Carrot Noses and Button Eyes

Sorry everybody about the lapse in detailing my fascinating life. I know you all were just hanging out during the holidays checking my blog and waiting for an update.

As with most Americans, the end of December is a busy time. Regardless of religious/non-religious denomination, the mere fact that a good portion of America is busy makes you more busy. You not only feel the need to take advantage of the great sales out there which show consumerism at its best, but you also have to pay extra-special attention while driving because the morons who hide most of the year crawl out of whatever slimy hole they come from to bless us with their presence. I know I’ve almost been hit a few times, how about you?

The weather too has been an issue with this crazy West Coast snow we’re having. It was a White Christmas morning while I opened gifts from Santa. Not a lot, but enough to claim a Bing moment. Shortly after arriving home from Michigan, we got a good several inches- enough for my mother to make a snowman which was promptly eaten as soon as we left the dog alone with it. She ate the carrot nose and the button eyes and even managed to throw them up later. It was quite the event.

Speaking of events and weather-related horrors, shortly before Christmas I was driving home from my Dad’s house and managed to get rear-ended by a girl “out for a drive” at 11 at night in an ice storm.  Wait… let me repeat that… I got rear-ended by a girl “out for a drive” in an ice storm. As in, the roads were slicker than a baby’s bottom. I don’t even know. So anyway, I’m stopped at this light waiting for it to turn green when I hear a honk, so I look at the light thinking it’s an impatient 11pm-er and the light turned green in the brief moment I looked down. No, the light is still red, so I look in my rearview mirror and low and behold, a car is sliding slightly sideways towards my car. I push on my brakes, and she… well, I can’t say she slammed into me. She was only going like 30 when she hit the ice and skidded, but she bumped firmly into me.

Before people get all weird about how I should have tried to avoid it and drive through the light or something so she didn’t hit my car, this happened in like 3 seconds flat. So that she had the presence of mind to honk and that I even had time to look up and see her was impressive. You have to remember that Oregonians don’t honk either, so I had to get over my initial confusion of somebody honking, let alone at me. In any case, after she bumped firmly into my car. I decided since it was the middle of the night and the road was deserted, that I should probably stay in my car and see what the person did. Oh, side note, this was actually before I realized it was a girl a little younger than me. I for whatever reason thought it looked like an Asian male about 30-40 in my rearview mirror. Which also tells you why I stayed in the car- a lone 20something female shouldn’t approach some 40 year old male’s car in the dead of night after he hits you. Just a thought. Call me paranoid.

So after about a minute of us stopped at this light, she finally gets out of her car and I realize that it’s not a 40 year old Asian male but a 20 year old Caucasian female. Crazy dark lit only by streetlights, so I get out too. The chance of the person being a serial killer is reduced dramatically when they’re young and female. So after assessing that she was okay and I’m okay and that my small SUV is totally fine and her non-SUV has about an 8-12 inch dent in the hood we decide to get out of the way of the now on-coming traffic and pull off to the side of the road to figure out if we should exchange information. This is where she decided to tell me she was just “out for a drive.” Lord give me strength.

Now, both of us were very calm. She seemed a little shocked and scatter-brained, but you could tell deep down she was probably an intelligent person. And since my car was fine, and I was the one hit, not the one sliding all over the ice, I was pretty chill about it too. But you can imagine what kind of inability to be decisive moments ensued with two young females trying to figure out what to do next. We knew that we should perhaps exchange something resembling our insurance information so in case somebody wanted to use it later on, but what we exchanged we weren’t sure. She was worried that her mom would destroy her soul and eat her for breakfast since it was her car and she couldn’t get a hold of her on the phone. And I actually still wasn’t worried, it’s my car after all and it wasn’t my fault. But we finally figured out after several Libra moments that we would just exchange names and phone numbers so we could contact each other later if need be. I also wrote down her license plate number and car type just in cases.

So it was an adventure, I’d never been hit. Almost very hit several times- like this one time where a giant truck tried taking a left out from a side street in front of me without looking for oncoming traffic. I was in my old car mind you (a tiny 1985 Toyota Corolla) and I almost plowed straight into him head first and then almost hit oncoming traffic as I tried to avoid him. But never actually hit. The nice part was that she called the next day to make sure me and my car were still okay in the light of day. It was super sweet of her.  Moral: it could have been worse, and other than feeling bad about leaving a dent in her hood, it was kind of entertaining in an anecdotal-I’d-prefer-it-hadn’t-happened sort of way.

Aside from that however, there haven’t been any other major incidents. Christmas passed wonderfully well. I spent Christmas Eve with my mother, her “boyfriend” (which by the way needs another term, what do you call a man your mother is dating but is practically married to? “Boyfriend” sounds like she’s 16) my great grandmother and my dog and cat. We opened presents and ate roast, potatoes, stuffing, the usual, and watched corny Hallmark movies. It was pretty swell. Then Christmas Day I went to my dad’s and had bagels, lox and cream cheese for breakfast, opened presents, and waited for their annual Christmas party to start. Family and friends arrived and we ate, did our white elephant gift exchange, played games, danced and were generally merry.

Christmas morning, I forgot to mention, I got an ipod nano and other than feeling like a sheep for owning something 99% of the world owns, I’m really rather fond of it. It’s hot pink and shiny and has all my favorite songs on it. It’s like a soundtrack to life and it’s amazing. I also received these microfleece sheets that are like sleeping on a clean sheep or a squishy, soft cat.

We didn’t make it to the  Christmas Eve service at the church, which we usually do because while I wouldn’t exactly say we’re a religious household we take my great grandma most Sundays and not to sound like a Sunday Christian, but if you’re going to celebrate Jesus’ birth, Christmas Eve is the day to go to church. I actually wanted to go because I heard a rumor that there was a little kid presentation and our church is notorious for not doing Christmas-related sermons (no baby Jesus birthing for us)  so the kids sounded promising and I kind of wanted to see if they’d dress them up as Joseph and Mary. Nothing like watching a pregnant 7 year old toddle around the stage.

We did go this Sunday, though, well, my mom always goes. But I don’t- so it’s more imperative to the story that I went. I figured I should go sometime around the holiday season because Christmas isn’t just about the presents, family and friends. Whether or not you like it, it’s about Jesus, and even if you don’t believe he was the son of God, I tend to think it’s a time to remember that he probably existed and did some impressive things.  So in any case, the sermon was about this parable concerning some King who before he left his province for a while decided to  split a bunch of his money among his servants telling them to invest it wisely for him while he was gone and if they did well they would be rewarded. So the King leaves and returns, and two of his servants have made 5 to 10 times the amount it was worth in his absence. They get rewarded land equal the amount they multiplied the money. But the third kept the money safe for the King and when asked why he didn’t invest it, the servant says something about it not being his nor the King’s money and that he is a bad King and reaps what others sow and uses people. So the King gives this servants portion of the land to the guy who made the most money while he was away.

Now, this is where I got totally confused.  The church’s pastor is the nicest guy but sometimes he forgets what he’s saying. So he accidently skips the last slide which I’m pretty sure explained not only the moral of the parable but also his point. So then he compares Jesus to the King. The King is unliked by some but rewards those who are loyal to him and the higher power (God obviously) — this kind of made sense. Except in my head, the King was suppose to be evil. I mean, I totally took the side of the one servant who didn’t invest the money. I didn’t  know a lot about this King from the parable, maybe he really was evil and used other people to get what he wanted. And he did want more money and money doesn’t get you into Heaven. So I didn’t understand this parable at all. Was the story about how you should stand up for what you believe in and go against the evil or was it about how the King was actually nice but there were people who didn’t like him? I still feel like  I don’t  have enough information to form an opinion on this guy. So I understand what the pastor was saying, but I don’t think the comparison was his best. Was the King evil or not? Does anybody know the Bible well enough to answer this question? Was there even any more to the story, sometimes the Bible just throws stories out there like you’re suppose to get character development from 3 verses. Any ideas?

Home again, home again…

I managed to finally get back to Oregon after The Flight That Would Never End (cue dancing sheep puppets and music)  I left Saturday afternoon at noon and the path was supposed to go from Michigan to Chicago to San Francisco to Oregon. The word “supposed” makes it sound like I didn’t take that path when I actually did, it just took a lot longer than expected. I can’t even blame the December weather like I usually can, I mean, what kind of moron tries to travel during Winter Storm season- the answer by the way, is a moron who wants to get home before Christmas.

What happened is my plane was delayed in Chicago because there were three parts related to the ILS system (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrument_landing_system) of the plane that were having some difficulties. The ILS systems allow for the plane to safely land if the weather conditions aren’t great.  They’re not 100% necessary because you can land the plane without the computer doing it for you, but it makes the plane safer and takes out a lot of the guesswork and pilot error.  So they finally fix the ILS stuff and we get on the plane (about an hour after when we’re suppose to depart) when they’re about to take off, they find out there’s another thing wrong with the plane. Also a system they could defer and not use, but they want to see if they can fix it. About now is when I realize that I will probably miss my flight into Oregon, but hey, hopefully I can get on the next flight if it’s not full right? This is also where people begin to wonder if they should be in a plane that needed four things fixed on it before it could take off again.

We finally and very safely get into San Francisco and I’m about an hour late for the flight I was suppose to be on, basically my flight was landing in Oregon while I was arriving in San Francisco.  I talk to the service desk and they nicely inform me that I can’t get on the last flight into Oregon because it’s full. I don’t know why 30 people all wanted to fly into my podunk little town at 10:25 at night from San Francisco, but apparently they did.  I’m obviously tired and frustrated, I’d been up since like 6:30am Michigan time and it was now 8:30pm Oregon time (so 11:30 Michigan time, in case you don’t know your time zones) and the guy at the counter can’t figure out how to work his computer to book me a room at the hotel and is trying to book me a room in Chicago, which gives me visions of never being able to sleep in a bed that night. But we finally straighten it out and he tells me to go catch the courtesy shuttle out front.

This is where I went out front, but what he didn’t tell me and what isn’t apparent on any of the airport signs that you would be looking at is that the airport shuttles are on the second floor, not the first so I’m standing around looking for a shuttle that is actually driving above my head, but do I know that? No. Because nobody ever looks up, that’s why assassins hang out in 22nd story windows.  It finally occured to me however after I stood around thinking about how all I could see were taxis and people picking their relatives up.

I ended up traveling to the hotel with quite a few people from the Chicago flight that had missed their connecting flights, one was this young woman (mid to late 20s) with a 2 year old who looked so harassed. Apparently she had started out in Little Rock and was trying to get to a little town on the Oregon coast and her flight was cancelled so she was sent to Chicago and then to San Francisco and had to wait until the next flight out of California the next morning. I felt bad for her though, that kid was tired. So after I got to the hotel and used my free money they gave me for dinner (most expensive yet free chicken salad I’ve ever had) and took a shower, I felt better about the whole staying overnight thing, even though my flight left at 8:45 the next morning so I had to be up at 6 again.

The flight in was fine, and even though there was suppose to be a giant storm and I was worried my flight would be cancelled, the snow nicely held off until I was back safely in my house thus completing my Birthday wish of good weather for flying, which actually worked really well. It was nice until I finished my license and then it snowed like crazy and it was nice until I got back to Oregon and then it snowed like crazy.

The day I got home for example, my mom and I went to see the movie Twilight because we had both read the books the last time my teenage cousin had come through town. I went into the theater in sandals, which I admit are pretty inane winter weather wear, but it was dry outside and not super cold. Also, I had been traveling in them, and they’re comfortable. When we left the theater however I got to experience for the first time walking in snow in flip-flops. No global warming though, I swear.

Aside from that, I’ve spent most days with family or friends. We had a belated birthday celebration at my Dad’s house and I received an aviator jacket which is pretty sweet. I will take pictures and post them in the near future now that I am back with my own beautiful camera. We had lamb for dinner that night which I hadn’t eaten in a surprisingly long time, and aside from a few well-placed baa’s it was pretty tasty.  Today I went to my local airport and asked them what planes were available to rent and what information they need from me. All they have now is a Cessna 172 (when I took lessons here they also had a 152) and so I will have to get checked out in that in order to fly it. The Cessna 172 is a bit bigger than the Cherokee I was flying in, but it has about the same amount of power. It’s basically Cessna’s version of the Cherokee 140. The Cessna however is a high wing plane as you can see below.

Cherokee 140

Thanks to: http://www.sunairaviation.com/images/N57309_Cherokee_140.jpg

Cessna 172

http://images.surclaro.com/Screenshots/c172_contest/4_Cessna_172_Skyhawk.jpg

So I will be taking over all my information, getting Renter’s Insurance and getting checked out in the 172 in the near future so I can take my friends and family for a ride. How gorgeous is that picture of the 172 by the way?

No love

I’ve been a bad blogger I’m afraid. I promised to write post-haste if I had some flying related news to share and I did, and I didn’t share! It actually had little to do with flying planes specifically, “little” meaning nothing at all to do with it, but it had everything to do with spending an evening with with airplane related people. Not actually related to airplanes, because how funny would that be? Anyway, last Saturday we had a Going Away party for moi at the VFW (I leave the 13th).

The VFW is the bar that Courtney always takes us to post-flying, it’s actually a bar specifically for veterans. I’m sure the VFW even stands for something, but I’m not sure what it is.  We’ve been there so often that the waitress knows  me, and though they close at 7pm, they stayed open until past 8:30 because we were still there. I’m fairly certain Courtney keeps them in business and secretly has children with the waitresses,  which would explain their willingness to do most anything for him but also their general “don’t touch me” vibe- that also might just come from working at a bar every day.

In any case, we had the party there so that we could order in pizza from across the street. The pizza was surprisingly delicious. And earlier that day, my grandma and I made cookies in the shape of airplanes. I decorated them with white icing and blue trim so that they would match the Cherokee I flew. I even wrote the N number on them, which is the identifier on the tail end of the plane. They were a big hit.

So, my time here is coming to an end but I’ll save the “I’m so sad, let’s look back on the last few months” commentary for the next post. But there was a certain amount of melancholy at the going away party because I am after all, awfully cool. And I’ve created a life here and it’s interesting to know it’s coming to an end.

In honor of my  love of winter, there’s a foot of snow on the ground and so the trek from my house to the main house is a study in how to get down a hill without becoming a snowball. And I’ve managed to create two snowmen out front. The first only came up to my waist but the second is almost as tall as me. Down the road is hands down the largest snowman I’ve ever see, at least 6 feet tall with a baseball hat on and a scarf. It’s the kind of snowman that you see people make in movies but know is rarely made in real life because it takes hours and requires three people to lift the head. I also had to use 4-wheel drive to get out of my driveway because apparently I’m not special enough to warrant getting my driveway snow-blown. I thought my grandpa loved me, but I was wrong.

Now what?

The following is what I just wrote for the “biography” section of this blog, modified for super-public consumption of course, because who reads the biography section?  It used to say I was getting my Private Pilot’s license, but anybody who has kept up knows that occurred weeks ago.  That’s amazingly great news of course because I finally feel like I’m an actual post-graduate, all floating along without any meaningful direction, but it’s bad news for a blog about flying. Luckily, Tom Petty thought of that when he sang Learning to Fly, so we can pretend I meant the metaphorical significance of it all along.

This blog, as stated in my very first post,  started out as a way to appease the masses whom inevitably wanted to hear about my adventures in getting my Private Pilot’s license. It was a way to cut down on the number of times I got asked “so, what did you do today?” which happened approximately 1600 times a day. Maybe not 1600, I’m not sure I even know 1600 people. But apparently when you’re flying airplanes people go insane and want to live vicariously. It’s nice to be the one whose life is interesting enough to warrant that attention, but to me, a day spent in the air was often as ordinary as buying milk. Perhaps a little less ordinary than that. I’d say it falls in between a time where you were buying milk and you ran into your favorite actor who just happens to live in the hills of your expensive town and you end up chatting with him/her and they introduce you to their cute friend who is staying with him/her throughout the summer and you two hit it off and you end up having dinner with them in their mecca of amazingness — and then actually just a day where you buy milk and your biggest achievement is remembering to tell the cashier you want neither paper nor plastic because it’s a gallon of milk and you can certainly save a tree/plastic bush and carry the thing from the store to your car and from your car to your home.  It falls somewhere in there. The two are closer than you’d think- after all, each story started with you buying milk.

Anyway, flying is far from over, but the license is got, so my blog will have to move on to more interesting things. Check back for a relatively continuous stream of fascinating tidbits, rants, and when I do fly or manage to do some flying related things, I will definitely write about it. I don’t fly everyday, because who as a post-college-graduate has the money for that? And eventually you all would catch on to the secret that flying is like driving a car 3,000 feet above the ground and stop reading. However, as those who know me have long since realized, I do have a lot of opinions and rants inside me, so you’ll have to just read hoping for a little milk-buying excitement. If you have a request, something you’ve always wondered, about anything, but especially flying, feel free to ask away. I can’t promise to know it, but I will learn it just for you.

Oooh… they make me so mad

What doesn’t cease to surprise me is how… wait, how can I say this nicely? how… unintelligent some people can be. I was recently asked to come to my local Small Town Airport for the day to help my instructor out with some biennials he had to perform. One of the requirements of being a pilot is a review every 2 years. These people were just sport pilots, which is like a step below Private Pilots (I’m a Private Pilot). My job, as far as I could tell, was to make sure these people needing their reviews knew the basics on ground school- so how to read a chart, how to do a weight and balance and what makes a plane most likely to stall.

Presumably, these are things they should know- I mean, if you’re flying a plane you should know what airspace is and how to balance a plane so you don’t spin it out of control and kill everybody. I mean, it’s pretty basic stuff.  The first guy had literally no idea, he didn’t know one airspace from another, didn’t know 90% of the items on the chart- he could pick out railroad tracks and roads. This isn’t rocket science people. The thing about sport pilots is they’re not really suppose to go into busy airports, but how would they know if it’s a busy airport when they DON’T KNOW WHAT AIRSPACE IS or HOW TO IDENTIFY IT.  Imagine not being able to read a roadmap- that’s what this is the equivalent of.

The second guy was a Private Pilot who was dropping down to a Sport Pilot, and he knew everything on the chart… wait for it… except AIRSPACE. For God’s sake, you’ve got to be kidding me– you’ve been flying for 15 years and don’t know how to identify a Control Towered airport on a chart? What got me about the second guy is that he has what is called a “satellite” airport. Basically what this means is that he owns an airstrip that is right outside of a busy airport, busy being a general term just meaning something with a control tower. Which means when he takes off in his plane, he has to contact the control tower to let them know he’s flying around just outside their airspace. But he DIDN’T KNOW WHAT AIRSPACE HIS AIRSTRIP WAS IN!!!

My brain seriously exploded.

How can you own your own airstrip outside of a relatively busy airport and not know what airspace you’re in? I just can’t even comprehend it. These people fly planes, in the same sky I fly planes in, and they don’t know what the rules are for where they are, because they don’t know what the airspace is for where they are, it’s like driving around and not knowing that a one way means you have to go that way and a yield sign means to look out for traffic.

Ooh they make me so mad. If I have to know it, they should too.