Summer, glorious summer! It snuck right up on me. Sailing the relentlessly sunny Caribbean for seven months aboard Windbird, the pageantry of northern seasons played out distantly across the flickering screens of muted beach-bar TVs: Halloween horror flicks, cable-news Snowmageddons, Yankees-Red Sox at Fenway Park. So when Dawn and I hurricane-prepped and hauled Windbird at a Puerto Rican boatyard in June and flew home to Minnesota, our abrupt return to the land of seasons caught me a little flat-footed. Having survived the long winter we elected to skip, friends and family were excitedly shaking off their winter doldrums and basking in the golden euphoria of a freshly blossomed summer.
A Quest for Flight Across Two Continents
Key Takeaways:
- An airline pilot, returning to Minnesota for summer, faced unexpected difficulties finding available small aircraft rentals or instructors for recreational flying in the U.S.
- During a layover in Frankfurt, Germany, he discovered a microlight flight school at Flugplatz Mainz-Finthen and successfully flew an Ikarus C42 microlight with an instructor.
- The flight provided a fresh, enjoyable perspective on the Rhine Valley, was surprisingly affordable compared to U.S. rates, and has inspired the author to plan future flying adventures in Germany.
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