How I was Showing Homes to One Guy and Almost got to Fly in Another Guy's Homebuilt Airplane

What you need to know before you read this is that I love to fly. I have my pilot's license (single engine land), although I haven't flown in a small plane since the 1980's. I haven't flown in years for a lot of reasons, which makes me, as a pilot, what they call low-time-dangerous. I love airplanes. Big ones, small ones, planes of all sizes and shapes. I especially like the homebuilt planes. The notion that for something like the cost of a mid-sized car you could actually own your own floatplane or beefed up ultralight, well, that really turns my crank.


So. Friday night I am showing a couple of houses in the valley to a client. On the way home, I am passing a residential area that has a private airstrip for the people who live there. I almost sold a house on that airstrip once, and since it is similar to the houses I am showing my client, we take a short detour.
We putter on down to the end of the airstrip looking at the houses (none of which are for sale) and next to the runway is a plane with a 70-ish guy just sitting in it. He looks like he is just about to start or finish a flight. His plane is clearly not your garden variety Cessna or Piper, and looks like a homebuilt or two I have seen in Kitplanes magazine which I read sometimes when my wife isn't looking. His plane is very sexy.
So I stop and ask him what kind of plane it is, and if it a home built. It is. He asks if I fly. I tell him I used to. We pass the time like that for about a minute. Then he asks if I want to go up with him.
Yikes! Really?
Really.
I tell him no, I really can't. I am, after all, with a client. He says ten minutes, max. My client then says he doesn't care, and that I should go for it. He'll even take pictures of me in the plane if I have my camera with me. Which, as a good real estate agent, I do.

What the heck, I say.
So we get the plane aimed the right way, and the pilot shows me how to get in. Getting in is a lot like getting into a kayak - you kind of shift your weight up and over and slip down in. You don't get into this plane quite so much as strap it on.






The pilot helps me hook up my four point seatbelt, get the headphones on and we taxi off to the other end of the runway for take off.










At this point, I am thinking this is very cool. We're going flying! I am also looking at the instrument panel and thinking how unfamiliar it all looks. There are some new gizmos that weren't around the last time I flew - GPS for instance - but mostly I've just forgotten what all that stuff is for.
We do the pre-flight run up and routine which is all terribly familiar and I am ready go, and getting pumped when there is some hitch in the smooth working of the horizontal elevator - that thing on the tail that makes the plane go up or down.
He fiddles with it for a while, and then says well, back to the barn. Something in there isn't right, and if it ain't right, we don't go, he says. He says one of the reasons he's flown for so long and lived to tell about it is he never takes a plane into the air when there is a problem on the ground.
Thinking of the consequences I couldn't agree more.
So we taxi back. He says he owes me a flight and he'll call me one day. I give him my card.
I am disappointed, but glad that if there is a problem we found it before going up. And glad I've got a pilot who doesn't take risks. This day, it will have to be enough to sit in the cockpit and taxi.
And if he ever calls me for that flight? I'll let you know.