Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Reminiscing

Nearly 11 years ago, this happened...



I was one of the many people that made it happen.

This video makes my heart race, gives me chills and puts tears in my eyes.  The amount of work it took to get to this day... well, I don't think I can quantify it.

Even though we did everything, checked everything and knew the baby was ready to fly, there was still just that tiny bit of unknown.  It was literally THE First Flight.

While reflecting on this day, the amount of trust we had in each other was awe inspiring... the amount of trust that we had in Bill Bubb to let him take the controls and the amount of trust he had in the rest of us to agree to take the controls... really, just awe inspiring.

This day was my first First Flight experience.  I was one of the many people on the ground... cheering, hoping, praying, waiting and cheering again.  We experienced a couple-hundred First Flights after that, but this was a brand-new aircraft, partially made with brand-new manufacturing technology and lots of other brand-new things.

Not much work happened after those speeches that day.  Hubba had to fetch me from the office and, as I recall, I was home "sleeping it off" by about 2pm.

May you be as blessed as I was to work with such an amazing team on such an amazing project.  These, most definitely, were the "the good ol' days."

5 comments:

MarmePurl said...

Awesome. I can not even wrap my head around how a plane gets airborne to begin with. The sciences, particularly physics, has always eluded me. Much respect for Katheryn's Brain.

Kathryn Ray said...

lol. Thank you very much.

The physics behind flight are actually quite simple, but doing it predictably, reliably, safely... not as simple.

Carrie Packard said...

I just listened to a chapter on the DC 3, and all I could think about was, "who gets to figure out if the thing will REALLY FLY?" That's kinda terrifying! Love this!

Vtknitboy said...

that is so cool!

Voie de Vie said...

Definitely a highlight that will live in your memory forever!