Bedtime is rapidly approaching, so this may be rather abbreviated…

Much to my disappointment, I didn’t fly on Friday, and still haven’t flown. The weather on Friday wasn’t very conducive to flying. I did end up preflighting a plane…. in the rain. Eventually the rain stopped, and it looked like we were going to go. But after getting a weather briefing, my instructor decided against it. It was fine directly above the field, but we were surrounded by convective activity and towing cumulus clouds, with lightning reported to the north. The wind was gusty and fluctuating wildly in direction. Several other instructors were trying to encourage Mike to take me up anyway, and just stay close to the field. Mike, conservatively, stuck to his decision, which I considered to be good rather than bad. I didn’t get to fly, but there’s no point in unnecessary risk, particularly considering this would be my first flight.

It turns out I’m Mike’s first private student; the rest of his couple of months experience as an instructor has been primarily commercial students with one instrument student. He was somewhat relieved to find out that I’ve got a solid background of aviation knowledge. After spending about an hour with me, he said he felt like he was talking to one of his commercial students. This is good, in that we can progress more rapidly to what I don’t know, but there’s always the risk that he might skip over something assuming that I know it. I pointed out that I don’t know what I don’t know, and he agreed that was definitely true.

I found out, for instance, that my experience in the aviation industry has provided me with a much more knowledge of what actually goes on at the airlines than most of the people aspiring to be an airline pilot seem to know.

Before we went of the basics of a preflight experience, Mike took me over to the pilot shop. It’s a little room in the flight school, which seems to be operated by a woman unassociated with the flight school. I assume she pays them rent, but the flight school is not itself interested in the sale of supplies, which is good as it keeps costs down. I’d already purchased the most expensive thing I needed, a headset. I took pride in observing that I managed to purchase mine for nearly $100 less than the pilot shop price. I asked her about it, and it turns out I bought mine at a price substantially lower than HER cost. Naturally, she was rather interested in where I’d purchased it.

Mike walked me around the little room, handing me things in a way that made the scene resemble Harry Potter’s acquiring of school supplies. At least I knew what most of the things I bought were, but most people probably wouldn’t. I bought a plotter, a fuel strainer, a copy of the FAR’s, a Dallas-Fort Worth sectional, a pilot’s information manual for the Cessna 172 (Essentially a generic POH for student use), a private pilot text book, and some other assorted things. I elected not to purchase a copy of the Airport Facilities Directory, since the current edition expires on April 15. I can make do without and just get the current version when it comes out, which should be shortly.

After hanging around for a couple of hours, discussing the weather and so on, Mike suggest I talk to Dale, the person teaching the private ground school class. It turns out that he was in such a place that it would be quite easy for me to take the last half of the class starting on Monday (tomorrow) and then go back and do the first half the next week. That will save me some time. The unfortunate thing is that private ground school is Mon-Fri 8:30am-Noon. That’s early.

Furthermore, Joanna is going to start working in a warehouse on Monday so that she can make some money while she hopes to get another job. It’s not a great job, and doesn’t pay very well, but some income will keep us from getting further in the hole. The bad thing is that we’ve only got one car, and we both need to be in two places at once. Arthur is pretty much out of the picture until I can spend some serious money on him.

Fortunately, the flight school is approximately 4 miles away. Too far to walk, but not terribly far to bicycle. In a rather un-Berckish endeavor, I went out to the bike shop on Friday, and after talking briefly to the salesperson decided on a bike. They only a had a smallish one available, but said they ordered a larger one for me and said I could pick it up after 1pm on Saturday. At 2pm on Saturday, they told me to come back at 5pm. At 5pm, they had a bike for me, though it wasn’t the color they said it would be. I didn’t really care, and bought it anyway. So, for $350, I now have a bike, a helmet, and a bike lock. My bike isn’t a true road bike, as those start at around $700, and I’m not about to spend that much on a bicycle. It’s classified as a hybrid, or “comfort” bike. Somewhere between a road bike and a mountain bike. It’s got skinnier tires, and geared much higher than mountain bikes tend to be. The seat hurts my butt, and I’m starting to wonder if maybe I should have gotten a 23″ instead of the 21″ I’ve got, but it’s a nice bike. It’s even got such goodies as a front suspension fork (a scaled down version of what you find on a motorcycle) and springs as well as a pneumatic shock under the seat. It rides quite smoothly.

It turns out that the highest gear is a little much for me on level ground, but it’s nice when going downhill. The lower gears are far lower than I seem to need.

I bicycled to the flight school and back today to see how long it would take me. It’s about a 35 minute ride there, and a 25 minute ride back. There’s about half a mile that’s pretty high traffic density, but the rest is relatively empty. It’s a lot of work for me, but wasn’t too bad. It was also about 50 degrees out, I’m sure it will be absolutely miserable when it heats up to 100. It’ll be good for me though.

So, I’ve got to leave here around 7:30 tomorrow morning, so I’m going to to try to fall asleep now…