THE IMMORTAL MOTH

摘要

"It never gets old" beams Wim Stapel as he jumps down onto the grass from his delightful-looking Tiger Moth. It's a warm afternoon and the skies around Hoogeveen Airport in the Netherlands' northeast are buzzing with aeroplanes. A passionate aviator, Wim first flew the 'Tiger' more than 40 years ago."They always say you remember your first time," comments Wim with a grin. "Growing up in the mid-1960s, my father was a shipbuilder and flew to the US with KLM every month for work. On these trips he was often given a free ticket from Amsterdam to London and back to Rotterdam. Well, my initials were the same as his, so as a 12-year-old I set off on an adventure. I got the KLM bus from Rotterdam to Schiphol, flew to London on a DC-9 and then back to Rotterdam.After that I did it quite regularly." Incredibly, Wim would later go on to fly some of those same DC-9s.