Member Article

Member Article Pie for Breakfast by Scott McNickle

{Editor’s Note – This article was written by Scott McNickle and appeared in the February 2017 issue of the KFactor. Please, enjoy!}

Many, if not most of us in D4 have reached the age where it’s important to pay attention to our health. Among other things this means paying attention to what we eat.

Some of us, like Mrs. Kane’s husband, have received wakeup calls and the rest of us need to hear the alarm. Our days of living on deep-fried bacon-wrapped cheese smothered in gravy with half a cheesecake for desert are over. We need to start feeding ourselves like grownups.

But.

Sometimes you just gotta have pie for breakfast.

There’s a meme that pops up on my Facebook page every few weeks that says something like, “The purpose of life is not to arrive at the grave a well-preserved corpse, but rather to skid in sideways with your hair on fire, fist bumping the Grim Reaper and thinking ‘That was a hell of a ride!’”

We need to remember that life isn’t forever and a certain amount of misbehaving makes it good. There’s an old saying that I just made up that goes “Moderation in all things, including shenanigans.” I think it’s important to include some pleasure in whatever time we have left.

It’s important to keep our hobby fun. As Pattern flyers we probably work as hard at our fun as anyone in model aviation. Lots and lots of hours of practice, being critical of ourselves, asking others to criticize us. Hours spent getting airplanes right, doing maintenance, thinking about how to get better, flying when we don’t really feel like it. If we’re not careful it can turn into a job.

Now, I used to have a job, one that had me walking around throwing my hands in the air and yelling at raccoons on my drive home and falling asleep on the couch at 8:00. I needed the vacations I took and eventually I just needed to get away from the job. We don’t want to let our Pattern ‘job’ get like that. Did it ever occur to you that some of the great guys who have left the Pattern ranks did so because they turned their fun into an irksome job?

Practice and contest flying are a kind of joyful stress that makes us feel alive, but too much of it can burn us out. Everyone has their own limits (I think Brenner’s is about 1.25 billion flights a year) but when that limit is reached things go bad in a hurry.

We all need some sort of model airplane version of pie for breakfast.

Wild Bill having some pie for breakfast

What to do? Step out of your comfort zone every once in a while. Fly a glider (electric gliders are great), a clunky sport plane, an Old Timer. Does your club have contests you don’t usually participate in? Enter a glider contest, or a club pylon race or a fun fly made up of silly events. Try combat. Fly a rubber model, or some control line. I don’t think I’ve seen three grown men giggle more than the time we flew 3-up U Control Goodyear racing. Give yourself permission to be a rookie at something. Give yourself permission to finish last. Give yourself the gift of not being an expert at what you’re doing. Learn from someone who is.

Maintain your sense of perspective.

Wild Bill’s lovely and (excessively) patient wife Leslie once asked him “Who dies if you don’t win this contest? Remind me how much money you win if you do.” Remind yourself that if you’ve reached the age of 40 and you aren’t Andrew Jesky you ain’t never gonna be no Andrew Jesky. A tiny, tiny percentage of us are world class, the rest are in it for fun and personal fulfillment.

So…work hard. Practice, practice, practice. Pick the brain of any pilot who will answer your questions. Buy the best equipment you can afford and keep it in top shape. Never give up.

But every once in a while, have pie for breakfast.