Welcome

Welcome to The Bandter, or what I like to call my first attempt at blogging. Like anything in life, with the exception of death and taxes, I can’t guarantee that this blog with be worth your time or that you will somehow find self fulfillment. It will be a place that I will use express myself and share links that I find with all the readers. This platform is a colossal blank canvas without a “color by numbers” so I don’t have the slightest clue where this will end up, but I can’t resist the urge to find out.

I’m Johnathan Bandt. I was born and raised by two wonderful parents in Janesville, Wisconsin. I have a pretty awesome sister who is three years younger than me. I graduated Janesville Craig High School in 2007 and I currently attend the University of Dubuque and plan to graduate to the “real world” in May of next year. I am a flight operations major at UD. Currently, I have over 200 hours of flight time and have my instrument rating. My passion for flight burns hotter than a Pratt and Whitney J58 turbojet, partly because I saw the film “Top Gun” at a very young and impressionable age and because I have been surrounded by aviation since birth. I can’t imagine anything else I would rather do. I know it sounds clique to say that aviation is my calling, but then again, that is why we have cliques. But the two biggest influences in my life have been my parents. They raised me to be the individual I am today and where the first to expose me to aviation. My father builds and flies remote controlled airplanes and he shared the hobby/sport with me at a young age and I continue to fly RC planes today. He never was a pilot himself because he claims he is to “reckless” to be one. My mother first got me involved in flying lessons during my junior year of high school and started me on the path I will follow the rest of my life. I can’t thank my parents enough for their everlasting support of my goals in life; they are the reason why I am living my dream.

Another passion of mine is sports. I love football, baseball, college basketball; my favorite teams are the Green Bay Packers, Milwaukee Brewers, UW Badger Football and Basketball and UD Football and Basketball. I am probably the most kinetically uncoordinated person you will ever meet so I never played any of the sports listed above in an organized fashion. With that being said, I will voice my thoughts and opinions about those teams in this blog as if I have played those sports. Like I mentioned before, the extent of my athletic experience is limited, but I did run cross country in high school and loved it. At first, I struggled to finish 3 mile races under 30 minutes my freshmen year in HS, but three years later, I was finishing races in nearly half the time and qualified for the WI State Cross Country Meet in 2006 with the best teammates anyone could ever have. I was recruited to run for UD, but I decided against running because, quite frankly I’ve been there, done that, and got a t-shirt, furthermore running in college would only hamper my real goal in life, which is to fly and be the best pilot I can.

So there you have it, John Bandt in a nutshell. This is only a small sample of me and my personality. I could continue to go on and on describing my background, personality, favorite Green Bay Packer memories, or my flying experiences, but I figured that this would be a good stopping point. All those ideas will be discusses and other nuances of myself will be revealed to you in future posts as I paint this canvas one color at a time.

Bandt