Taking your first solo flight in an airplane is a huge step forward in learning how to fly. It means that the instructor believes you can do the following things all by yourself: make the correct radio calls, taxi to the correct runway without running into the grass, takeoff without turning left even though the plane wants to, reach the pattern altitude and stay there without going up and down like a porpoise, fly a reasonably rectangular pattern, configure the aircraft for the approach back to the runway, and (most importantly) land without killing yourself or breaking the airplane. You aren’t expected to do those things perfectly or even gracefully. Improvement will come with practice.

Landing is by far the hardest step. It involves so many small details and counterintuitive concepts that I won’t try to list them. I’ll just say that before I landed an airplane on my own for the first time, I had over 60 hours of training in that type of plane and nearly another 20 hours of training in gyroplanes. I had accumulated over 270 landings with the instructor watching, correcting, teaching, and often taking the controls away from me. It took a long time to find the right mental groove, and even now I’ve only begun to settle into it.

I flew my first solo two days ago, on October 14th. I had imagined sitting down afterward to write a profound page or two about the experience of being all alone in the air while my instructor sat on the ground. He would be watching in desperate hope that he hadn’t misjudged my readiness. I would be struggling with the realization that there was only one person in the world now who could put my butt back on the ground alive and unharmed. I couldn’t chicken out and pull over. No one else could take the controls. I could put off the landing for a couple of hours until I ran low on gas, but sooner or later I’d have to land, and the longer I put it off, the more wrung out I would be.

But soloing wasn’t profound in the way I had imagined. The flight felt routine. Maybe part of the reason was accumulated life experience (I’m over 60), but most of the reason was those 270 previous landings and the patience of my instructor. I called ground and taxied to the runway. The takeoff was imperfect but fine. I got a hundred feet too high in the pattern, but I fixed that. I started my descent, and whenever it was too fast or too slow, I corrected for it. All the way down, I watched the runway (and the entire planet!) coming up at me, but it didn’t make me nervous or worried. There was no time to think about failure, because the approaching asphalt, the airplane’s alignment, and my airspeed occupied all my attention. I remember passing the arresting cable that they built for testing F-16s at the field, but there was no time to think about it except that it meant I still had 6000 feet of runway. I rounded out the landing too soon (an ongoing problem), so I had to let the airplane sink for more time than I should have. My instructor took video of the landing, and later I got to see the plane settling to the asphalt just as a berm obscured the instructor’s view. That means he didn’t see the three gentle bounces as the airplane settled down. More importantly, I didn’t squeal the tires by landing at an angle, which made my instructor very happy. I pulled off the runway where I had planned to, and taxied a little too fast (something else I need to work on). The mower was out, and on the way back to my starting point, I paused on the taxiway to let the prop blow grass clippings to the side. Then I stopped to wait for a minute before my second time around.

I didn’t get the shakes. I didn’t feel a cold breath on my neck like the stinking draft from a slaughterhouse. I didn’t feel like jumping up and down and shouting with joy. Frankly, I was surprised at how ordinary the experience felt. The landing was not bad. I was pleased with it, but not so pleased that I didn’t want to get much better. There was a C-130 cargo plane in the pattern, and I had to wait until it had landed before I could take off again. I watched the landing carefully and was surprised at how close the C-130 was to the ground before rounding out. On my next time around the pattern, I tried to round out lower and did a better job. I only bounced twice.

On the third time around, I only bounced once. Then it was time to pick up my instructor and fly back to our home airport. It’s busier and the runway is both shorter and narrower. My landing wasn’t as good, but I got down in one piece and know how to make it better next time. I expected to get out of the airplane and collapse on the ground, but it was just like any other time I’d gotten out. Routine. Mundane. And as I thought about it, that’s just the way I want it to be.

I do stand up a little taller now, but all that means is I slouch a little less.