Even after flying for more than thirty years, I never start the engine of my Cessna without learning something new. This was particularly true this past August (2025) when I completed a dozen complex flights in ten days. But sitting at the end of the runway in Michigan, on a dreary morning with light rain and the lowest ceiling I have ever seen, I wasn’t in the mood to learn something new. I was worried. My hands were shaking. I pondered the poor life-choices which had brought me to this threadbare airport for a zero-dark hundred departure.
