Chapter 3: Thinking it Over

I was surprised at how quickly Daise had gotten back to me. In her email she gave me her GoogleTalk address and we opened a chat session.

The first thing she told me was that she as a little uncertain about what she was doing as she had just joined the website earlier that day. Mine was one of the first profiles that she had seen and she had felt drawn to it instantly because flying had always been a dream to her.

We started chatting in earnest and I quickly determined that behind the poor grammar and spelling was a very bright and intelligent woman. She apologised about her language saying that she didn't get much chance to write in English and assured me that her spoken English was a lot better than her written. I told her that was the least of my concerns.

She seemed to be honestly modest when I complimented her on her beauty from her photos. In all we must have chatted for about an hour, before Daise excused herself saying that she had to go to bed. We arranged a time for the next day to chat again.

I had a lot to think about. Beverley had taken me from a pretty laid-back approach to looking for some sort of affair, to actually meeting someone online who seemed only too keen to consider a long term serious relationship sight unseen.

Based on my interaction with Daise, I felt that she was what she appeared to be, but I was still cautious about that. I figured though that if she had been someone that I had met locally, I would have been only too keen to go on a few dates with her to figure out whether we had anything at all in common. I thought that I should think about seeing what I could do to rectify that.

I woke up fairly late the next morning, having no real rush to get out of bed. I decided to treat myself, so I hooked up the trailer with my Gyro-Copter on it to the back of my TD5 and drove to the Hillcrest Sports Club. I had an arrangement with them that I could take off from their parking lot and leave my Land Rover and trailer there, as long as it wasn't over the week-end when they were busy.

Once there, I removed the tie-downs from the 'copter and did my pre-flight before taking off from the parking lot. It was only two hours flying time to the wonderful Hilton Hotel, just outside Pietermaritzburg. I landed in their parking lot, as I had before, and had a late breakfast on the veranda of the hotel. The waiters there knew me and knew what I liked, so as soon as I sat down they brought me my first Cafe Latte and that day's copy of the Natal Witness.

I had enjoyed my breakfast as usual and took my time flying back towards Durban, landing at the Cato Airfield. I had called ahead to arrange to have a plane ready for me so that I could do a jump. I always found that when I was in knots about some or other problem, doing a hop-and-pop at 13 thousand feet AGL and hanging under a canopy had the most amazingly soothing effect on me.