Giving Back

While at the Rat Race I was amazed at the efforts of all the volunteers. People came on their personal vacation time from work to drive us around, be safety checkers, feed us and help out in every way. It made me think about something I heard at a Fun Run once. A runner said it was common in the race circuit to volunteer one time for every few races you do.

So this year I've stepped up and started doing more for my sport. In the past I've joined some work parties to clean up the roads to our launches and volunteered for a couple of hours here and there for certain events. But recently I've gotten a few opportunities to really give back. A few months ago I was offered the position of membership director for our local flying club. Volunteer board positions are notoriously hard to fill, and the girl in charge of this position was having trouble & they needed someone to step in. So I signed up, and through that found myself volunteering to help with our local fundraiser this past weekend too. At first I thought I would just be helping to organize & plan the event but since my tandem rating came through in time I got to help in an even funner way. Each year our club offers discounted tandem flights to the public & the pilots donate their time and the funds to the club. I was lucky enough to do 2 tandems yesterday and couldn't care less that I wasn't paid for them. The joy of bringing people into the air is amazingly fulfilling!

I'm looking forward to helping out more. There are many competitions this summer that attract a much higher level of flying than I'm at (yet) and I'm thinking about heading to some of them for a few days & giving back. Funny that it should be referred to as "giving" since you end up "getting" so much out of it.




Letting my tandem passenger take the controls :)