Last Friday, I went up for an introductory flight lesson out of the San
Carlos airport. WOW!!!!!! I have been dreaming about learning to fly
since I was in my teens. All the time I was in the air the lines of
that famous poem kept going through my head "Oh, I have slipped the
surly bonds of Earth.........". When we landed (I didn't want to ever
come down :-)) the instructor asked me if I thought I would be
interested in flying and I told him that wild horses couldn't stop me
now and proceeded to sign-up for two flight days the following week. I
had my second flight day, this afternoon, practicing a variety of turns
while maintaining (or making attempts to) altitude.

One question I had for the instructors out there - what I seemed to find
more awkward than anything was steering the nose wheel using my feet on
the rudder pedals. The people in the control tower must have thought I
looked like a wounded bird taxing out to hold position before takeoff.
Is there some 'trick' to getting the hang of this, so often I would be
tempted to reach up and turn the control yoke but resisted the
temptation (due to its futility).

Once again, thank you all for your posts on this newsgroup. I finally
just made myself go out and start. I fly again, on Friday and will keep
you posted. Meanwhile I am going to pour over some of the aviation
training books to review some of the things I learned today. Just
starting out, but I am so excited!