Happy landings!

Okay, I know I haven't posted since the "I failed my stage check" post. I'm still not very eager to discuss the details, but I will say that my biggest problem was that my landings just weren't up to snuff. This was something I sort of knew going into the stage check, but I was hoping to do them well enough to get past Belinda so I could work on them by myself. Well, that didn't happen. She told me I needed to work on landing, then get back with her to redo the takeoffs-and-landings portion of the stage check. For a couple days there, I was pretty upset and had no real desire to fly anymore. I actually called Jen and told her to let me know whenever she was ready to go back to Michigan, and we'd pack up and go. I was frustrated and disappointed and feeling pretty crushed. In retrospect, that was a natural way to feel, but it certainly wasn't the most productive mood to take with me to my lessons. I'm sure Joshua was about ready to strangle me a couple times. I just felt defeated and it seemed, at the time, like every critique he offered was just another attack on my already-broken spirit.

Things sort of came to a head a couple days after my stage check. God ended up convicting me about my attitude and I eventually went to Joshua and apologized. I recommitted myself to learning to land and made it known to Joshua that I wasn't really interested in doing anything else until I'd gotten my landings right. He was cool with that because he gets obsessed with challenges, too. So we spent a few days just flying the traffic pattern. Takeoff, downwind, base, final, land. Takeoff, downwind, base, final, land. Over and over and over. And this morning I finally did 6 really decent landings in a row. So I talked to Belinda after class (she teaches my ground training class), and I'm flying my landings redo at 8:15 Wednesday morning. It's not a great time, since it means I won't have much of a break between practice and the real thing, but it's the soonest time she had available, and I want to get this done!

In other news, my headset came in the mail today. I bought it on e-bay last week and have been waiting eagerly since. Well, it finally showed up this afternoon. I'm excited to take it to my lesson tomorrow and try it out. Here's hoping it doesn't suck!