“What do you mean by, ‘Honey, I just bought an airplane’?” Nicole stared at me like I had just sprouted a third eye and offered to fly us both to Hell in a homemade hot air balloon. Her expression landed somewhere between cardiac arrest and righteous homicide. If I’d told her I was Elvis reincarnated with a side gig in necromancy, it might have gone over easier. Up until that moment, she had been clinging—desperately, delusionally—to the idea that this whole “Africa situation” was just a passing phase. A midlife tantrum. A chaotic mirage that would vanish like a suspicious wire transfer in a Nigerian inbox. But now? Now she realised, with the chilling finality of a guillotine blade, that this wasn’t a phase.
This was real.
This was happening.
This was me, wielding a Super Cub-shaped battering ram against the crumbling walls of logic, marital peace, and financial prudence. And in her eyes, I had officially announced—loud and proud—that not only was the Titanic sinking, but I had just purchased an artisanal iceberg and installed a minibar on deck for the occasion.
“Well,” I chirped—cheerfully, like a psychopath holding a lit match in a fireworks factory—“for the fun of it and as a spur-of-the-moment decision, I had sent that grumpy bastard of an owner a little proposal. Just to mess around. Just to feel something. Just to see what happens.”
I had typed with the cocky swagger of a man who had clearly lost his grip on fiscal responsibility:
“Listen Mister. I give you 70,000 euros. Tomorrow. Not a penny more. In two days, I fly to the USA. Your choice if I buy a real airplane over there—or just the spare parts to patch up your airborne coffin.”
And then, because I apparently thought I was starring in some cheap spaghetti western of aviation bravado, I ended it with:
“One man, one word. The ball’s in your court.”
Which would’ve been fine, if I hadn’t accidentally lobbed the ball into the hands of a man who returned it like a Red Bull–fuelled Ivan Lendl on a meth bender, armed with divine wrath and a data plan. His reply hit my inbox with the delicacy of a nuclear detonation:
“OK. The plane is yours. I expect the money tomorrow. One man, one word.”
“Shit,” I thought.
Not the elegant, philosophical kind of shit, mind you. More the staring-down-at-your-own-life-exploding-in-slow-motionkind.
That was it. No more negotiations. No turning back. Just a one-line confirmation that I had—without adult supervision, fiscal planning, or a functioning brain—just bought an airplane. An actual airplane. Yellow. Mostly fabric. Powered by prayer and bad decisions.
Nicole stared at me like I had just told her I joined a cult that worshipped lawnmowers. She blinked. Twice. Then checked the cupboards for wine and blunt objects, probably fantasising about bludgeoning me with the nearest kitchen appliance.
And me? I stood there, the proud new owner of a bright yellow disaster with wings, trying to act like this was all part of some grand strategy instead of what it truly was:
The Everest of idiocy. The Super Bowl of self-sabotage. The aeronautical equivalent of drunk-texting your ex and waking up married to a goat.
And thus began the glorious descent into aviation madness, tailwheel terror, and the final countdown to Africa.
But—I’m getting ahead of myself.
It was the end of April 2011, and Enrico—blissfully unaware that I had nearly plowed myself into a cow-infested ditch on that solo triangle flight just days prior—decided it was time to throw me at the final boss of flight training. With the solemnity of a priest preparing to launch a particularly unconvincing exorcism, he announced:
“Marcel, I believe you are ready for your check ride.”
He said it like a man trying to convince himself that this was fine, that the world was not on fire, and that I hadn’t nearly turned his reputation into flaming rubble beside a North Sea runway.
“I’ll schedule it for the end of next week,” Enrico said with the weariness of a man who’d just realised he might be legally liable for whatever I was about to do. “Friday is usually good—people want to get home. In one piece. Preferably not packed into Tupperware.”
He sighed, already regretting everything.
“So, for the love of aviation, just this once—stick to the procedures. Don’t improvise. Don’t freestyle. Don’t invent a new way of flying midair. Whatever you do afterward is between you, karma, and the cleanup crew. Just… don’t kill anyone. Especially not the innocent cows and deer minding their own business below you.”
He paused, then added with the kind of tired conviction you only get after years of therapy:
“And please—try to radiate something remotely resembling an aviator. I don’t want you showing up barefoot, wearing flip-flops, board shorts, and a ‘Hakuna Matata’ tank top like you’re heading to a beach rave in Mombasa. I know that’s how they fly in Africa, but this is not Africa yet. This is still Europe, where the paperwork alone can kill you.”
“Worry not, Enrico,” I replied, puffed up with the same brand of bulletproof idiocy that had steered my life into most of its more spectacular collisions, “I know what I’m doing. I’ll just try and be me.”
He stared at me like someone realising they had just handed a loaded chainsaw to a toddler.
“That… is exactly what I’m afraid of,” he muttered, already mentally drafting a new student application process involving background checks, psychiatric evaluations, and perhaps a sacrificial ritual to ward off future chaos incarnate.
I stood there, heroically clueless, quietly wondering if I should wear a Hawaiian shirt for the big day. After all, nothing says responsible pilot like tropical fruit patterns and an aura of imminent disaster.
08:00 hours on a Friday morning, early May 2011.
I stood proudly—idiotically—on the apron of our charmingly derelict county airport, soaking up the early sun like a man completely unaware of the storm about to hit. I was calm. Too calm. The kind of disturbingly misplaced calm you usually only find in action movie villains seconds before they’re launched off a cliff in a burning vehicle.
I had shown up an hour early—not two, as Enrico had suggested—because I wasn’t nervous. I—unlike the rest of humankind—had somehow never understood test anxiety. In my twisted worldview, you were either prepared or you weren’t. Simple. And if you were, worrying was just a hobby for the emotionally unstable. I’d once read that worrying makes you suffer twice. I took that as gospel and decided to suffer only once, and preferably later, with snacks.
Enrico, on the other hand, looked like he’d spent the night curled up in the tower replaying every moment in his career that had led him to this very decision-making tragedy. He’d pulled the aircraft out of the hangar himself—possibly to prevent me from totalling it before the test even began. I couldn’t blame him. I have a rich history of collisions with inanimate objects.
We went through the visual checks again. And again. And again. I lost count somewhere around number 76.
Trying to lighten the mood like the oblivious moron I was, I quipped,
“Maybe we should just slap post-it notes on every part I need to check? You know—make it an aviation treasure hunt.”
Enrico did not laugh. He didn’t even blink.
Instead, he retreated to his weather charts, checked airspace frequencies, and reviewed emergency procedures with the same intensity a surgeon might display before removing a live grenade from someone’s colon. Then, with the gravitas of a priest at an exorcism, he turned to me and said,
“Remember, Marcel—the examiner will expect you to use the radio. To talk on it. To inform people where you are, where you’re going, and what your intentions are.”
The way he said “intentions” made it sound like he expected mine to include an unplanned aerobatic show followed by a rapid descent into someone’s backyard.
He looked me straight in the eyes—like he’d finally accepted that the plane might be the least dangerous part of the day—and sighed.
I have never flung a test in my life. Not once. My academic record was cleaner than a nun’s browser history. So when I saw the examiner approaching—a cheerful, slightly chubby woman with a sunbeam smile—I would’ve bet vital organs and at least one functioning engine that I was about to keep my spotless record intact.
Enrico, who until that moment had maintained the emotional range of a brick, suddenly turned into a charismatic game show host. He introduced us with flair, tossed a few jokes like he had a fun personality, and wished us both good luck—me for passing, her for surviving—before shaking his head and vanishing toward the horizon. Probably straight into the next bar, where he could order something strong enough to make him forget that this was the day his student might legally be allowed to operate a flying death trap.
“So!” she chirped, practically bubbling with enthusiasm, “I heard you’re going to Africa? How exciting! You have to tell me all about it. Let’s do a quick go-around, take off, and just get out of here. I love Africa, Marcel. I adore it!”
Enrico heard that. Oh, he heard it. He stopped mid-stagger, turned around slowly—like a man watching the first crack form in a nuclear reactor—and caught sight of me, grinning like Tom after successfully handing Jerry a stick of dynamite disguised as a slice of cheese. That was the exact moment he realised all his meticulously drilled procedures—emergency protocols, airspace regulations, radio calls—were about to be smothered under a cozy, elephant-print blanket of casual chatter and cheerfully abandoned in favour of a National Geographic-themed therapy session.
The check ride was a dandy, if by “dandy” you mean “barely legal sightseeing tour with a side of vague mortal peril.” The examiner and I drifted through the serene skies of Northern Germany like two ducks in a glider, nattering on about elephants, bush pilots, and the spiritual merits of unreliable weather reports.
Every once in a while, she'd toss me a question or gesture at some vague shape on the horizon. I answered with the polished confidence of a German 747 captain—one who had just discovered whiskey but was still determined to fake sobriety through sheer willpower. I explained how I had meticulously planned the flight, accounting for fuel, wind, alternate airports, and weather patterns stretching all the way to the Ural Mountains. Irrelevant? Yes. But I figured overwhelming her with useless data was better than revealing that I had the spatial orientation of a concussed pigeon.
She looked at me with open admiration. “Those are excellent planning skills, Marcel. You’re going to make a marvellous aviator one day. I’m sure of it. See that little airstrip down there? Let’s simulate an engine failure, do an emergency approach, and then head back. I’ve seen enough.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I declared with the solemnity of a man who knew the devil had just started preheating the oven. I pulled the throttle back to idle, and with the serene calm of a potted fern that had accepted death, I glided toward that airstrip like it was the parking lot of destiny. The manoeuvre felt less like an emergency and more like a casual funeral procession—except I was both the hearse and the corpse.
However, as I glided down to the threshold with immaculate timing and the tranquil confidence of a Buddhist monk steering a missile, she suddenly chirped, “Brilliant, Marcel. Let’s go home. No need to actually land here—this place is about as exciting as a Danish roundabout on a Sunday. I say we celebrate with a drink at your airport, Mr. Private Pilot. Congratulations!”
Thirty minutes and one landing later—so smooth it could’ve been mistaken for divine intervention—she blinked and asked, “Wait… we’re on the ground?”
Yes, Ma’am. We were. The kind of touchdown that makes airline captains question their profession choices. By the time we taxied in, Nicole was already standing outside the restaurant like ground crew for an emotional airstrike—balloons in hand, smile locked in, absolutely certain that I’d passed with flying colours and probably a few extra medals.
Enrico, watching me step out of the plane laughing with the examiner like we’d just returned from a scenic safari rather than a check-ride, finally began to uncoil. The man looked like a trauma survivor who’d just heard the war was over. The tension evaporated from his shoulders. He was clearly unaccustomed to the “Marcel Romdane Way”—a methodology best described as recklessly improvised, vaguely aerodynamic, and somehow always ending in applause instead of an insurance claim. I could practically hear the sigh of relief whistling through his teeth: no second test, no remedial flight marathons, no post-traumatic paperwork. We were done. Everyone still had a pulse. Even the flying relic of an airplane had emerged miraculously unscathed.
“This,” he muttered, staring at me like I’d just disarmed a bomb with a fork and a prayer, “might actually be a goddamn record. No one’s ever completed training this fast without at least losing a propeller or part of their soul. Congratulations. And hey—any news on that Super Cub? Maybe drop that guy a line. Who knows? He might be just crazy enough to say yes.”
Which is exactly what I did—fired off a half-sane email at midnight—and that’s how I woke up owning an airplane, while Nicole was already scanning the kitchen for blunt objects, visibly torn between a frying pan or the toaster. Cue the next disaster.
“Mr. Romdane, I am aware that this is your money,” my bank advisor began carefully, the way one might speak to someone holding both a loaded gun and a hand grenade with the pin already removed, “but please be advised—if we wire this amount of funds to that man, we won’t be able to get it back without extreme difficulty.”
She looked at me the way trauma therapists probably look at squirrels that have survived wood-chippers.
I had just instructed her to transfer €70,000 to a man I had never met, would never meet, and whose entire business model appeared to be built on trust, vintage aircraft, and exactly zero paperwork. I had no contract, no written agreement, not even a poorly spelled receipt. All I had was a few emails, an enthusiastic gut feeling, and an adrenaline addiction I refused to acknowledge.
“Don’t you worry,” I beamed, with the gleeful confidence of a preschooler who just swapped the family dog for a broken yo-yo and a jellybean. “what could possibly go wrong? The plane’s at the airport. The papers are here. It’s practically done.”
She blinked twice. “Well, I could think of several things that could go catastrophically wrong,” she replied, visibly considering whether to hit the panic button or call for a psych evaluation. “The account could be fake, for one. Or the aircraft could belong to someone else. Or—”
But I was already signing. Smiling. Thrilled. As if nothing could possibly derail this perfectly rational decision.
Ten minutes later, I left the bank as the proud, deliriously oblivious owner of a bright yellow Piper Super Cub—an aircraft I had not flown, had no experience maintaining, and absolutely no plan for so far. I had no idea where to park it. I had no idea how to insure it. I had no idea what bush flying actually required, apart from raw stupidity and canvas wings. All I knew was that we were leaving for America in three days, I hadn’t packed a single sock, and I had just turned my bank account into a war memorial.
And somehow, this was only the beginning. It was clear that the Africa plot was thickening like a badly stirred pot of oatmeal. Up until now, my grand vision had been less of a master plan and more of a dramatic trailer for a movie I hadn’t written yet. The rough outline went something like this:
- Become a pilot.
- Acquire a rugged plane capable of withstanding goat stampedes, bird strikes, and my own incompetence.
- Descend heroically upon the plains of Kenya or Tanzania to send elephant poachers fleeing in terror, screaming my name like I was some avenging angel with a propeller.
That was it. That was the plan.
Details such as where to live, how to make money, or what the hell to actually do had been filed under the reliable category of “I’ll figure it out later.”
Sure, my best friend Shlomi had offered me a temporary landing pad in his guesthouse—a generous gesture, if you ignore the minor detail that said house was already serving as an unofficial immigration hub for a sprawling herd of relatives, cousins, children, uncles, and possibly the occasional stray sheep. All wonderful individuals, I'm sure, but the general vibe was less “peaceful retreat” and more “wildebeest migration in a suburban living room.” So that wasn’t exactly a long-term option unless I fancied sleeping in a broom closet with toddlers poking me at sunrise.
And then came the real monster: the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority. If there ever was a place where dreams came to die a slow, paperwork-clogged death, this was it. The KCAA made the German “Luftfahrtbehörde“ look like Amazon Prime on steroids. This was bureaucracy at its purest: opaque, stubborn, and aggressively uninterested in helping anyone, especially not some wide-eyed foreigner with a saviour complex and a death wish.
Their unofficial slogan might as well have been:
“You want to fly? We want you to cry. Or to die.”
Still, I had an ace up my sleeve: a long and sordid past of navigating third-world systems where bribes, favours, and absurd amounts of persistence could move mountains—or at least shift them slightly to one side. So yes, I’d dive headfirst into the cesspool of paperwork, protocol, and polite pleading. And if that didn’t work, I’d simply revert to Plan B: charm, desperation, and envelopes filled with “thank-you notes.”
Somehow, I was going to make this work.
I had the plane.
I had the dream.
I had absolutely no clue what I was doing.
Perfect.
There was, unfortunately, more. How would I even get my airplane to Africa?
Option A—the one that, bafflingly, had the most appeal to me—was the kind of plan that only forms when your last three brain cells get drunk together and start high-fiving each other. I’d simply fill up the tanks, grab a few snacks (as if I were prepping for a lazy Sunday drive), climb into the cockpit like a delusional movie extra in a low-budget romance film, wave a tearful goodbye to no one in particular, and take off for Africa.
That’s right. My genius-level strategy—dreamed up with the same confidence that leads toddlers to wear capes and leap off furniture—was to just fly south. Over the Alps. Across the Mediterranean. Past Egypt, Sudan, and a few active war zones that would be thrilled to light up a Piper Cub like a birthday candle. All with the aid of a couple of dog-eared aviation maps, a $99 GPS unit, and the unwavering faith of a man who’d just passed his check ride and now thought he was basically Charles Lindbergh with Google.
In my head, I would glide heroically into Nairobi airspace after 5,000 miles of blind optimism, poor decision-making, and near-death experiences, where my wife would be waiting at the airport—bouquet in hand, cocktail ready, like I'd just returned from a successful moon landing.
In reality, the more likely outcome involved me ditching the Cub somewhere between camel-infested mountain passes and restricted military airspace, calling for help on a hand-cranked emergency radio while being politely detained at gunpoint by people who had very different interpretations of border control.
Option B—Fold it like a cheap tent, cram it into a 40-foot shipping container, slap a “fragile” sticker on the side, and hope it didn’t get hijacked en route by a Somalian goat herder-turned-pirate with a grudge against white imperialists? Even if the plane made it through the Suez Canal unscathed and didn’t vanish into the logistical Bermuda Triangle of East African freight forwarding, who was going to retrieve it from the port? Who would sweet-talk it through customs without sacrificing a small farm animal in the process?
Would there be tax to pay? Bribes? Blood oaths? A secret handshake performed under a full moon?
And then there was the actual reassembly. I had serious doubts that African bush-plane workshops—bless them—operated with anything resembling NASA precision. The best-case scenario involved my wings being bolted on backwards, the worst involved discovering my engine had been replaced with a moped motor and a bible.
But the real beauty of this situation? I didn’t know any of this yet. I was blissfully, gloriously unaware. That rare, fleeting ignorance before the avalanche hits. It’s a bit like climbing your first mountain, eyes glued to the summit, unaware that the path is booby-trapped with loose rocks, angry animals, and existential dread. Had I known what lay ahead—bureaucratic vampires, logistical sinkholes, financial haemorrhaging—I might’ve torched my freshly minted pilot’s license on the spot, set the plane ablaze for insurance, and disappeared to an uninhabited Pacific island to contemplate my life choices with a coconut and a thousand-yard stare.
But here’s the thing about decisions:
The safe ones are boring. Predictable. They lead to mildly disappointing barbecues, ergonomic office chairs, and dreams that expire quietly at 3:00 a.m. in a power point spreadsheet.
It’s the unsafe, unwise, completely-off-the-rim gut decisions—the ones that make your friends stage interventions—that actually set the wheels in motion. Those reckless leaps into the unknown are the birthplace of invention, courage, and glorious catastrophe. They force you to think sideways, pivot, adapt, scream into the void, and somehow build a runway out of sand and safety wire.
Most people avoid those choices. They play it safe. They mimic everyone else’s risk-free existence and then spend their lives secretly fantasising about the chaos they never had the guts to choose.
Which brings us, neatly, to Enrico. Ah yes—my instructor. The patron saint of eye-rolls and exhausted sighs. While I was out there cobbling together an aviation strategy from a heady mix of delusion and instant coffee, Enrico—of course—already had a plan. Naturally, it was rooted in Option A. And, it involved himself. Because of course it did.
The following day I informed him of the latest turn of events: that I had, without serious intent or adult supervision, become the owner of the very Piper Cub we once hurled toward the outer edges of breathable airspace. Not through strategy, not through investment wisdom, but through the aviation equivalent of drunk-texting your ex and waking up married in Vegas—only louder, pricier, and with worse fuel efficiency.
“A welcome to the world of plane ownership is in order then,” he said, grinning like I’d just secured a place in the pantheon of celestial heroes—when in reality, I’d just bought myself a lifetime subscription to mechanical despair, hangar politics, and the unending mystery of where the hell that oil leak is coming from.
He spoke as if I’d ascended to some holy order. A sacred brotherhood of weather-beaten aviators who spend 98% of their time grounded at local airfields, downing flat coffee and spinning yarns so long you could knit a parachute with them.
Men who wear bomber jackets indoors and refer to anything under 500 feet as an “emergency descent.”
Men who treat mildly turbulent landings like they’d just flown through enemy fire and limped back from the Battle of Britain, wings in tatters, co-pilot bleeding out, cigarette still somehow lit.
These were the men I’d apparently joined.
By mistake.
But my focus was far more unhinged than mere casual aviation cosplay. I had just checked the second item on my unlicensed, unapproved, and highly unrealistic anti-poaching hit list and now, with all the knowledge of an internet commenter who’s watched exactly three hours of STOL competitions on YouTube, I was staring down the existential horror of transforming my newly-acquired Piper Cub into a true Bush plane. A war beast. A low-flying, gravel-spitting, freedom-shrieking airborne avenger.
Naturally, the next step involved disassembling this poor unsuspecting aircraft down to its last rivet and building it back up from scratch—because I had no idea what I was doing, but I did have a dream. And that’s what truly matters when attempting to fly directly into chaos.
With the unwavering conviction of a man who believes Jesus is returning next Tuesday, and the blind optimism of someone who’s never been billed for an aircraft rebuild, I declared—loudly, euphorically, to no one in particular:
“I’m going to America! To the sacred lands of aviation! I will buy whatever I need to build the best damn bush plane ever!”
The words hung there in the hangar air—equal parts stupid and heroic. And just like that, the next chapter of this absurd, smoke-trailing, fuel-leaking fever dream took flight. A chapter that would involve finding a suitable mechanic.
Preferably one willing to share actual knowledge—real, hard-earned, wrench-in-hand wisdom. Not the glorified nonsense peddled in overpriced workshops, where instructors preach to wide-eyed students like prophets of piston-powered enlightenment. No, I needed someone who actually knew what the hell they were doing and wouldn’t mind explaining it to someone who didn’t.
Fortunately, I already had someone in mind.
The same man who once resurrected our limping flight school shuttle from the dead and, in doing so, unknowingly introduced me to the yellow bird now under my questionable ownership. A man with a name so profoundly German it practically goose-stepped into the hangar: Karl-Heinz. Or, as everyone called him, Kalli.
It doesn’t get more stereotypically German than that—unless you wrap him in a flag made of Sauerkraut and Weisswurst and give him an honorary doctorate in engineering efficiency from BMW.
Kalli had the calm, unshakable demeanour of someone who’d seen it all. All levels of aviation idiocy, all shades of pilot overconfidence, all the sacred commandments of airfield myth. He had endured every pointless suggestion, unsolicited tip, and barstool theory ever uttered by a man holding a beer and a pilot's license. And through it all, he now seemed to exist on his own plane of mechanical sobriety—floating somewhere above the chaos, neither impressed nor disturbed by anything short of an actual explosion.
Perhaps it was my steady stream of wisecracks and borderline pathological optimism that made us click.
Or maybe it was pity.
Hard to tell.
But Kalli took me in like some stray animal with aviation dreams and no sense of self-preservation. I saw him as the living embodiment of mechanical aviation wisdom; he saw me as a clueless man-child with a vaguely noble mission to save elephants on a continent most people couldn’t find on a map.
And yet, somehow, it worked.
Kalli didn’t laugh when I told him about my plan to turn the Cub into a savannah-chasing, poacher-scaring airborne demon. He didn’t even roll his eyes. He just looked at me with that signature expression—half curiosity, half “this is above my pay grade”—then nodded.
“Alright,” he said. “Let’s build your bush plane.”
And just like that, the Cub’s transformation began. One screw, one curse word, and one completely irrational dream at a time.
Enrico had already foreseen this whole charade—my glorious descent into plane ownership—with the cold precision of a man who knew my decision-making was a six-alarm dumpster fire soaked in jet fuel.
By now, he understood me well enough to realize that the idea of me simply starting the engine and, without so much as a flight plan or functioning sanity, launching myself over several international borders and a handful of active war zones was not just possible—it was probable.
And so, in a preemptive strike against my idiocy, he had already sketched out the cockpit layout of my “new” Super Cub. Because of course he had a strategy.
A blueprint. A spreadsheet.
Enrico wasn’t just a planner—he was THE planner.
Where my operational style looked like a slow-motion car crash narrated by a confused game show host, his involved weather forecasts spanning four time zones and pre-flight rituals so thorough they’d make a forensic accountant cry tears of joy. The man wouldn’t so much as taxi to the runway without personally interrogating the spark plugs and running a background check on the wind.
“We”—there it was again, that ominous we, implying that my Africa-bound lunacy now had a co-pilot—“need better instrumentation. All this junk? Out. Replaced. These basic gauges can’t be trusted.”
I stared at the blueprint, blinking. It looked more like the flight deck of Air Force One—or NASA’s Mission Control—than a fabric-and-dowel Piper. I couldn’t have been more shocked if someone had tacked a gatling gun to the yoke.
“Great,” I thought, internally, already making an arithmetical inventory of the funds required to finance this aviation laundry wish list.“Who’s paying for all this?”
But that—naturally—was just the beginning.
“We still need bigger tanks,” Enrico continued, rattling off items like a deranged doomsday prepper furnishing a bunker for World War Infinity. “A belly tank with cargo capacity. Double fuel lines per wing—redundancy, you understand. Two radios. Two antennas. A handheld backup. Battery upgrade. Emergency locator transmitter. Firewall reinforcement. Maybe throw in a weather radar.”
By this point, I had left my body entirely. My consciousness hovered somewhere near the hangar ceiling, watching the scene unfold with the detached horror of a man attending his own financial autopsy, complete with a soundtrack of slowly unraveling credit scores and the soft weeping of his future self.
Were we building a bush plane—or a flying NATO communications relay disguised as a mosquito with trust issues?
“Listen, Enrico,” I interrupted, summoning my best impression of a reasonable adult human—a role I hadn’t rehearsed in years. “What’s wrong with just making a few basic enhancements? Something that lets me take off and get moving. I don’t see what’s so hard about that. I’ve been around the world in vehicles that were more incomplete, unstable, and morally questionable than this plane. If anything goes wrong, I just bribe my way through the nearest border. Works every time. Not a single customs officer in that part of the world who isn’t bent like the Soviet sickle.”
He blinked. Slowly. As if trying to determine whether I was joking, insane, or simply raised by a band of feral bureaucrats. In his highly organised, spreadsheet-coloured universe, my “just wing it” approach must have registered somewhere between felony and suicide pact. I could practically hear the static hiss of his internal systems short-circuiting, trying to process the audacity of my logistical nihilism.
So I shrugged and went for the kill:
“Okay then. What’s your plan, Field Marshal?”
“I thought that was rather obvious by now,” he deadpanned, as if spelling out two plus two to a particularly dense barn animal. “We fly together. Think of it.”
I tried. I really did. But following his logic was like trying to thread a needle while blindfolded and on fire.
“We’ll need about 50 hours of flight time to get there,” he continued, utterly unfazed by the war zones in our way. “It’ll be valuable flight experience for you. Prepare you for Africa. You might even get some practice avoiding surface-to-air missile attacks, since we’ll have to skirt a few... geopolitically enthusiastic areas.”
I stared at him, half expecting him to laugh. He didn’t. He meant it.
Somewhere deep in my brain, a lone neurone raised a trembling hand and whispered, He’s not wrong.
In Enrico’s black-and-white, checklist-infested universe, this all made perfect sense. I had to admit it. To him, this wasn’t chaos—it was an extended syllabus. A training montage with airspace restrictions.
And, who knew? Maybe there was a chance—however microscopic—that we could even learn from each other. He might loosen up slightly (highly improbable unless sedated), and I could absorb a few slivers of aviation wisdom before inevitably rejecting them in favour of instinct, caffeine, and blind optimism.
Plus, in some dusty, cobwebbed chamber of my business brain, a brief calculation flickered to life: if we flew together, I’d only suffer half the financial haemorrhage.
Efficient, right?
Wrong.
Tragically, hilariously wrong.
Because what I didn’t yet know—what hindsight would eventually etch onto my soul with a blowtorch—was that Enrico believed, with the radiant confidence of a man completely detached from financial reality, that his contribution to this whole odyssey would be limited to his presence and his logbook.
That’s right. He’d bring the pilot skills—I’d bring everything else.
Fuel. Repairs. Permits. Bribes. More bribes. A small aircraft-sized hole in my bank account.
I wish we’d clarified that then. Just once—just once—I wish I’d asked the right question before I spent six glorious months daydreaming about our great cross-continental odyssey. The bonding. The adventure. The airborne camaraderie forged over war zones and questionable fuel stops.
Only to find out, mere weeks before departure, that Enrico’s financial contribution to this historic expedition was going to be exactly zero.
But no. That little plot twist was still lurking in the fog, grinning like a hyena with a credit card. The trip collapsed faster than a tent in a windstorm. And with it, so did the romantic delusion of two pilots soaring south like noble adventurers. Turns out, the only thing airborne was my budget—shot to hell before we ever left the hangar. To be fair, I still got the emotional whiplash for free. That part was fully sponsored.
But that’s a tale for later. Because Enrico wasn’t done yet. No, no—he was just revving up, with all the mad confidence of a man who rides a flaming ostrich into a war zone wearing nothing but optimism and a checklist.
“You’ll need a taildragger endorsement,” he said, clinically.
“You can’t just climb into a taildragger and expect to be able to handle it. It’s vicious. It can get very nasty, very quickly.”
I said nothing.
Up until that moment, I’d given about as much thought to tailwheel technique as one might give to underwater basket weaving in a desert. Sure, I’d noticed the airplane had its wheel anatomy reversed and probably handled like a cross between a shopping cart and a caffeinated crab—but so what? It was still a plane. How bad could it be?
“Five hours of training,” he continued, deadpan. “I won’t charge you. It’s going to be fun. I know a great little grass airstrip where we can practice your landings and take-offs for Africa.”
Looking back, this was the moment the universe casually leaned in and whispered, “You poor, dumb bastard.”
Because in aviation—especially the winged asylum I’d stumbled into—nothing comes free.
Not the training.
Not the maintenance.
Not the check-rides, biennials, medicals, or even the dubious honour of sweating through another simulated engine failure while pretending to look competent. Hell, you can’t even ask another pilot for a weather update without subconsciously owing them your last cigar and an IOU for psychological damages. The phrase “I won’t charge you” should have detonated red flags so violently, I ought to have been buried under a landslide of North Korean parade-style banners waving “ABORT MISSION” in Morse code.
Instead, I smiled.
And nodded. And strolled deeper into the quicksand—politely considering it—while my soul screamed in molecular protest. I had just graduated from student-hood. Escaped the never-ending hamster wheel of forced enthusiasm, instructor sermons, and ritual humiliation via written exams. I had levelled up to “licensed pilot”—the sacred threshold where you’re finally allowed to make your own terrible decisions in the sky and no one stops you because you paid for the privilege. Now Enrico wanted me to crawl back into the cockpit like a death-row inmate volunteering for the firing squad...
I admit, Enrico’s aviation expertise was invaluable. He was the Yoda to my runaway chariot. But me? I was about as much a team player as a landmine at a group hug—and with about the same bedside manner as a steel-toed boot to the groin.
I promised to “think about” the endorsement—aviation-speak for “absolutely not”—while I hallucinated alternatives. Like getting it in the U.S., of course! Tomorrow I’d be stateside, and I already knew the perfect spot:
Hillsboro, Oregon.
A modest little airfield surrounded by rain, despair, and industrial grey. Home to a flight school with a fleet of Super Cubs and the kind of staff who smiled too much—the sort of unsettling cheerfulness that suggested either a cult or full-blown emotional collapse.
But honestly? At that point, it still felt like an upgrade.
***
Before I left for America, I went to Kalli and presented him with Enrico’s grand vision—his lovingly hand-sketched diagram of what my future cockpit should look like. A technical masterpiece of theoretical optimism.
Kalli stared at it like I’d just handed him a toddler’s crayon drawing titled How to Survive a Spaceship Crash.
“Well, nice,” he muttered, with the detached amusement of a surgeon about to amputate a patient’s hopes. “If you plan to go IFR, that is…”
Then he leaned in, the way people do when about to commit a murder disguised as aviation advice.
“You see,” he continued, “the artificial horizon never works in a taildragger. Never. And if by some miracle it does, it’ll snap off its mounts the first time you land on something that isn’t a runway but a goat path with ambition.”
He tapped the directional gyro with one finger like it owed him money.
“This beauty here?” he sneered. “Yeah, enjoy hauling that four-pound piece of finely crafted junk around. You’ll use it exactly three times. Two of those will be by accident.”
He looked at me the way an undertaker looks at a man buying his own casket on sale.
And of course, he was going to be right on both counts. But I, in my usual display of wilful optimism seasoned with industrial-strength denial, nodded along like a doomed investor at a Ponzi scheme seminar. Because some lessons you don’t learn from wisdom.
You learn them from the wreckage.
But Kalli wasn’t done.
Not by a long shot.
Like a battle-hardened older brother watching his sweet, gullible little sibling wander into a back-alley poker game run by vultures, he pressed on—equal parts concerned, enraged, and morally offended on behalf of aviation itself.
“And what’s the manifold pressure gauge for?” he demanded, squinting at Enrico’s cockpit diagram like it personally insulted his ancestors. “That’s for planes with constant speed propellers. You don’t have one, do you?”
“No…?” I replied, suddenly aware of how that word tasted like a confession.
“Then why the hell would you need one?”
“Well…” I began, voice dropping into the survival octave of someone testifying at their own war crimes tribunal, “Enrico said it’s an important feature. Apparently, the tachometer only tells me how fast the propeller spins, which—while mildly entertaining—doesn’t exactly tell me how much power the engine is producing.”
Kalli looked at me. Blinked. Slowly. Like a man calculating whether it was legally acceptable to slap me with a clipboard.
“And since I’ll be operating at high altitudes,” I added lamely, “he figured it would… help?”
There was a silence. The kind of silence you get when a priest hears your sins and starts Googling exorcists.
I shrugged, already halfway down the tunnel of shame.
“Honestly, I’m just glad I can tell a taildragger from a shopping cart at this point.”
Kalli didn’t respond right away. He just stared.
Not at me, but at the growing metaphysical crack in the aviation gods’ collective patience.
Because what we had here wasn’t a panel.
It was a shrine to confusion. A symphony of misplaced trust.
A cockpit designed by an idealist, funded by a fool, and soon to be operated by both.
As I headed for the door, mumbling something vaguely hopeful like “See you in three weeks,” Kalli called after me.
“Hold it.”
The words dropped like a hand grenade.
I froze. Every molecule in my body already knew what was coming.
It was the tone—the sharp-edged concern of someone who just spotted a six year old trying to hot-wire a combine harvester.
“Did you say… Enrico is joining you on this adventure?”
He sounded alarmed. Not curious. Not surprised. Alarmed.
“Well, not exactly,” I replied, instantly shifting into the guilty shuffle of a man trying to explain a Tinder date that ended in arson.
“He said I can’t just jump into the cockpit with a box of cigarettes, a sleeve of Oreos, and a warm Coke and point the nose toward Nairobi like it’s a Sunday drive to the gas station. So… he suggested we go together. You know—as a team. Like Thelma and Louise, but airborne and underfunded.”
A pause.
“After all,” I added, puffing up the last scrap of rationality I had left, “I’d only have to come up with half the cost if we fly together…”
Kalli blinked. The kind of slow blink people do when they’re trying to keep their soul from evacuating through their nose.
“Did he say he’s going to share the costs?”
“Well, no,” I answered, defensively—because apparently, that was now my default setting. “Not yet. But why wouldn’t he? I mean—come on—why else would I take anyone with me if I’m footing the whole bill? What am I? The goddamn Salvation Army?”
There was a silence. Heavy. Radioactive. If words had radiation levels, mine were triggering alarms at Chernobyl. Kalli didn’t argue. He didn’t mock. He didn’t even sigh. He just looked at me for a long, surgical second—like a man watching someone voluntarily climb into a cannon labeled Life Lessons.
Finally, he said:
“See you in three weeks. Have a great trip. And while you’re over there, make sure you swing by a place called CubCrafters. The boss is a guy named Jim Richmond. Try to talk to him. Bye now.”
And with that, he closed the hangar door on what little remained of my illusions.
It echoed like a coffin lid.
Marcel Romdane—aviation’s village idiot-in-training, not broke yet, but well on his way to earning a PhD in catastrophic optimism
My best professional pilot imitation during my check-ride.... Not long after, blissfully the aviation village idiot, again...
Kommentar hinzufügen
Kommentare