Chapter IV- A New Adventure!

Sorry about the blatant play on the original "Star Wars" title, but a little heroic theme music seems appropriate.
I got to see and touch the airplane that I'll train in. Remos G3/600 sn 199 N199RE is a beauty! Sure it's flight school workhorse and it shows it. The aircraft has been used. The paint is no longer as glossy as new and the seats have been squashed by other heavy butts before me. But it looks great!
My Flight Instructor (CFI) is Sherman Bilbo, a soft spoken middle-aged black man with a wonderfully clear voice and a very apparent love of flying. He describes himself as an "airport bum" and says that he basically grew up at the airport where he works now. He's worked the line pumping fuel and just about every other job for just about every company on the field, some he worked for twice. He's old enough to be a calming influence. And he's been flying since 1975. That's 35 years for the math impaired.
We hit it off immediately. A standard complaint about flight instructors is that they are young guys just building up flight time to get an airline or corporate job. Makes them impatient and disinterested at times. I know I won't have that problem with Sherman.
I also got to see several other light sport aircraft (LSA). Met a veteran Navy P2V Neptune crewman named Phil crossing sport pilot off his bucket list in a big way. Today he passed the oral portion of his final checkride. The wind messed up something with the practical portion, but that's no big deal. A sizeable portion of students fail their first checkride. What Phil's done right is to buy a Jabiru before he even finished the license. That's style!
What went wrong today was centered around identification. The Trasportation Security Administration is rightfully concerned with ensuring that people with acccess to the flight line, like student pilots, are who they say they are. What Jim Julius forgot to send me was a letter with the documentation requirements before my first flight. Now I'm one of the most identified guys on the planet. I've got government files from birth, including security investigations, radio licenses, passports and military ID's. But the TSA wants the flight school to see a birth certificate or passport. I didn't pack either one with me. I will have my passport on every trip in the future!
So....My much ill-used neighbor, George, had to break into my house again and get the passport to Fedex for overnight. Like I said, good neighbors are good to have, but great neighbors are priceless.
More tomorrow after the two first flights.