It's Goin' to Be Close! January 12, 2010

Woke up at 8:30.

Another great day for flying.  We have been under an absolutely absurd high pressure system.  I've seen 30.71 in the past week!!!  And we had 30.61 today.  Winds were variable throughout most of the day.  And blue skies everywhere.  Just perfect.

Same routine again.  Fly for a few hours in the morning, land around 12:30, grab a quick soup-can and potato chip lunch, hit the skies for two hours more, then land.  But I decided to change it up a little bit today...

With music!!!  I rocked out to some tunes for a lil' over an hour.  Man, what a difference that makes!  I never usually listen to music in cars, trucks, OR airplanes, but today I decided I needed some.  And it was fantastic!!!  Everything under the sun.  Garth Brooks, Journey, The Steve Miller Band, Johnny Cash, and on and on.  It sure made the time pass by so much quicker.  I might have to do this more often!

Flew through an active MOA for awhile today.  Never saw anything, though.  Although the controller made sure I knew it WAS active.  Twice.  They vector all of the other traffic AROUND this particular MOA.  I decided to fly through it.  <sigh>  The work has to get done!

On my way back in this afternoon, I decided to do a stall.  Haven't done one of those in over a year!  I was a bit timid, but I felt the buffet.  Corrected too soon.  Never went into the full break.  I need to do these maneuvers again!  Been way too long.

Landed with 5.1 hours on the Hobbs.

Went to IHOP for supper again.  First time I ordered something besides breakfast.

Came back to the hotel and worked for a couple of hours on finances.  Made sure I had everybody billed out and updated some missed transactions.  It's a fiasco with so many receipts and people all the time!  But I'm stayin' on it pretty well.  Now anyway.  I was a bit behind before tonight!  I'm averaging $29.01 on my hotel for each night.  And $13.64 on food every day.  I can live with those numbers.

Read a little bit more of Sullenberger's book tonight.  It's more a personal biography than a description of the flight, but I'm sure that story will come soon enough.  A hard marriage being a pilot.  I think about that pretty often!

Went to Waffle House with Matt at 9:00.  Only had a Coke.

Ended up being wired.  Didn't go to bed until 1:00 A.M.!!!