I FLEW A PLANE!

I did something cool!

(It has nothing to do with this orangutan though.)

     I think half of my body is afraid of heights. I've known this for about 8 years now and it still doesn't make sense. When I was in Paris (ugh, my blog makes my life sound cooler than it actually is... is that why people blog?) back in 2006, I went to the Eiffel Tower. I had a cold at the time, so I rode the elevator. (If I go back, I want to take the stairs.) There are 3 levels of the tower you can hang out on. Naturally, they're all very high. I went to all 3. Level 1: No fear. Level 2: No fear. Level 3: Complete terror. Whyyy? Had I fallen off at any point I would have been equally dead. It's confusing.

    Flash forward to September 2013. I went skydiving in Moab. It was magical. I jumped from somewhere between 9,000 and 10,000 feet. At that height, everything on the ground looks like plastic. It's like the world transforms into some sort of miniature model of itself. Things just stop seeming real. That small fact, however, does not make it easier to jump. The half of my body that is afraid of heights convinced the half that is not that it should be. Pulling my legs out the door of the plane in preparation to jump required an intense inner struggle between my survival instincts and my attempts to be cool. Somehow, Lady Gaga's 'Applause' found its way into my brain and distracted me long enough to get into jumping position. Thanks, Miss Gaga.

    Anyway, yesterday I found myself climbing into another small plane - which told my brain to get ready to go skydiving and sing 'Applause' to myself for the next 5 hours. Fortunately, neither of those things happened. Instead, I enjoyed a pleasant 42 minute plane ride with my Uncle Jerry. Here's us in his plane. Yeah - he owns a plane.

     We partied at about 2,800 feet. In case you were wondering, that's still high enough for things to look plastic. Here's a better shot of my Venom shirt and the ground below:

     We flew down to the Payson temple (see below), then in front of the Y, then over my apartment. Bizarrely enough, I never had the slightest twinge of fear. I guess I hadn't crossed the threshold between The Eiffel Tower's level 2 and level 3. So that's a relief. It also makes absolutely no sense. The Eiffel Tower is only 986 feet tall.
     Side note (since I'm apparently trying to make myself sound cool), I was once able to say that I had been inside the tallest building in the world. This was before that whole Burj Khalifa thing Dubai. At the time (August 2009), it was the Taibei 101. I think you can only go up to floor 96 or something, but that's very high. However, no fear. Also, the building is only 1,667 feet. If humans are born with a decent sense of height, mine is broken.

Since I like bullet points, here's what I learned from flying a plane:

• It's fun. Like, lots of fun.
• You don't "drive a plane". You pilot it.
• When you switch control of the plane, you say, "I have the plane." This is important.
• Turbulence is fun. Lots of turbulence is not.
• I now have 7/10ths of an hour of flight time. Pilot's license - here I come.

Finally - here's a video I took. I hope posting it here works. I'm not entirely sure. 

*Sorry for the oppressive amounts of parenthesis. :/ (Seriously.)