But I wanna hear aviation stories too! Please post transcript of upcoming said meeting with respect to aviation stories. There are lots of wannabe pilots here that wanna hear the real deal. 
I admit to being a wannabe pilot. 
Well, here is one for you. When I first left active duty, I was looking around for jobs and a contract job, flying a DC-3 out of New Oleans to Nassau in the Bahama's, hauling sheet metal for roofing material. I had to land at Fort Lauderdale to clear customs, off into the night sky again to finish the trip. I took off on 09, with the intent of climbing to 7,000 feet and cruising on in and unload my freight. With thunderstorms around, and a copilot who had about 20 hours in the 3, we did have a AVQ-47 weather radar on board and so I was pretty busy. The first thing that happens when you leave the coast line at night, all references to the ground or water are gone, so you have to fly instruments, like it or not. On this night, there was a lot of "St. Elmo's" fire running all over the instrument panel, on your arms and control yoke and my copilot was about to have a coronary on the spot! I knew that sooner or later, we were going to have a "static discharge", some call a lighting strike, "bang" went the discharge, which blew the tail cone right off the old 3 and some of the discharge wicks had to be replaced later, but the causality was poor old Eugene, he lost it on the spot, puked, turned white, leaned back and passed out. A few more bumps and near strikes, finally got thru the weather, landed, poor Eugene got off the aircraft, said I'll see you later and that was the last time I ever saw him. Guess he caught a Chalk airlines flight back to Miamai. With no passengers or freight, I flew the thing solo back to New Oleans for the next load.
