I do it every week, 52 demanding weeks a year.  The name is Lorenzana, Vance Lorenzana, and it’s my job, I’m……a pilot.  And I’m a member of the finest group of individuals to walk the streets of our fair city, The Fox Valley Flying Club.

That’s right, I’m a pilot. I patrol that dangerous world above Terra Firma known as,... The Sky.  The Sky's a rough place, full of tough customers such as thermals, currents and eddies that’ll really knock you around.  It’s not a place you’d want women or kids.  It’s a place where a man’s a man…and all others aren’t.

It's awkward being a member of the Fox Valley Flying Club around the airfield. Visitors drop in, an FVFC man answers the hanger door, and the temperture drops 20 degrees. All at once you lost your first name. You're an ultralighter, a kite, a flying lawn chair. You're poison, you're trouble, you're bad news. They call you everything, but never a pilot.

It's not much of a life, unless you don't mind missing your wifes' birthday because the hotshot phone rings and one of the guys wants to go to breakfast. Unless you LIKE flying Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays, with a plane that doesn't cost a lot to operate. Oh, you can get by --- if you count pennies you can put your kid through college, but you better plan on seeing Europe on your television set.

And then there's your first fly-in competition. When you try to hit a spot landing on a grass field and she rips your new landing gear to shreds. You'll buy another one - out of your own pocket.

And you're going to rub elbows with the elite - men who would sell their soul for another gallon of gas, flying addicts, snack thieves, airport bums, coke drinkers, girls who can't keep an address and men who don't care. Liars, cheats con men - the class of the south end of the runway.

And the heartbreak - underfed pilots who got there after the buffet closed, beaten pilots without a fairing, lost pilots, crying pilots, lost and crying pilots, homeless pilots cause their wives kicked them out, hit-and-run pilots who'll smack a bulldozer without a second thought, broken-arm pilots, broken gear-leg pilots, broken head-gasket pilots, sick of working pilots. The people nobody wants - the backpack paraplaners, those who are building a house, the ones who walk the streets cause their engine is being repaired, and those who tried to keep warm and almost died in a cheap hanger with an unventilated gas heater.

You'll fly your plane and try to pick up the pieces. Do you have real adventure in your soul? You better have, because you're gonna do time in heavy turbulence. Oh, it's going to be a thrill a minute when you get an unknown engine outage and hit a backyard at 4 in the afternoon, never knowing who you'll meet - an angry housewife, a farmer with a gun, or two pit bulls with nothing to lose.

And you're going to have plenty of time to think. You'll draw duty in a lonely cockpit, with nobody to talk to but your radio.

Two years in the cockpit and you'll have the ability, the experience and maybe the desire to be a member of the Fox Valley Flying Club. If you like to fly by the seat of your pants, this is where you belong. For every bonehead mistake in the pattern you've committed, you've got 3 million excuses to choose from. And most of the time, you'll have few facts and a lot of hunches. You'll run down parts leads that dead-end on you. You'll work all-night to fix minor problems that could last a week. You'll ask where you can get something welded until you're sure you've talked to everybody in the state of Illinois.

And paperwork? You'll write enough words in your logbook to stock a library. You'll learn to live with doubt, anxiety, frustration. Lunch decisions that can come back to haunt you. You'll learn to live with the FAA, testifying in court, defense attorneys, prosecuting attorneys, judges, juries, witnesses on the beach with video cameras. And sometimes you're not going to be happy with the outcome.

Not that it bothers me, mind you.  It’s a task that someone has to do, I do it, … and I love it.  I eat, breath and sleep flying.  It’s never off my mind.  Some of the new guys in the group can’t take the pressure.  They’ll say things like “I can’t go up today…. It’s too windy”, or “ My wife’s having a baby “.  I don’t let it stop me.  Sometimes after I come back after a long day of chasing the real bad boys, the Cumulo Nimbus, and I look at them moping around the hanger because they have a flat tire, or they are out of gas, and they raise the heads to look at me with hope on their faces, I know I’ve got to do it for their sake, I’ve got to go up again!

When I land after flying every Saturday, sunup to sundown, no citizens come running up to me saying “Oh, thank you Sir, thank you for risking life and limb in the pursuit of your own personal pleasure”, but I know down inside, they appreciate it.  And that this world is a better place because I’m up there, in the sky, looking down on them.

There are over 60 men in this city, who know that being a member of The Fox Valley Flying Club is an endless, glamourless, thankless job that gotta be done.

I know it too, and I'm damn glad to be one of them.

Flying?  It’s for the birds,……and the men of…

The Fox Valley Flying Club!