Where are the lovers?


by Berck

So we’re here in Virginia. As usual, I cannot sleep. So I read over the last entry and realized that I really do need to proofread. I’ll try to that. I need to find a client-side editor for this since WordPress does not come with spell check. And we all know that I need spell check. Sometimes Joanna reads my posts and complains, so I go back and try to fix them.

Hmm… Bishop lurks! Fa!

The $%#@ing clock radio went off at 0830 this morning, and we didn’t have to wake up! Jonah said that she wanted to make use of the free breakfast in the hotel, so I told her she could drag me with her if she did. I didn’t realize she was going to set a bloody alarm.

I put on my dirty clothes from the night before and my hat and stumbled downstairs to breakfast. I took some of the eggs which looked scary and quite a few biscuits and gravy.

The gravy was pretty good (much better than Jonah’s which for some reason tends to be greasy and brown), but the biscuits were mediocre. Jonah makes MUCH better biscuits. Especially the last ones. I don’t know which recipie she used, but she should stick with it. (I feel compelled to point out that I walked in to discover her cutting biscuits with a glass. In spite of the fact that someone gave us biscuit cutters for our wedding gift, which I knew that I would probably never use, but hoped that maybe Joanna, the biscuit-maker, would. Unfortunately, she didn’t remember we had them. Maybe she will next time.)

After a breakfast, which was very good for a free hotel breakfast yet not worth getting out of bed for, we went back to sleep. And slept until some very late time when Joanna’s parents called to say that they were in Richmond and not to get lunch, because they would take us out to lunch. (We were clearly in much danger of self-feeding at this point…) We showered, and Joanna’s parents did indeed take us out to lunch.

Jonah said we had the choice between Mexican and Chinese. She seemed to be equally at ease with either. I pointed out that the Chinese was quite possibly very bad, but that in Virginia the Mexican was probably El-chico like and overpriced for Mexican but yummy. She agreed, and so Robert and Sarah took us out for Mexican.

It wasn’t as El-Chico-ish as I expected (this is a good thing), but it wasn’t authentic either. It was, in short, good Tex-Mex. The salsa had too much cilantro for me, which probably means everyone else liked it. My burritos were very good Tex-Mexish burritos. They even came with a nice tasty red sauce on top, which is how I like them. And they didn’t come with rice and beans, presumably because the rice and beans were inside. But we were in no danger of winding up with Tortas de Milenese de Res. (I’m sure my Spanish spelling is even worse.)

Then we came back and I toyed with the internet while Joanna’s parents napped. Then we went downstairs and drank free beer with the freely available “dinner”. I didn’t go near the soggy looking chicken or roasted potatos, but the only beer available was Yuengling! Yuengling, while it’s not exceptional, is one of the few widely available good beers produced in this country. And it tastes so good when it’s free.

After beer, we went and watched Shrek2. I couldn’t talk to Joanna during the movie (something I like to do even though it drives her crazy) since her mother was talking to her during most of it. It’s deffinitely one of the better sequels out there.

I was just ecstatic over the endless Disney cracks. If they missed a good opportunity to take a shot at Disney, I don’t know where it might have been.

And it featured Tom Waits! In what may be the most appropriate place for his music that I’ve ever seen.

Before Shrek (but after beer), Sarah dragged us to the mall so she could buy a T-shirt. I kept trying to convince her that one of mine would do nicely, but she couldn’t be convinced and had to spend money on what appeared to be one T-shirt sewn inside another. Thankfully this task wasn’t nearly as painful as I thought it might be.

Before the T-shirts (but after beer, as well as after Shrek) we drove all around downtown Richmond reliving Sarah’s childhood.

We also barged into the Jefferson Hotel wherein Robert asked where “the staircase” was. The concierge responded, “It’s a legend. Read about it in the book over there.” So we did.

And then came the never-ending sojourn to acquire Berck food. The Brenners have this uncanny notion that a bowl of popcorn counts for a meal. It really doesn’t. Fortunately, they were willing to provide me with Wendy’s, but first we had to drive through every other fast food joint only to discover it was closed. Wendy’s is “Open Late”.

And that’s my day condensed. Maybe Joanna will fill in the witty details later.

And now I’m too tired to proofread. Oops.

Posted in Nonclassified Nonsense | 1 Comment

Why is Virginia for Lovers?


by Berck

I’m going to Virginia and, once again, am not going to see an EFO concert. They play there every other weekend–why not whenever I’m there? Oh well. “Sweet, sweet Virgina always keeps an open door…”

I flew yesterday and today. I’ve now spent the last three lessons and nearly five hours flight time doing nothing but landing. 40+ landings. And you know what? I still suck.

I very consistently make mediocre landings. My landings are all reasonably safe (at least considering that I’ve got a mile long runway to play with) and aren’t horrific. But I’m not getting much better. I’m better at crosswind landings than I was a couple of weeks ago. If the crosswind is steady, I can land straight and hold the centerline. But lately the wind has been varying about 140 degrees in direction and ranges from 5-20 knots which makes it really difficult because each landing is so unpredictable. On one hand that’s good because it’s more of a challenge. On the other hand, I suck.

And it’s not like there’s any one thing I’m getting wrong. Some times I flare too much, sometimes not enough. Sometimes I land sideways, sometimes I’m straight. Sometimes I come in fast, sometimes I come in slow. I almost always come in a little high, but that’s because D. likes approaches steep and gets twitchy otherwise. I wish they’d fix the VASI on runway 17. It’s not that I need it, it’s just that it would be nice to have some sort of reference to a 3 degree glide slope. I seem to do better when my approaches are less steep than what I generally do. D. admitted to teaching his students to come in steep, but he’s right, it’s safer that way. And in a Cessna 172 with 40 degrees of flaps, you just stick those barn doors out and point the plane at the numbers. A power off approach with 40 degrees of flaps looks like it’s about a 20 degree glide slope.

The past few lessons I’ve been supposedly working on short-field and soft-field landings. And all that does is make things more difficult. Today we did nothing but just land. I was supposed to make them as soft-fieldish as possible. I did manage to hold the nose wheel off the ground for a good long time on one of them. I think in the past few days I’ve made… 3-4 GOOD landings. I should be doing better than that.

I confessed my frustration to D., who hasn’t been terribly helpful. He’s master of pointing out the obvious. Yes, I know I was fast. Yes, I know I was too slow too high. But what am I doing WRONG? I mean, I can see the after-effects as well as he can. Mostly we just fly in circles (well, rectangles), and he doesn’t say much. I suppose there’s probably not a lot he can say.

In any case, he decided that it’s probably in everyone’s best interest to send me up with one of the gurus until I can land. Either the chief flight instructor or the instructor who they refer to as their “landing expert”. I’m all for this–especially if I get a ride with the chief. He’s got well over 10,000 hours and supposedly radiates aviation knowledge. I know who he is, but I haven’t met him yet.

So that’s supposed to happen next week. I need to be able to make good normal landings so I can make good enough short field landings to pass a check ride.

Holy cow. I just looked outside and, well, I was flying an hour ago and it was beautiful. Now it’s hailing and looks really rough. I’d estimate 50+ MPH winds.

HAH. The storm center picked it up TWENTY minutes ago. It came out of nowhere:

AT 306 PM CDT…DOPPLER RADAR DETECTED A LINE OF SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS
FROM 11 MILES EAST OF SPARKS TO NEAR CHOCTAW TO JUST SOUTH OF
BETHANY TO EL RENO…MOVING SOUTHEAST AT 35 MPH. THE STRONGEST
STORMS WITH THIS LINE ARE LOCATED OVER CHOCTAW AND JUST SOUTH
OF THE VILLAGE AND BETHANY. HALF DOLLAR SIZED HAIL IS POSSIBLE WITH
THESE STORMS ALONG WITH 70 MPH WINDS. ELSEWHERE WINDS OF 50 TO 60
MPH AND HAIL TO THE SIZE OF NICKELS AND QUARTERS ARE LIKELY.

Hopefully the inbound plane will actually land and we’ll get out of here tonight.

Man. It sounds like the hail is going to come through the windows…

Posted in Flying | 1 Comment

Virginia is for lovers


by Jonah

We’re heading to Richmond, VA tomorrow evening. We’ll be there for the weekend to attend my grandmother’s memorial service. I get bereavement pay! Woohoo! We’re staying in a hotel with free Internet access, so maybe we’ll post some stuff from there.

We’re heading to the grocery store this evening. Berck needs a toothbrush and toothpaste and shampoo and deoderant, so I’m making him go with me so he can pick out exactly what he wants. I’m waiting for him to find his black pants so he can start a load of laundry before we leave. I think he’s now looking for his brown pants. This could take a while.

I have to work until 5:30 tomorrow evening, and our flight is at 7:05. Berck is going to take me to work in the morning, then pick me up straight from work, and we’ll go to the airport. The airport is right next to the warehouse, so that should work nicely.

Well, the hunt for the black pants is not going well. And in such a small apartment…

Ah… Berck just reappeared from the bedroom. “Hanging pants on a non-pants hanger is a bad idea, because you’ll never find them again.”

I guess that’s better than, “Jonah, what did you do with my pants????!!!!”

Posted in Nonclassified Nonsense | No Comments

Who says I can’t fly in the rain?


by Berck

I’m not exactly sure why Joanna thought I wasn’t allowed to fly in the rain… Around here I need 3 miles of visibility, and I have to stay 500 feet below, 1000 feet above and 2000 feet horizontally from all clouds. I also need 3 miles of visibility.

The ceilings were above 12,000 feet, there was better than 10 miles visibility, and light rain today. We flew.

Actually, D. didn’t think I could fly either. “I dunno about the weather,” he told me. By now I’d already bicycled there. I’d gotten a weather brief. The briefer said, yes, there was a dry line to the west of us, but that was the only convective sigmet. I told D. I didn’t see any reason we couldn’t go on the cross country flight I’d planned. There was a cloud layer, 3300 scattered at Paul’s Valley. Winds aloft were LIGHT AND VARIABLE??? D. got a weather briefing himself while I preflighted the plane. He came back worried about the convective activity west and moving our way, very slowly. It wasn’t supposed to get here for another 2 hours, minimum. We decided that I could practice my landings. I needed practice.

Apparently every one else had the same idea. The controller said there were already four people in the pattern, and he didn’t really want another one. So we decided to go to a nearby airport and do touch and go’s. After we were climbing through 3,000 feet, it became obvious just how beautiful a day it was to fly. The air was perfectly smooth. The visibility cleared up quite a bit, and I could see farther than I usually can when the sky is clear. D. decided that we should, after all, fly my cross country.

There was quite a bit of rain falling from the clouds, most of it didn’t reach the ground. (The name for this is virga, but Joanna didn’t know this word, so you might not either.) Little holes in the clouds opened up every so often, allowing the sun to blast through in a little circle on on the ground. It was all very pretty, and a nice change from the clear skies, sun beating down on you days.

I got us to Shawnee okay, using nothing but my sectional, the compass and landmarks. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to do, but I’m getting better at it. I was rather frustrated that I couldn’t find the airport, until finally I saw it, clear as daylight, a little to the left of where I thought it was. Why I couldn’t find it, I don’t know. We did a couple of touch and go’s there, then flew to Paul’s Valley, then back to Westheimer. As I rolled out on final, the controller said, “Winds…calm.” No WONDER. I couldn’t figure out why it seemed like I was going so fast. It was really weird landing without wind, but actually fairly easy. So easy I wanted to go do a bunch more. I’d never landed in much less than 10-15knots, and it’s usually 20-30 knots, and that’s a big difference. It looks like you’re just flying along way too quickly, but that’s just because the air mass you’re flying in isn’t moving relative to the ground like it usually.

I told D. I wanted to fly more. “Hmm. I should solo you.”

So, after 1.5 hours of cross country instruction, I went in, got another weather briefing, and took off again for the south, this time by myself.

D. told me I needed an hour. The big thing was that I was supposed to head to the practice area and come back to the airport all by myself.

“Go do some maneuvers and come back.”

“What, like barrel rolls and upset recovery?”

“NO! Do steep turns or something. Don’t do too many stalls.”

So, I did steep turns, and that was boring, so I did steeper turns. Steep turns at 60 degrees is more fun. A 60 degree turn while maintaining altitude is a 2G maneuver. I got dizzy after awhile, and played around with some negative G-loads. Just enough to start to lift me out of the seat, nothing very extreme. I didn’t like not having a specific task. I would just go have fun, sight see, and enjoy flying, but I was paranoid that I’d get lost or something. “Just fly the river, you can’t get lost if you’re on the river,” D. told me. I couldn’t fly very far out, because I was getting into some heavier rain and visibility sucked that way. I couldn’t go North, because then I’d be in class D airspace. After about half an hour, and I headed back to Westheimer and opted to do some touch and gos, since that’s what I really need some practice with. I did 4 landings. The second one sucked. The third one was beautiful. By then the wind was at 10 knots from 170 and I was landing on runway 21, so that’s a substantial crosswind. The last two landings I landed almost perfectly straight, which sufficiently impressed me. D. was flying the same time I was, so he didn’t see them. “You sound like a real pilot on the radios, though,” he told me. At least I sound like one.

I got 1.5 hours dual and 1.0 hour PIC today. Maybe I’ll get a private certificate eventually.

Posted in Flying | 3 Comments

Oh, where, oh, where has he gone?


by Jonah

It’s 8 p.m., and I have no idea where my husband is.

He can’t have gone far. I came home to find him and his bike missing. This isn’t unusual… they both disappear quite often to go flying. (Well, Berck goes flying. The bike stays on the ground.)

But it’s raining today. Berck can’t fly in the rain yet.

We only have one phone between us, and Berck supposedly has it. I got online and asked Nathan to call Berck’s phone. Berck didn’t answer, so Nathan left a voice mail.

I’m guessing Berck and his instructor are doing things that involve being on the ground. Maybe they flew anyway, because it doesn’t rain over all of Oklahoma at once. The weather tends to change rather quickly around here. It couldn’t have been raining when Berck left for him to be willing to ride his bike.

So I’ve been spending the evening looking for jobs. I got a rejection e-mail yesterday about the history professor position. That was nice of them to let me know, especially since Berck was going to make me call them the next day. There are two promising jobs in the paper today that I’m going to apply for. One is another history professorship at a community college. It asks for three professional letters of reference, so I’ve got to send out some e-mails begging for some. The other is for a curriculum developer. “Instructional designers, writers, and secondary teachers encouraged to apply.” That looks like fun, but I have to send in a writing sample. I’m thinking I may have to create one.

I spend my day in the warehouse sweating and thinking of things to write about. I’ve got a whole list of topics in my head. But by the time I come home, I’m too pooped to do much of anything except eat the (usually) delicious meal Berck has prepared for me. And then I spend whatever remaining energy I have studying the want-ads for employment. Fortunately, the local paper has all their classifieds online, searchable. It makes things easier.

So I’m sorry if my post is simply informative and not amusing. Maybe the next one will be more of the latter.

Now it’s 8:30. Where the heck is my husband?

Posted in Nonclassified Nonsense | 1 Comment