Alltrikes

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• • XC Triker@XCTriker

  

  XC Triker 3889 days ago

  When I was up in Spokane last month parked on @GeoBlaze 's orchard getting ready to fly to Idaho/Elk River, Montana & Glacier with him, Ttabs, Henry & etc, his wife loaned me this book:  "Going Solo."   It's written by Roald Dahl and is about his adventure on his first job also as an expat in Africa-  really cool and funny stuff-  then the outbreak of WWII and becoming an Ace fighter pilot.

  Roald Dahl is a fabulous story teller (he wrote, among many things:  Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, The Gremlins (adapted to famous movie), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Magic Finger, Fantastic Mr Fox, Danny, the Champion of the World , The Enormous Crocodile, The Twits, George's Marvellous Medicine, The BFG, The Witches, The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me,  The Vicar of Nibbleswicke)  so you know that when writing about his TRUE autobiographical adventures he REALLY TELLS A GREAT STORY!!!

  With everyone soloing recently-- I thought it was also a great book to recommend, it also has dangerous African snakes (for herpetologist Ken @Knussear) and September is Roald Dahl month and September 13th is Roald Dahl Day in honor of his birthday – he was born in Wales in 1916, even though there weren't trikes in it specifically, I think you guys would really enjoy this easy to read book.

  I'm going to mail my copy to Ken, who could mail it to you if you asked.  Or you could pick your own up for a couple bucks

  Stolen from the web:

  Going Solo is a memoir by Roald Dahl, first published by Jonathan Cape in London in 1986. It is a continuation of his autobiography describing his childhood, Boy. It tells about his voyage to Africa, describing the various strange people he meets. He was on a boat heading towards Dar es Salaam for his new job working for Shell Oil. He eventually joined the war as a squadron pilot in the Royal Air Force, flying the Tiger Moth, Gloster Gladiator, and Hawker Hurricane. He was one of the last Allied pilots to withdraw from Greece during the German invasion. After Greece fell to the Nazis, he went to the Middle East to fight Vichy French pilots after staying for a brief time in Alexandria, Egypt.

  “Don’t be an ass. How can anyone teach you when there’s only one cockpit? Just get in and do a few circuits and bumps and you’ll soon get the hang of it. You had better get all the practice you can because the next thing you know you’ll be dicing in the air with some clever little Italian who will be trying to shoot you down.” – Flying Training, p. 95

  “I remember thinking at the time that this was surely not the right way of doing things. They had spent eight months and a great deal of money training me to fly and suddenly that was the end of it all. Nobody… was going to teach me anything about air-to-air combat, and they were certainly not going to take time off to instruct me when I joined a busy operational squadron. There is no question that were flung in at the deep end, totally unprepared for actual fighting in the air, and this, in my opinion, accounted for the very great losses of young pilots that we suffered out there. I myself survived only by the skin of my teeth.” – Flying Training, pp. 95-96

  More HERE

  Thank you GeoBlaze & family for all the help, puppy sitting, friendship and this great book!

• • GeoBlaze@georgeb

  

  GeoBlaze 3888 days ago

  It was great having you visit with us XC... glad you enjoyed this book.  My dear wife found this book (she's great at finding little treasures like this) and read most of it to me while riding in the car together.  I will second that this is a fascinating story and an eye opener to the kinds of things that combat pilots were thrown into and endured... some fortunate ones like Roald survived to tell the tale!   Thanks XC for thinking to share this book with others here on Alltrikes.