"Pocketknife"
Well folks, this is me. I'm one of the two web masters for this site. My name is John Keith and I'm a Trike-a-holic. I've been wanting to do a site like this ever since I got into the sport and I hope that there is something here for you.
The picture below is from the day that
I bought my first Pegasus, December 26th, 2004. That's not a sour expression on
my face, I
was just cold. I picked it up near Indianapolis and yes, there was about three feet of snow on
the ground. Many thanks to Gene Dean who sold it to me :)......
My foray into trikedom started kind of reluctanly. One of my best friends, Tracey, started triking and tried to get me to join him. I had always wanted to be a pilot, but was afraid of ultralights. All I knew about them was what I saw in the news when somebody folded one up in flight and got killed. I didn't think they were safe. So I decided to start taking private pilot lessons. I discovered that Cessna's are really boring. I figured I would try another school that used Piper Cherokee's, hoping that they were more fun. Turned out that Tracey and his trike buddies had hangars at the same airport as that school. He spotted my truck there and called my cell. He said that if I was any kind of friend, I would at least come by his hangar and check out his plane. I said OK. Of course when I got over to the hangar Tracey, his instructor Mitch, and Jon (my eventual instructor) all had their trikes out ready to fly. Mitch was sitting in the back seat of his trike and as I got out of the truck he said "If you're not too much of a wuss, get in the front and see what flying is really about". Well since I ain't no wuss.....I went. I got in and we all took off. Immediately I realized that my seat belt would get a lot tighter so I cinched it in. Honest to goodness, when we got above the trees, I realized that I had to get me one of these things. It was that fun. I felt completely secure. Way more secure that I ever felt in a GA plane.
I started taking lessons in the fall of '04 and bought my first trike then. It was a Mainair Rapier. I did all of my training in my instructors Pegasus and then did my solo in the Mainair. A short time later I found the Peg that you see here. I loved this trike. I put over 100 hrs on it in one year and had a ton of fun in it.
At the end of that first year, most of my local flying buddies had left triking. Tracey had a little incident with his and wasn't sure if he was going to fly anymore. Mitch bought a Falcon sport plane and sold his Peg. Jon bought himself a Titan 912 and sold his Peg. I decided that I was also going to go fixed wing flying and sold my beloved Pegasus. I bought a Rans S-10 and decided to do some resto work on it and get it ready to fly. In the mean time, Tony (the other webmaster) asked me to go to sun-n-fun with him. I went with the intentions of getting some ideas for the plane I was finishing. Once I got there, things started to change. I met up with all of my former trike buddies, got to meet a bunch of new trike buddies, and generally just had more fun around the trikes. (Spending 16 hrs in the car with Tony probably had something to do with it also) I had to get back into trikes. I missed it! While there, I found out that Jim was selling his trike. We struck a deal, and I was back in. Yippie !!!!!
Well that gets you pretty well caught up, admittedly minus a bunch of the gory details. I'll try to post some of the misadventures in the editorials for all that are interested. So long for now......
John AKA "Pocketknife"
