THE UNPUBLISHED SEQUEL

Be sure to check out this week's Ask Captain Meryl question & answer about figuring an airplane's weight: Figuring an Airplane's Weight

First a couple of notes: Our friend Courtney Riecan is due congratulations as she got her Private Pilot license last week. For those of you new to this newsletter, Courtney first wrote to me last spring, inspired to become a pilot herself after reading "The World At My Feet." She called me immediately right after she passed her check ride, and I couldn't be more proud of her if she were my own daughter. She decided what she wanted to do, took the necessary steps, overcame financial and other obstacles and is on her way to becoming a professional pilot. By the way, she wasted no time and was back in school the very next morning to start working on her instrument rating. Congratulations, Courtney!

By the way, there are several nice photos of Courtney on both pages of my "Sky Ladies" Album in my Photo Gallery: Sky Ladies

Secondly, I received a couple of notes from a flight attendant for Singapore Airlines who was inspired after hearing about my story, and even more so after she started reading my book. She wrote to tell me she, too, has decided to find a flight school and become a professional pilot. Her own obstacles include a traditional Chinese family who thinks she should go get married and have children, but she is insistent and it sounds like she has convinced them to support her. Hopefully I'll hear more from her in the future.

The third note is a question I got from a reader and I'm hoping you can help. He asked whether there is a "website where you can see all the planes flying in the US and zoom down to see your area, kind of a live radar map of the US." If anyone knows of such a site I'd really appreciate it if you would send the info to me at support@fromthecockpit.com. Please put "info for Cap'n Meryl" in the subject.

The fourth, and final, note is that I'm offering a Christmas Special on my "Flying Fearless--Ground School for Passengers" CD course. It normally sells for $67 from my site www.flyingfearless.com but it's on sale now for just $47 for a limited time and includes a free bonus. I mention this because of the number of questions I get from readers who are unaware of either the site or the course: Special Offer

Now, on to this week's title. There isn't a week that goes by that I don't get at least several inquiries regarding the status of the sequel to "The World At My Feet." At the time I signed the contract with the publisher, I was still flying for United Airlines. When I retired, it pretty much messed things up in terms of finishing the book because it was meant to include current flying stories. I wrote fourteen chapters but then the project was abandoned as I no longer had any desire to write it and the publisher no longer had any desire to publish it. I'm still working on a hard-cover fear of flying book, but that's still in the editing process. My Ebook, however, is available at www.flyingfearless.com.

Since I never finished the sequel, I've decided to put out a feeler as to whether my readers might be interested in viewing the unfinished product, probably about half a chapter at a time due to the length. Please give me your feedback on this and I'll make a decision based upon your response.

By the way, just so you know, there may actually be some flying in my future, but not for at least another five to six months. It would be worldwide and include both wide-body and narrow body aircraft, but more about that later as the opportunity develops (if it develops).

In the meantime, I'm giving you just the first few paragraphs of the Prologue now of my unfinished sequel to help you make your decision whether or not you'd like to read more. You can send your feedback to me at support@fromthecockpit.com and please put "Sequel" in the subject line.

Prologue to the Sequel of "The World At My Feet"

My train is racing through the Alps. The scenes that rush by my window are charming and incredibly beautiful, each village with its colorful steepled or onion-topped churches and neat, pleasing-to-the-eye gingerbread patterns in the houses. The snow is deep and the sky an impossible sapphire blue.

I can’t believe thirty-five years has passed since I last traveled this route from Frankfurt to Innsbruck, Austria, surely one of most picturesque and largely unsung cities in all of Europe. Even after all this time, it seems as though part of me is still in Innsbruck, having never left.

I hadn’t bothered to pack a suitcase in the dark hours before dawn this morning when I’d crept quietly out of my hotel after only two hours of sleep. I didn’t intend to be gone overnight, although one never knows, and I was just too exhausted to bother packing. All I carried was a shopping bag containing my ever-present camera and a copy of my autobiography, which had been published only several months prior. It was to be a gift to a family which had last known me thirty-five years ago, when I was barely sixteen.

Since then so much had happened, and I wondered what their reaction would be when I showed them the book I had written. They were in the book as an important part of my life, yet they had no knowledge of this, nor of the fact that I was now one of the few women in the world who had made it into the left seat of a major airline as an international airline captain. When I knew them, I hadn’t even thought about being a pilot yet. That inspiration was to come a few years later.

It had been awhile since I had read my own book, and I reread the parts of it about them in the first hours of my journey, which would last over seven hours. I was a little warm in spite of the bitter cold that morning. I hadn’t realized the streetcars in Frankfurt didn’t run this early and had staggered exhaustedly the mile or so from my hotel in the dark.

Want more? Write to me and let me know.

And with that,
Until Next Time,
Maintain Airspeed,

Cap'n Meryl