Yep.
Our family has a lasting fascination with aviation. My brothers and I built LEGO airplanes as kids, constructed (detonated?) model rockets with our Dad and devoured the EAA youth magazines as teens.
I was fortunate to get my Private Pilot's License (PPL) my senior year in college, accumulating nearly 50 hours and passing my FAA checkride the 3rd week in December 2002. I haven't flown as Pilot In Command (PIC) since.
Nine and a half years later, now married with 2 daughters, my wife bought a Groupon for admission to the EAA museum in Oshkosh, 10 minutes south of our new home. On the drive home, we were watching jealously the families criss-crossing Lake Winneconne on waterskis on a hot July day and debating whether maybe we should get a boat and join them. As casually as I could, and perhaps half-joking, I suggested, "you know, for about the same price as a nice boat, we could buy an airplane."
My wife, daughter of a USAF test pilot, paused for a second, and said, "you know, I didn't really grow up around boat people."
That's when I knew I married well.
The following summer, I was wandering the rows of homebuilts at Oshkosh after a volunteer shift, reading about the 40-ship commemoration of Rich VanGrunsven's company, when a trio of guys stopped me by their plane (an RV-7). I must have looked pretty shell-shocked, because they took pity on me and used small english words, not once dropping a "cleco" or "dimple die" into conversation. Realizing my helpless condition, they tried to clear things up:
Them: "Just start building."
Me: "But-"
Them: "No. Just do it. Buy a kit and get started. You can do it."
And that was it. Before I could blubber out a question they'd disappeared. I stumbled home (2 hours late for dinner), galvanized: we were going to build a plane.
