Day: September 24, 2002

To fly, or not to fly: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the sky to suffer
The winds and rains of cumulus clouds,
Or to forsake all the possible risks and troubles,
And by caution end them. Caution: to fly:
No more; and by caution say we end
The challenge, and the thousand natural dangers
That flying is heir to, ’tis the danger
Devoutly to be avoided. Caution, to fly;
To fly: perchance with safety: ay, there’s the rub;
For with that safe flight what dreams may come,
When we have yet to stall or spin again,
Must give us pause: there are the manouveurs
That makes calamity so worthwhile:
For who should bear the risks and perils of flight,
The aggressive thermal, the powerful wind shear,
The pang of damaged plane, the law’s restraint,
The insolence of controllers, and the many dignitaries
That merit patience from the hurried pilot,
When that same pilot may make his release
By never flying again? Who would bear these trials,
To curse and swear under a dreary sky,
But that the boredom of something after flying,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No flying skills return, searches the soul,
And makes us rather bear those risks we have
Than walk to others that we know not of?
And thus the glory of a dawn flight
Is sickled o’er with the pale cast of fog,
And flights involving geat pitch and roll and yaw
Are by this inclement weather delay’d
And lost in the name of safety.