I bought a two-year-old Beechcraft Musketeer and parked it at Teterboro Airport (TEB) in New Jersey, across the river from New York City. I got my instrument rating in it and flew the fun little bird around the East Coast for years. In the years since, I've had a wonderful life in general aviation, moving into bigger and faster craft, peaking in a beautiful Piper (Ted Smith) Aerostar. When kids came along, I downsized to a Beech Sierra, which took us across the United States a couple times and to many airports in the West. I sold it in 2017 when we moved to Europe. We returned in 2020 to Los Angeles, just in time for COVID-19 and the era of seclusion. Not used to hibernating, I knew it was time to sit behind a propeller again. I found a low-time 1960s Musketeer hiding in Alabama, barely flown in five years-an aircraft much like my first little BE23 from the 1970s. Bringing this airplane back to life would be a great way to spend my COVID isolation, and it was the perfect place to bury my pain from the death of our daughter that had occurred a month earlier.
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