
Two days later I had a trial flight on a glider and really fell in love with it and started pondering how to learn to fly one and where ...
A week later while I was holidaying for few days with my sister in Sardinia I found out that there was a little private airfield not far from the little town where I was and decided to go for a half an hour flight with a savannah plane.
The panorama over the coast line and the nearby little islands was breathtaking and it really reminded me of when I arrived for the very first time to the Maldives and looked out of the plane window and saw the atolls set in that turquoise water ... also then my heart started beating faster and faster ...
I thoroughly enjoyed that experience, but when I came down, I could feel that I was missing something ... that something was me flying the aircraft instead of being flown by somebody else!
I came back home starting considering how to join the club in Turin and how to go there for the lessons ... and how to manage it all ...
I had another flight on a glider in Turin in August and understood that I really wanted to have that reality on a regular basis and learn it little by little, I wanted flying to become a part of my life rather than the odd occasion, it meant too much to me!
I started looking into English flying clubs, where they are, how they work and got into contact through a friend with someone who learned gliding at the London Gliding Club in Dunstable who also lived in London.
Talking with him brought all my passion back up to the surface and I realised that I could do it myself too without having to fly to Turin etc...
In autumn that year I had to find another place where to live at a very short notice, so I decided to go and inspect the club and, if I would like it, I could move nearby so that I could learn gliding on a regular basis and make it become part of my life.
So I did and since January 2010 I am a member of the London Gliding Club in Dunstable and am enjoying my passion of all times: flying in the sky among the clouds which I used to look at from the ground, now I look at them from the seat of a glider, it is a whole different perspective, it is like being in heaven!
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