Lost Day

Hey everyone, sorry I haven't posted in a while, it's just kinda slipped my mind over the last few days (and there hasn't been a whole lot to write about).

Yesterday night, I had my first flight at the controls of the real airplane. They called us up in the afternoon and most of the pilots here for aircraft training had to show up at the airport at 8:45 because we had a plane from 9 onwards. Unfortunately, this meant I had to miss the end of the Purdue vs. Ohio State game (which wasn't going so well anyway, but I did miss our only touchdown of the evening) and instead spend a few hours sitting in the back of the plane while others were flying. I finally got my chance to fly around 12:15 and did one trip around the pattern (the goal was to complete a night landing and do most of the rest of my training during the day). It went ok; the plane definitely flies and lands better than the sim, but I wasn't expecting the power levers (throttle to you non-pilots) to be so much more sensitive than in the sim.

We finally got back to the hotel about 1:45 and I got to bed about 2:30, glad that I was going to be able to sleep in. Before you bash me for sleeping in instead of going to church, you have to understand that I'm on call 24/7 right now, so even if I could get to church it would not be fun to have to pull my ride out of sunday school or service if my phone rang. They told us last night that there was going to be a plane available from noon to 6pm today, but also that only the captains should plan on flying (they didn't think they'd have time to fit us F/O's in).

So, I slept in until about 11:30, took my time getting up, and was looking forward to a nice relaxing day (was planning on having church with my phone again by listening to some more worship music and another Driscoll sermon, taking with Kathy and Dan Willman, an old friend who called me out of nowhere last night, doing some video editing, etc) when my phone rang at 12:20 while I was in the shower. It was John (one of my classmates) saying that we have a plane and we're leaving for the airport in 5 minutes. Naturally, I wasn't too happy, but that didn't change the fact that I suddenly had to frantically get dressed, grab my flight stuff, throw a book and some snacks into my gear (made the mistake of being stuck in the back with nothing to do for a few hours the night before), and rush downstairs to meet my ride up to the airport.

It's now 5:50 and I'm still sitting in the back and haven't gotten any chance to fly, which means they really didn't need to have me come up here anyway. Oh well. At least I brought some stuff to do up here (read my Bible, did a little reading in a book Shane is lending me, reviewed some of my flight study materials in case I got a chance to fly, and I'm finally blogging a little from the Mogul (in Flight Mode, of course, I'll send this after we get back on the ground). I guess on the plus side, even though I didn't get to listen to that Driscoll sermon, I did end up spending some more time in the Word than I would have according to the original plan.

I don't know what I'll be doing this evening yet, but food is definitely on the agenda, seeing as how all I've had to eat today is a couple granola bars and a Snickers. I'll probably spend the rest of the time relaxing a little and hopefully talking to Kathy and Dan if they're available.

Well, I think we're about to land for the last time (finally!), so I think this is a good time to sign off. Later everyone!