Taiwan - Chiang Kai Shek Memorial, Sculpture / Flying Solo

And last...my favorite of the bunch taken on the Memorial grounds.  This was off to the side, down a walkway not frequented as much by visitors.

While we're in the museum/touristy mode, think we'll go to one of the major museums we visited in Taipei next. 
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When I was 15 I started taking flying lessons.  I've always had a passion for aviation; when I was really young I started collecting pictures of neat looking airplanes and helicopters (primarily from Flying), and by the time I was ten was saving pennies so I could one day buy my own helicopter.  One of my heroes at the time was my father's brother, Uncle Ed, who could fly helicopters and a lot of other things, including the F-4 Phantom (with 61 carrier landings under his belt) and for a time was PR director and flew the solo act for the Blue Angels.  One time he gave us a tour of the Bell factory where, later on, he sold helicopters in Fort Worth.

But first I needed to learn to fly fixed-wing, and could legally begin at age 15.  The pennies I saved for this came from a paper route, which was enough because in those days the training only cost $15 for an hour of dual flight time and $10 solo in a Cessna 150 ("niner-four Golf").  Since I was so young and needed only ten hours before I could legally fly solo, my lessons were spaced out to once a month or so.  I'd usually ride my bike the five miles to Brown airport (now called Orange County), but later got a hardship license to drive.  Yes, I went to the Orange County Court House and got a hardship license so that, at age 15, I could drive to my flying lessons!

My instructor's name was Ed Feuge, and as lessons progressed we did the usual touch-and-goes, stalls, etc., but did not get around to cross country flying until I'd soloed at 16.  On that day I had a feeling it was going to happen when we did some touch-and-goes and Ed wasn't saying much.  It was a good day and I was in the groove flying the pattern, so after about the third landing on runway 22 he told me to stop and go have fun.  That I did, flying the pattern three or four more times by myself.  It was tradition in those days to dunk water on a pilot who reached the milestone, so they were waiting when I taxied back and parked the plane in its usual spot.  Two of the guys grabbed me, carrying me prone to a faucet back behind the hanger, turned it on and held my head under the spigot.  While that was going on, Ed's wife was behind me with a pair of scissors cutting off the back of my shirt.  Then they wrote a message on the shirtpiece with the date to commemorate the occasion...a memento I've kept through the years (along with my log book).