This is the question people have been asking me since I decided to embark on this project. And it got me wondering what makes someone want to do this. What could possibly be the driving force behind actually building an airplane? And then flying it? Is this crazy? Am I crazy? OK. We don’t need to answer that last one.

I have been building things almost my whole life. My mother says that when I was about 7 months old and could barely sit up by myself, she got me one of those stacking toys. She took all the plastic rings off of it and put everything in the playpen with me. She came back about five minutes later and it was assembled. She thought she just forgot about taking the rings off. So she did it again. And I quickly put it together again.

When I was about a year old and barely walking, my grandmother told a story that she came looking for me and I was no where to be found. She was looking at the ground, but she heard laughing higher up. I had pulled out the kitchen drawers to make stairs for myself and I was sitting on the counter. Apparently I was a bit of a handful and these stories explain why I am an only child. My mother wanted lots of kids and then she had me. In the field of contract law, we call that substantial compliance.

I guess it is in my blood. I love few things more than seeing the words “Assembly Required.” For me, I think this was inevitable. There is such an extraordinary amount to learn, but isn’t that a huge part of the fun? Just studying the plans (yes, I bought an advance copy in anticipation of my kit) is fascinating and I have already learned so much more than I ever did in ground school about how planes work. Every pilot should make an effort to go see the guts of an airplane. It is amazing how simple and how complex they are at the same time.

I wish I had learned as much about how to add pictures to this blog. That is this weekend’s project (after what I hope is a very nice cross country tomorrow morning).