Feelin' Groovy

Two posts in a row with song lyrics in the subject lines. I like it! I flew last night. 1.6 hours and God knows how many touch and goes. It gets to be physically tiring. My left arm is sore (left hand on the yoke, right on the throttle during landings). The upshot is that the conditions were challenging.. windy and gusty.. .and I did well. I am gaining some confidence. For the first time my CFI asked me to evaluate my own performance.. meaning that I am far enough to know what it's supposed to be like. Things are cool. Flying Tuesday and Thursday next week.

And the Beat Goes On

I had a great evening last night. 5 safe landings on my own in Nampa and one back in Boise. What a relief! I have always thought of landings in terms of "good" and "bad" or "smooth or "hard." CFI talked about "safe" as the criterion last night. Maybe he has given up on "good." :) He also told me that smooth isn't always good. The analogy is that a golf coach takes a first time student out and on the first shot, the student has a horrible swing.. just awful.. but, through serendipity, the shot is pretty good.. straight and fairly good distance. Does the instructor say, "Good shot" and stop teaching? No. Because if he did, the student would end up in trouble down the road. So if you start slopping together a bunch of crappy landings, you get bad habits, and could smack up an airplane at some point. Better to have the right technique and be a bit off on execution. Anyway, I did great.. and I needed that.

Broken Record

I know.. it's an archaic phrase. I flew last night for the first time in a couple weeks. Stunk up the sky. Crappy landings. My CFI gave me a pep talk. "Learning to fly is hard!" "Getting through this phase is the tough part." "You are doing fine. It just has to click." "It's a fluid thing with constant adjustment." "Keep at it."

I know all that's true. And I know I can do this.

On a brighter note, we did some navigation planning the other day. It's cool. Figure a course and checkpoints, accounting for wind, figure a true course. Calculate fuel burn and time between checkpoints. Very neat stuff. It was all very pilot-like.

Truly Nice People

I think most of us are nice enough folks. Some are not, but most of us at least "pass" for nice in our society. Some are exceptional. I was in Walmart the other day and noticed a shopping cart full of stocking caps and cloth gloves--"Sale." I noticed some guy standing there going through them. I went to the checkstand and he ended up behind me in line with a whole pile of hats and gloves in his cart. The guy was about my age.. maybe a tad older. He had a chest-long raggedy grey beard (not sure how one that long could not be raggedy). He had on a well-used coat and levis. My initial impression was that he likely had seen better days. I am great for generalizations like that. Anyway, I said with a smile, "Hard to have too many hats and gloves!"

He smiled. "10 cents apiece on closeout. I bought 50 of each. I am going to give them to the school near my house for kids who lose their winter stuff. I figure I can keep 50 kids warm for 5 bucks. Not a bad deal!"

I suddenly felt pretty thoughtless. He was obviously in a higher category than I. I paid for my stuff and, as an afterthought, pulled out $5 and offered it to him. "Let me chip in on your good deed."

"No," he said, smiling, "You need to take that $5 and go buy 50 to deliver yourself." He was obviously a couple categories up on the list from me.

I should have taken him up on it, but did not. I am not sure how much the $5 meant to him, but he not only had the good thought, he pulled through. Impressive. I need to figure a way to do my own good deed and get at least even in the game.

Back at it

My CFI was out of town for a few days the week before last. I went to Ely last week, and we didn't hook up. This week we are back to a 2-day schedule. I hope I didn't lose my touch (joke).