I'm now 1.5% complete with the hours needed for my private pilot certificate. Flying was pretty awesome. Went up in this rig here, the Diamond DA20. It is a brand new plane with only about 110 hours on it.

Got to pretty much do the entire flight, except for some assistance with rudder control from the instructor, and a couple other things that I'm sure he took care of in the background without my knowledge. I made the calls to the tower, took off, flew around a bit, out over the lake to try out some turns, back over land for some more steep turning.

I asked the instructor to show me some aerobatics the plane was capable of. He did a knife-edge turn, a wingover, and a brief zero-gravity maneuver which was fun and I was glad I forgot breakfast. I got to handle about all of the landing which was pretty sweet. It all went pretty fast -- almost too fast to realize what was going on, but it was really sweet. Oh - he also said that it was obvious that I knew what I was doing somewhat, and that most people have driven off the taxiway onto the grass within the first minute.