Piva 1 Keegan Piva Ron Christiansen English 2010 12 October 2013 Cleared for Takeoff Pushing the throttle

to full power, the wheels start rollin down the runway, next thing I know Im airborne. Im climbing above the chaos of the five oclock traffic, with no one in my way. Im free to go wherever I want and there is no traffic or lights or anything to slow me down. I continue my climb to twelve thousand feet so I can make it over the mountains and away I go. I can see all of the lakes and trees in the countryside. I am traveling twice as fast as anyone on the ground and I dont have to follow any roads. This is the career I am getting myself into, I thought to myself. I am always free to takeoff and go. Yet, without the support of my family and the decisions they helped me make, I would never have gotten to this point. It all started at the end of my junior year and my 17th birthday, when I got to fly an airplane with an instructor for a half hour. This was one of the best presents a guy could ask for. This was when I got my first real taste of flying an airplane and I was hooked. There was no turning back and that is when my research on what it took to become a pilot began. Usually, most young kids will watch Top Gun and say that they want to become Maverick or Ice Man and fly the jets. I was definitely one of those kids. It wasnt until I got this flight that it really hit me that flying is what I wanted to do for a living. Now I was faced with the many choices that were in my near future. My research on how to become a pilot consisted of two different paths: 1) Look at colleges and universities with flight

Piva 2 programs or 2) Look at how I could fly for the military. I came up with a variety of different options for myself. There were two or three colleges that were fairly close to home and then there was the option of going to the Air Force Academy or the Naval Academy. Out of the two military academies I had chosen to go for the Naval Academy. That was probably because every time I heard Kenny Loggins, Danger Zone, playing on my iPod, I wanted to be landing on the aircraft carriers. I ended up pursuing this option and had done all of the paperwork when an unexpected event had happened. My first Varsity football game of my senior year I tore my ACL in my knee. After I had broken the news to my recruiter for the Naval Academy he gave me some options. I could either try and get a medical waiver and maybe still get a flight slot after graduation or I could give up on flying and chose another career through the Navy. I knew that I wasnt letting flying out of my sights as a career so I decided to ditch that plan altogether. Well maybe not all together, I am a sophomore in college now and still think about that option all the time. I may still be able to pull off becoming a Navy pilot after I graduate from college. Now I was left with what I thought was the only option and that was to choose a college to go to that had a flight program. I had three in the works, all of them in Utah, which was nice because it was still pretty close to home and my family. But then unexpectedly my Dad and step Mom presented me with another option. One night my Dad came in my room and told me he had something to tell me and to come downstairs. Once I got downstairs my Dad and step Mom, Rebecca, were sitting at the table. Trying to think of what it could possibly be, I went over to the table and sat down. My Dad had told me that they have been talking to my Aunt Sara (Rebeccas sister) that lived in South Africa and they had come up with a plan. Then Rebecca went on to tell me,

Piva 3 My sister has offered to have you come and stay with them, while you do your flight training for your private pilot license Are you serious? I said. Yes, all you have to do is pay for your flight training and they will cover the rest of the costs of living there. Are you interested? Of course, that sounds awesome. This wasnt completely out of the ordinary for my Dad and Rebecca to come up with another opportunity for me. They were always trying to help me figure out different career paths that I could take. On my 16th birthday they took me to a full motion flight simulator, which kind of got me thinking of flying; then on my next birthday, they got me that flight which got me dedicated to a career in flying. I think that they both were really pushing for flying, because Rebecca used to be a stewardess for an airline and my Dad always had a dream of flying. Considering where I am at now, I am so happy they got me into flying. After a week or so of doing research, about what Africa was like and looking at the colleges in Utah, I was close to making a decision. The schools in Utah all had great programs with a variety of different options to choose from. While these schools sounded like a great option, I really wasnt sure which college and degree I wanted. I only knew one thing for sure and that was I wanted to be flying. Africa would be an amazing opportunity to not only get my private pilot license but also travel the world. I was scared of the traveling at first but then thought about the once in a life time chance it would be. Also, by choosing to go to Africa it would give me more time to think about which degree I wanted. I had a pretty firm idea that I wanted to go to South Africa, but now I had to make sure the parents were ok with it. My Dad was easy because as much as he loved having me around, it was partially his idea for me to go to South Africa.

Piva 4 My Mom on the other hand wasnt quite sure about it. She was a little scared of her baby boy being half way around the world to another country. She had good reasons to be I had only been out of the country once before and it was with my whole family. This time I would be on my own traveling and then living with family I had only met a few times. She was totally for the schools in Utah more, but she was always strong in supporting whatever decisions I made. She told me that even though it is a long ways away she would support my decision to go. With both of my parents supporting my decision, I told my Dad I wanted to take that opportunity to travel across the world and live in South Africa. After that I just wanted high school to be over with. It seemed like it took forever without sports but I had finally made it to graduation. After Graduation in late May, I still had another five months to when I took off in October, to question if I made the right decision. I thought a lot about if going to Africa to fly was really the right thing to do. Every time I would talk to any of my family about Africa they would reassure me that my decision to travel across the world was going to be great. Then that summer I had an experience that cemented my decision on flying, which actually helped me feel better about going to South Africa. I had gotten a job on a forest fire fighting crew in Challis, ID and had a lot of fun experiences but there is one that stood out the most. Two of my crew members and I had to hike to a cabin to do fire protection on it. After we finished, we hiked to an airstrip where we would be flown out back to Challis. The plane was waiting there for us and once we got our stuff loaded on the plane, the pilot had us load up. My coworkers and I had to play rock, paper, scissors over who got shotgun and I couldnt believe it I won, this had to be a sign I was meant to fly. So we all loaded up and after we had taken off from Indian Creek airstrip the pilot looked over at me and said, So what do you think?

Piva 5 This is definitely what I want to do, I replied, I cant imagine anything better than being able to hop in a plane in the morning and get to experience this every day. A few months after this flight out of the woods, I was on a flight on my own. After about 20 hours of flying with my instructor, the time had come. We had just landed and he told me I was ready for my first solo flight. He got out of the plane and, went up to the control tower to watch. I taxied very anxiously to the runway ready for my first flight. I called to the control tower and told them I was ready for takeoff, they replied, Sierra Uniform Papa [My tail number], Cleared for takeoff. I pulled out on the runway did some last routine checks and I was ready. Pushing the throttle to full power, the wheels started rollin down the runway, next thing I knew I was airborne. My heart was beating a million miles an hour, the biggest smile on my face. I finally did it. I was flying by myself.

Works Cited Top Gun. Dir. Tony Scott. Perf. Tom Cruise, Val Kilmer. Paramount Pictures, 1986. DVD. Loggins, Kenny. Danger Zone. 1986.