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Zen Pilot: Flight of Passion and the Journey Within
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About Zen Pilot: Flight Of Passion And The Journey Within
Product Description “I was rocketing toward the ground in an aircraft loaded with high-octane aviation fuel. All I could do was negotiate where the impact would happen.” Robert DeLaurentis had an impossibly big dream: to circumnavigate the globe in a single-engine piston plane. Meant to be the ultimate test of his flying skills as a pilot, the journey would take him to the ends of the earth and over some of the most inhospitable terrain on the planet. He diligently prepared himself and his plane, the “Spirit of San Diego,” for the excursion. Having previously flown to far-off places, he thought he knew what to expect. But reality doesn’t always make for the best co-pilot. What began as a call to adventure turned into a soul-defining mission riddled with equipment failure, fierce weather, foreign bureaucratic nightmares, and nearly ended in a crash into the vast Pacific Ocean. The voyage would stretch his limits, test his mental strength, and eventually define him. Beaten down, broken and discouraged, he found that the only way to survive was to surrender to the Universe. In this follow-up to Flying Thru Life, DeLaurentis shares the insights he gained for overcoming paralyzing fear, defeating obstacles, and confronting any situation with grace and ease. This raw, at times terrifying, real-life adventure will inspire anyone who loves flying, yearns to fly, or simply has their own “impossibly big dream.” DeLaurentis’ extraordinary journey shows us what it takes to be a Zen Pilot. Review Kirkus Reviews says: A daring pilot's true story of flying around the world. DeLaurentis (Flying Thru Life, 2015) begins his rousing, compulsively readable autobiographical tale by assuring readers that everyone has the urge to fly: "We stare up into the sky," he writes, "and know somehow that we were meant to make that part of our playground." Certainly, this is true of DeLaurentis himself; in 22 fast-paced, accessible chapters, he narrates several of his own adventures in the air. He made a plan to fly his Piper Malibu Mirage, the Spirit of San Diego, across the Atlantic in the manner of Charles Lindbergh's 1927 transatlantic flight. However, the journey quickly grew into something much bigger: a flight around the world in which he visited dozens of countries and faced dozens of perils, airborne and otherwise. The resulting memoir is as immediately exciting as any flying stories written since pilot Ernest Gann's 1961 memoir Fate Is the Hunter. DeLaurentis never lets up on his pacing and never quails from laying on the melodrama with gusto: "I was moving through the air in a 4,900-pound flying bomb," he writes in a typical passage, "and it was my job to get it back on the ground without it blowing it and me to pieces in a fiery cloud of billowing black flames and noxious burning aluminum." He fills his account with warmly drawn portraits of the people he met in his travels, with a particularly affectionate tone reserved for the crusty old mechanics at all the hangars and airstrips along the way. He balances out the action with lightly spiritual patter about the universe (with a capital "U") and some well-earned inspirational comments about facing one's doubts in order to embrace an adventurous life. Overall, he has a thrilling story to tell, and he does so with a tremendous amount of zeal and a winning streak of humor, making it a surefire bet for aviation aficionados everywhere. A rough-and-ready flight memoir, dedicated to the human spirit of adventure. "An innate part of human nature is to explore, to wonder what's on the other side of that ridge or to see a mountain and climb it. Robert DeLaurentis' book Zen Pilot demonstrates this quest for challenge, adventure and exploration and tells his story of circumnavigating the planet in his Piper Malibu Mirage. His first hand accounting enthusiastically keeps readers excited and challenged to reach for and realize their own dreams." Robert [or Zen Pilot], you don't just dream it,you
