Adelle is / was here...

in


So, Adelle got a chance to come over for the Halloween Weekend. This basically marks the beginning of when we went out for the first time. No, it wasn't us on a date, but more like a "casual" outting to a club called E-Street in Downtown, SD. It was for the Halloween Special. And yes, I have never gone back since then. At least I think I haven't. And yes, it's pretty not that cool. Instead, this year, we went to a place called Mai Tai's in Daytona Beach, FL. It's the PB Bar and Grill equivalent but much smaller and a lot more guys! I mean like 90% men! Not fun either, but hey, what can you do? I have Adelle here part of the time. She came with to the graduation ceremony of some friends from the CAPT program and a night flight in the PA44. We also went to Jacksonville and spent some time walking around the St. Johns Mall. Actually, we spent quite a bit driving around trying to find the place. I eventually ended up near Craig Airport. (that's about 20 miles or so north of where we wanted to go) We also got some nice chat time in and mostly just a bunch of "hanging out" time at home just relaxing like what we use to do in SD. I'll miss ya babe!

*who are those two guys trying to mack on my girl?

Waffle House

in

Today finally marks the end to Adelle's little fantasy of waffles at the Waffle House. Definitely not that great at all. I don't even recommend eating there really. It's okay, but nothing short of what I couldn't do. I mean, eggo waffles taste better! Oh well, it was the experience that we were after. There was also this HUGE fly buzzing near. I mean, it almost looked like a bumble bee.

Tonight should be the first night flight in the PA44. We are in N926ER, again. If you don't remember, its the plane that had the mold issue going on and crews getting sick. The last time I flew that plane, it wasn't that bad at all. I mean, the weather was a little colder than normal so that probably helped with the smell. Usually on the hot days, 926 smells the worst. Adelle is thinking of coming tonight, but we'll see how the plane is prior to taking off. Maneuvers should be fun. I've never done them in the PA44 at night. I'm definitely looking forward to the flight.

GO CHARGERS!!!

Personal Record

in

So, if it isn't weather, its resources. It's not the lack of instructors at CAPT, but the lack of multi-engine aircraft. We have 4 PA44 and 3 of them are still down. So, yeah, I didn't fly again today. This will be bordering a record of how many days I haven't flown.

Graduation of a class that I actually knew took place today. The catering was better We'll see how things go! and the keynote was very informative. It would be nice to get a transcipt of the speech. We also got new CAPT hats. They don't look that great, but they were free (in some weird sense if you don't include the huge tuition). Looks like there is good news all around with the various airlines working with CAPT. Once again, excitement is in the air.

Adelle is here on a short trip. I'm excited that we get time to hang out.

Busted again

in

I was a little surprised to get canned tonight. Once again, another PA44 was downed for maintenance or whatever. So, Manoj and I are beginning to truly get the feeling of not flying everyday. It's not that bad, but I mean, I could be using my time here to be working or studying whichever. It just feels as if I could be using my time more wisely and I'm not. Yeah its my fault but I just don't want to exert myself too much before a flight.

Adelle is coming over tomorrow early in the morning. She's taking the red eye from SD to LAX to ATL then down to DAB. It's going to be a long flight. But she's a trooper. I can't wait. I do have a night flight in the evening which will dappen the mood, but it should be a lot of fun.

Good flying

in

Today was a good day in N926ER. I have to say that I was a little hesitant in flying that airplane because of what Laura told me last night. To sum up that experience, she didn't feel that good at all. She basically threw up afterwards and the rest of the crew got sick. I'm not sure, but the smell inside the aircraft is quite rancid. So, after eating a huge lunch, Manoj and I were a little scared of feeling sick ourselves. We had weather on our side today because it didn't allow for the smell to heat up. Instead, the cold weather helped out a bit in keeping it down. We flew around for about 3.7 hours total and got a good lesson in. We start night flights tomorrow along with steep turns and other maneuvers. That should be fun.

Should I get my CFI?

wake up call to no plane

in

I had a feeling that I might need two alarms for the morning, so last night, I set one at 5:40 AM and the other at 6:20 AM. Did that work? Nope... Instead Manoj gave me a, "Where are you?" call around 7:30 (I just got up like 2 minutes before) and notified me that we were on standby waiting for resources. Of course when I say resources, its none other than the PA44. Three out of our four were down and one was out. We stuck around for our instructor who then just told us to go home and wait for a call. We got one, but it was the news that we had been cancelled. Oh well!

Adelle is ocming this Friday! I do have night flights so that's going to stink up the night time events, but the morning and afternoons should be fun! What do you want to do babe?!

uneventful...

in

I have to say that the past two weekends that I have had a chnace to relax by going out have been both huge, major busts! I mean, I don't expect anything anymore of Daytona Beach, but at least some gratifying notion of social life would help out the demeaning character of this hell hole. Whew...that was a mouthful.

Well, looks like Hurricane Wilma has come and gone. It's a good thing I guess. I got a free hour in the DA40 and I'm ready to leave whenever another storm hits. Come to think of it, the season is slowly but surely almost to and end and without any harm to my residence. Is this just a quirky notion that I should sell the house before some devastates my neighborhood? *Ummmm*

I walked outside today and the weather is amazingly frigid. I mean, it was if I was standing in some snow in Big Bear! It was nice. I almost had to get a jacket for the 2 minutes that I was outside checking the mail. I'm loving this. Good thing for cold fronts. ^_^

Sad day...

in

Well, the pressure was on and the Bolts weren't able to pull through. We had a good rally and tried to help LT break the record but with no success. I never thought that I would ever get emotionally over football, let alone the Chargers, but damn, I was really mad. In every game that we have lost, we have lost with the lead in the 4th with the opposing team making the winning drive within the last few minutes of the game. It was an absolute disaster! I remember watching the pregame and every player on Phillys team was asked how they were going to stop LT. They did their job and quite well too. I rememeber that they were also talking about how LT needed a new name, I was thinking that Jojo's name of Boltron be a good one, but now, I just don't know. (check out his icon)

So, after waking up to the Chief Flight Instructor of CAPT giving me a call to give us a heads up on Hurricane evac, I ended up going back to sleep because he said we were okay. So of course, I started to continually dream about evacuating and the procedures involved. It wasn't pretty...the dreams I mean. It was restless sleep so I just decided to wake up and get going on my new big breakfast ordeal. I woke up to Jeremy making some Chocolate Chip pancakes. They were awesome. I even went back to my old school ways. I had some with syrup and some with butter and sugar. I actually preferred the latter. I guess that I was just accustomed to being not able to have syrup as a kid. It was a great childhood. I miss it!

Standby

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Well, being that Hurricane Wilma is right around the corner, I had some recurrency training yesterday in the DA40. It was fun to fly that plane again. The landings were nice and smooth and I was even impressed. We did three approaches and because it wasn't a checkride, we got to act as a crew. I had the Standards Manager, Wes Treco as my co-pilot. It is so intimidating to fly with him because he's so well trained. He's just an overall awesome pilot. He did all my radios and configured the avionics accordingly. I shot three approaches and finished up. I did all this because I was almost at the 90 day mark for DA40 flying. Now, I might get to rent it when Adelle gets here. That should be fun.

I got a call this morning at about 11 EDT just to notify us that we were not going to be evacuating today. We are still on standby for 8 AM EDT Sunday until the evening and even till perhaps Monday morning. It'll be interesting to see what ends up happening. I'm starting to feel how it is being on standby. I just need a pager now!

First real AMEL PIC time

in

After logging my checkride as PIC, today was the first real log, without testing the anxiety factors. To my dismay, the flight wasn't that great at all. You probably would have been asking how the heck I received my ticket. I guess you can attribute it to being very tired and weary (preflight was at 6:00 AM EDT). I was just so drained. I stayed awake for Manoj's ride and when I got in front, I just started to get sloppy. I wasn't holding altitude well nor was I actually cleaning up the plane due procedure. I was a mess. Oh well...I'll do better next week.

We might evacuate this weekend actually when H.Wilma comes along. It'll be really interesting. I'm excited for the flight. I'll definitely be posting daily as I hear more news on this.

I also got my first iPod today from my one and only. Go over to TECH Rants for the small words. I'll have a review soon enough.

Evacute?

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CAPT has put up a temporary advisory notifying us qualified pilots that they might need our assistance. As of now, we are on standby for temporary evacuation! It's nuts huh? Check out this graphic. The red circle/dot is where I live. We are just north of the track, so it shouldn't be that bad, but H.Wilma is still a very scary Category 5. For those who don't know, Hurricane Hunters have already called this the strongest Hurricane ever measured in the last 150 years. This means that the central pressure was measured to be the lowest at 882 mb. That is just darn low and abnormal. Wish us luck!