My second flight as a pilot

Since I will be travelling again this weekend I booked the aircraft for 5:30 today for some local sightseeing. My eight year old son and his best buddy were my intended passengers. Bruce, the father of my son's best friend wanted to talk to me as he was dropping his son off at our house. To say that Bruce is a nervous flyer would be a huge understatement, he is extremely scared of flying. After a few minutes discussing it I convinced Bruce to come with us. (He figured that if his son was going and if god forbid something happened and he wasn't there, he wouldn't be able to live with himself). I agreed but told him that they were more likely to get hurt walking across the street.

I had my work cut out for me today, was I up to the task?

They followed us to the airport and Bruce watched as I preflighted the aircraft, asking a thousand questions which I happily answered. He was not impressed with the fact that Fern was thirty years old. I reassured him that although her paint and interior needs a little TLC, that she was safe where it counted.

Ten minutes later we were climbing up from runway 21 for what turned out to be a great flight. Bruce actually was surprised with how beautiful the view was from 1,500 ft. Thankfully the flying was smooth as glass for the whole flight. (I can't think of another time it was so smooth). Bruce actually seemed pretty relaxed when I asked him a few times during the flight how he was doing.

We visited a few local towns basically in a 30 mile circle east of the airport, returning along the beaches that line our north shore. Touchdown was perfect with a light chirp from both main tires. (I actually had to leave a touch of throttle on due to the hot day and loaded aircraft). The school must have fixed the front wheel dampener since it didn't shimmy at all as we coasted down from flying to taxiing speed.

The day was perfect and so was the flight, the boys as expected had a blast. Bruce commented that he had a great time and would love to come flying with me again. Our wifes were talking tonight and my wife told me that Bruce had some really nice comments about the flight and my abilities as a pilot. His wife still can't believe that he went with us, and that he'd actually go again!