Scooter is not feeling photogenic today. He asked me to contact his publicist.
Milestones.
So I have been taking private pilot flight training since the 30th of November 2013. It has been an awesome experience for me and when people ask me how much I love flying, the best I can tell them is that it’s the second best thing to ever happen to me. Ever. There’s no doubt about this in my mind. I like to think that I live life without regret, but I wish I had gotten started on my aviation career earlier in my life. Earl reminds me that I’m learning now because I was ready to learn now, not 10 years ago.
This past Thursday I had a lesson with another flight instructor. This is normal, as my flight instructor and this other one work together, are really good friends, and they cross-check each other to make sure they’re teaching everything they need to be teaching to student pilots. Plus, flying with a different instructor adds an element of pressure that helps determine if the student is ready to handle the pressure of flying the airplane solo.
After four landings, we headed back to the hangar and Russ told my flight instructor, Chuck, “I recommend him for solo, he can handle things safely in the air.”
Chuck looked at me and asked me, twice, if I was ready to fly solo and after a few seconds of thought, I answered in the affirmative.
“I’m ready.”
I was nervous. After all, there wasn’t going to be anyone in the other seat that could compensate for any mistake I could make. I was confident, yes, but I was still nervous. And I was also very excited.
I made a turn around the pattern and performed what I considered to be my best landing to date. Feeling good, I went around and did it again. The landing wasn’t quite as good as the first; the wind had picked up a little bit and I came down a little harder than I would have liked, but my landing was safe, I didn’t break anything and I felt good. Since it was getting bumpy up there, I opted to make it a full stop. I taxied over to the hangar with a big grin on my face.
I was officially a solo student pilot. I can now fly by myself and practice landings. After a few times at flying solo and a few lessons with my instructor, I’ll be able to venture out a bit more.
I feel like here’s where the harder part of the training begins. I’m really on the road to becoming a private pilot. I am more excited than ever.
I reached a milestone on Thursday and it was one of the best moments of my life. On Sunday morning I went out and practiced landings all by myself. I have such a feeling of freedom in my being now.
I captured my first solo on video if you care to view it.
Mud.
The past several weekends have been very busy for us. Flights to North Carolina, visits to Chicago, family gatherings, life is tough, right? Earl and I decided we needed to relax so we purposely kept this past weekend commitment free. It was a wonderful feeling.
On Friday afternoon I sent Earl a message letting him know that it was suppose to rain over the weekend. No surprise; that’s what it’s been doing for what seems like forever in these parts lately. I suggested that on Saturday afternoon we take the Jeep out and get it really dirty. I said, “Let’s go muddin'”.
We ended up driving into the Tug Hill Area of Central New York. The Tug Hill is the area you see on the Weather Channel during the winter. East of Lake Ontario, the Tug Hill gets a lot of snow each year. Driving through the area on Saturday we saw several places where there was still snow on the ground.
We checked out quite a few of the “Seasonal Use Only” roads in the area and played around with a little mud.
It was fun exploring these barely used roads, but I was in the mood to really kick up some dirt. After driving around and taking a necessary bathroom break in my hometown, we ended up in the Happy Valley Wildlife Management Area. It turns out there was a lot of mud to play in at Happy Valley.
The road through Happy Valley had quite a few spots where you could pull off in 4WD or on an ATV and basically have fun maneuvering through mud holes. A couple were particularly deep and Earl sounded cautious when I mentioned we should try them. I remembered that the Jeep doesn’t have a winch on the front and when I suggested this to Earl, he mentioned that we could always call AAA. This made me laugh as I could just imagine trying to explain to AAA as to where we were and why we were in the mud. I don’t think AAA helps out in those situations.
Driving through Happy Valley we ended up following a couple of guys in a jacked up pick up truck who were kicking up mud along the same road. It was fun to purposely find the mud, spin the tires and throw mud all over the place. Earl and I bounced around in the Jeep and had a grand time.
I felt like one of the big boys when we went to a local family restaurant for supper afterwards. Several looked at the amount on the Jeep, a couple of guys nodded.
We did it right. I’m looking forward to doing it again.
April.
I am looking outside and marveling at the fact that it is the 30th of April. It is currently 42ºF. Rain is falling in buckets. The wind is blowing at 24 MPH. During the month of April I believe we have had maybe 5 days that have been April-like. To celebrate the arrival of May tomorrow, I moved my autumn wardrobe back into my closet. I am wearing a dark green shirt with orange and brown stripes. If there were any leaves on the trees they’d probably be ready to fall.
To say that I am frustrated by this streak of underwhelming weather would be an understatement. By this time last year I had a couple of hundred miles on my bicycle. This year I have clocked in a whopping 10.62 miles. I am not amused.
As a private pilot I logged more flight time during the winter months than I have thus far this spring. Something is amiss with that equation and I find it disheartening. I am so very close to making my next aviation goal, but I can rarely find weather conditions that are conducive to practicing landings and the like. I desperately try to not get depressed about it, but it feels like my winter blahs are lingering a bit longer this year.
This morning I asked Earl if he had any job opportunities in San Diego. He does not. I’m starting to wonder if they need ditch diggers on the Panama Canal.
One of the special treats about this weather is that our cat is still trying to go in and out of the back patio door as if he hadn’t a care in the world. He spends approximately 46 seconds on either side of the door at any given time, before wanting to move to the opposite side of the door. This could be adding to the frustration I am feeling with this weather.
During my chiropractor visit yesterday, the doc mentioned that the forecast showed this weather continuing for the next 10 days. He then marveled that my back seemed tighter than usual. Of course it is, this crap makes me tense.
I started my “winter vitamins” again this morning with the hope of boosting up my Vitamin D levels. I don’t know if they’re low or not but extra Vitamin D can sometimes feel like sunshine in a friendly capsule.
Plus, they’re less calories than beer.
I was doing some random reading on the web earlier this week and a conspiracy site suggested that President Obama had the Jet Stream relocated. They had a brief discussion about how fighter jets were used to latch onto the Jet Stream and pull it further south to combat the effects of Global Warming. Aside from trying to figure out how one would actually latch onto the Jet Stream, I briefly bemused the thought of anyone in the U.S. Government doing anything that would require any sort of imagination. And then I was amused by the fact that someone suggested that the U.S. Government did anything at all. That’s a funny one, right there. If the Jet Stream can’t pay taxes, why would they drag it farther down south?
The furnace just kicked on to combat the opening and closing of the patio door so Sir Indecisive can go out and make sure that the plants are still accommodating to his litter box habits. I’m going to go put on a sweater.
Clicked.
Something in my head clicked last week and I’m finding myself to be a lot more relaxed. I don’t know if it was two days off from work, the trip to Chicago last weekend or a recent trip to North Carolina, but I shan’t fret about the trivialities. Perhaps it’s the arrival of spring in these parts. Whatever the reason, I’m not nearly spun as I have been for the past few months and this is a good thing.
It’s good to feel a smile on my face.
Confession.
So I have a little bit of a confession to make. As I’ve mentioned on here before, Scooter moved in with us at the end of January. We don’t know much about what Scooter did before he ended up in a friend’s barn over the winter, but he seems to have had a few adventures. He has a skittish side and he has some habits that indicate that he lived outside for a long while, for example, he still gobbles his food down at an alarming rate.
I have been concerned that Scooter is lonely here. He often seems bored and when he’s bored he gets into all sorts of mischief. If there is a door between us and him he is very loud about his discontentment with this. He is still learning the basics of staying off of kitchen counters and the table. He’s still figuring out how sleep works in that if he’s not screaming about our bedroom door being closed, he’s ramming around the bed at all hours of the night and trying to leap onto as many elevated surfaces as possible. Last night he ran up and down the piano keyboard a few times. I couldn’t figure out the tune.
During a particularly frustrating moment I decided that he wasn’t very happy here and I thought about finding him a new home. I even put together an ad for Craig’s List. While I read over my description on the “review” screen before submitting the ad to the popular site, I looked at the photo I had selected of him and found that I just couldn’t do it. I don’t give up on people and I’m not a quitter, so I certainly wasn’t about to give up on Scooter. I found myself misty-eyed and I deleted the ad before submitting it. It was at that moment that I decided that the latest feline in the family had won my heart and that we would have to come to an understanding.
Yesterday I installed a sleep mat for him near my desk in my home office so he could relax while I worked. His new vantage point allows him to keep an eye on the proceedings. Yesterday morning (before the bad weather moved in) I gave him some outdoors time so he could engage in his spring fever ways. Last night’s sleep cycle was good, but not great, but it showed improvement. Last night when I mentioned to Earl that I had contemplated the Craig’s List maneuver, I was scolded for thinking of such a thing. He’s still get used to us and we’re still getting used to him and that’s all there is to it.
I guess we still have some mutual training to do. But I’m not giving him up and I wouldn’t trade him in or exchange him for another. And that’s something for everyone to purr about.
Code Review.
Struggling with a piece of code today, my assistant was helpful until he decided to lay down on my desk.
Exploration.
A certain someone of the feline persuasion just ventured outside (with supervision) for the first time since moving into our happy little home a couple of months ago. Scooter is still getting his routine around here down; he hasn’t figured out the differences between “meal time” and “sleep” and he’s an early riser (breakfast at 3:00 a.m. anyone?), but he’s starting to get his bearings.
Since today is the first time it has been above 60ºF this year, I thought I’d spend a little time out on the front porch during my lunch hour. I motioned for Scooter to come out with me, but he didn’t want any part of the shenanigans I was engaging in, so he scooted around the house at a high rate of speed. He then realized that I was still on the front porch.
There’s a saying about cats and curiosity…
Anyway, it only took two rattles of the front porch door to get the human to get up from his comfortable position in the sun and let Mr. Scooter outside, but when I went to open the door, Scooter ran back. I decided to leave the front door open and let him come out on his own. It took a bit and the steps were filled with trepidation, but he finally came out to where I was sitting on the steps. He made a few cursory checks of the area through his very active nose and then decided he had had enough and starting ripping around the house again.
Apparently all of this activity has deemed him worthy of a nap. He is now relaxing and undoubtedly pondering his exploratory mission of the day.
Readers.
Since the beginning of the year I have noticed a marked decrease in the number of entries on many of the personal blogs I read, my blog here included. I have spoken about this before and I still attribute this shift to the rise of social media, namely Facebook and Twitter and the like. I’ve wondered if our increasing expectations of immediacy and short blasts of information in life are fueled by the instantaneous nature of social media or vice-versa. Whatever the reason, I’m sure they are here to stay for a while.
Another contributing factor to the decline in personal blogs is the shuttering of Google Reader a while back. Google Reader was an excellent aggregator of RSS feeds, or blog data, and when Google shut down the application they did a real (purposeful) disservice to the blogging community. Google Reader was thorough in its capabilities. I have tried other services, Feedly and a couple of others, but I reinstalled my own copy of Tiny Tiny RSS, a Google Reader-like aggregator that runs on one’s own web server space.
When I was looking for a solution to replace Google Reader I found Feedly too cumbersome with its way of organizing incoming feeds; Tiny Tiny RSS fits the void left by Google Reader quite well.
I don’t know who still reads me blog but by whatever method you have arrived, I’m appreciative of the fact that you read my ramblings. Though I routinely contemplate the closing down of this blog, in the long run I feel that I still have much more than 140 characters to say.
So I guess I’ll just keep on doing what I’m doing.
