Micro-Update 2

Chick = back in nest.

Josh = Incurable hero complex.

At a Loss

The other day, Jen noticed that a chick had fallen out of its nest. Now, for the sake of not incriminating myself, I'm not going to mention the type of bird this chick happened to be. What I will tell you is that I put on a dirty, old pair of gloves and helped the chick back into its nest. Problem solved. Well, now the stupid chick has fallen out of its nest again. The fact of the matter is that five chicks is just too many for this nest, and it seems inevitable now that at least one of them is probably going to keep falling out. The chick is unhurt as far as I can tell, but I'm hesitant to put it back up there again. Truth be told, I don't have any clue what to do in this situation. Do I just let nature run its course and do nothing for the chick? Or do I go put it back again and wait for it to fall back out the next time? Any ideas would be helpful.

Micro-Update

I thought this was an interesting coincidence. This morning I posted about how much I like birds. This afternoon I knocked one out of the sky with my airplane.

Scoping Out Chicks

Thanks to my grandparents' influence in my early life, I've always enjoyed watching birds. Since moving to Arizona last Summer, I've become pretty near obsessed with watching swallows. They're fascinating! This nest of little guys is at the base of our stairwell, so I get to see them every day, usually multiple times a day. Only 4 chicks are visible, but there are actually 5 who live there. I really like them. Last year, there was a nest with 3 chicks in it by our stairwell. It was fun to watch them grow up and eventually fly away. I'm excited to see these little guys do the same. This post actually brings up an interesting question Jenny raised the other day. I've been calling baby swallows chicks, but are all baby birds really called chicks? If anyone knows, please feel free to answer.

8 Random Facts

I've apparently been tagged, which means I have to come up with 8 little-known facts about me. I find myself at a slight disadvantage, since I more or less already did this when I filled out my Blogger profile. However, I just happen to be one of my favorite topics of discussion, and I'm disinclined to turn down opportunities to talk about such a fascinating topic, so here we go.

1) For a short time in the first half of this decade, I had electric blue hair.

2) I used to (and kind of still do) want to open a coffeehouse.

3) This is my fourth attempt at college.

4) I still fantasize (regularly) about becoming a superhero.

5) I have a small, underdeveloped third nipple a few inches below my left one.

6) I have a lifelong love of hats of all kinds, but I'm usually too self-conscious to wear any but a standard ball cap.

7) When I was a kid, I used to read multiple books at a time because it was like being able to change the channel when I got bored with one.

8) I can remember the most obscure names and lines in movies and literature, but I struggle to recall even general details from my own life.

There. That should do it. Now I'm supposed to tag 8 other people, but I don't thank I have any Blogger friends who haven't already been tagged. What I'm going to do instead is invite my readers who don't have their own blogs to leave comments on this post and reveal their 8 little-known facts. I'm talking about you, parents and parents-in-law.

Bird's Eye View

(As always, click on the pictures to enlarge them.)
Here are some pictures from Friday's cross-country. This is the airport in Willcox. It's called Cochise County Airport.

This isn't really anything specific. I just thought it looked pretty.

I forgot the name of this body of water, and I'm too lazy to look it up right now. I will say, though, that it kept me from becoming very lost on the first leg of my journey.

And here are some more of those round fields. A lot more. Also, I'm pretty sure those shiny things are solar panels. I think they're the first ones I've seen on any of my flights.

Where Credit is Due

I feel like I don't give God the credit/glory He deserves in my life. He's certainly got some coming for my cross-country yesterday. As I was dealing with the clouds and the turbulence and stuff, I kept praying, "God, help me." And He did. Most of my trip was remarkably free of turbulence. He enabled me to get oriented when the clouds put me off-course, and He gave me a path back home. I asked Him to keep the clouds away from the college so I could get back and land safely, and He did. I didn't have to fly around any clouds after I got situated on my new course. I asked Him to keep the clouds from developing into thunderstorms, and He did. And, despite my final landing being ugly and as un-graceful as any landing could ever be, it was also a safe landing that didn't result in damage to me or the airplane or the runway. And that was God, too. So all the glory and all the credit for a successful cross-country belongs to God, and to Him alone.

Post-Flight Date

Oh, yeah, and then after I got back from flying, we went and saw Shrek the Third. It was very good. I laughed a lot. It may not have been as funny as it seemed at the time, but I had tons of leftover tension I needed to get rid of. Laughing did the trick for me. The movie really was enjoyable, though. One of the highlights of the experience happened about 2/3 of the way through the movie, and didn't actually involve the film at all. There were a little boy and little girl with their parents (I'm guessing) sitting off to our left a ways. Suddenly, I heard the boy cough a bit, and then I heard a splash. And then the little girl said, very loudly, "Did he just throw up on my shoes?!" It was hilarious! What wasn't so funny was when, a short time later, the puke smell finally wafted over to us and stayed with us for pretty much the rest of the movie. There were quite a few people there, and we weren't sure how much longer the movie was, so finding new seats seemed like a whole lot of effort. In the end, we alternated between breathing into our hands and breathing into the collars of our shirts. Still, though, it was a good movie and I'm glad we went.

Forty Miles West

I finally flew my cross-country yesterday morning. It wasn't my best cross-country, but it was mostly okay. I made 3 landings in the course of the flight, and 2 of them were pretty bad. I think I was just really tensed up, and it caused me to over-control the plane in the flare. Also, on the last leg of my flight, I encountered some cumulus clouds. Flying under cumulus clouds is like saying, "I sure do love flying through turbulence." Not a great idea. So I flew around the clouds, which put me about 40 miles off-course and resulted in my spontaneously selecting a new course home. What's remarkable, and I truly praise God for this, is that there was only a very brief period where I didn't know where I was. Despite flying over unpopulated, rocky terrain with very few obvious landmarks, I was able to figure out where I was and successfully choose a path that took me safely back to the college. That's an amazing thing! Thank-you to everyone who was (and is) praying for me. Your prayers were answered.

Now I only have one cross-country left before I can finish commercial stage 1. Unfortunately, it's a doozie of a flight, under-flying Phoenix's airspace and landing at a large, towered airport with 3 parallel runways. On the bright side, I don't have to deal with it until next Friday at the earliest.

Last Post of the Day... Maybe

I think I somehow forgot to mention that Jen and I are heading back to Michigan for a week in June. Shame on me! Jen and I are heading back to Michigan for a week in June. Now you know.

The Horse

And now my pity party is officially done. It's time to get back on the horse. I just called Erin and asked her to dispatch me for another local solo tomorrow morning. I'm going to work on takeoffs and landings again. And I'll keep working on them until I regain my confidence. Yeah.

Failure

I was sitting in Erin's office this morning, filling out my flight plan and expecting to be taking off in the next 20 minutes. Everything was looking good, except for my confidence level. After talking to Erin about my fears, we decided it was probably best for me to pass on the cross-country today. Erin told me to do a local solo instead, and to stay up as long as I wanted working on maneuvers and things. I wound up spending all of about 30 minutes in the air. As I started my takeoff roll, I realized I hadn't been in a plane by myself since my last cross-country flight. That flight took place over a month ago and, if you'll recall, it was a difficult, frightening flight for me. Since keeping a plane in the air is much easier than safely putting it back on the ground, I decided to start my solo time with some touch-and-go's. I did five in all, a couple good ones and a couple bad ones. Then I decided that was long enough for my first solo in a month. And from the moment I taxied off the runway, I felt like a colossal failure. In fact, I'm sitting here typing this and still feeling like a colossal failure. In the end, though, I suppose it's better to call off a cross-country I don't feel good about, than to force myself to go and make a foolish and dangerous mistake because I'm all nerved up. Thanks to everyone who prayed for me, especially my father-in-law. Thanks, Terry. Your assurance that you'd be praying for me meant a lot to me.

Jenny asked me to update, so here goes. Assuming the weather forecast doesn't dramatically change overnight (and that the actual weather tomorrow morning turns out something like the forecast), I'm flying one of my last two cross-countries of the semester. I'll be going to Globe, AZ and to Holbrook, AZ. Erin and I flew over to Bisbee-Douglas International this afternoon to get me a little practice landing somewhere other than the college. It was a good learning experience, but also a little frightening. The air does strange things around here when it starts getting hot, and it's very hard to predict just how the air's strangeness is going to affect your airplane. For instance, I was just coming over the end of the runway, maybe 20 or less in the air, getting ready to set down on the runway. Everything was looking good, and then, very suddenly, we hit a weird air pocket that rocked the plane pretty hard. We instantly found outselves swinging sideways. I wound up putting in full throttle and aborting the landing, and everything was fine. But the experience certainly accelerated my heart rate.

Anyhow, please ask God to grant me skill and safety for my cross-country tomorrow morning. Thank you.

SPIDER-MAN 3 SPIDER-MAN 3 SPIDER-MAN 3!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay. Now that's out of my system. Wait, no it's not. SPIDER-MAN 3 SPIDER-MAN 3 SPIDER-MAN 3 SPIDER-MAN 3!!!!!!!!!!!

Right. Okay. Better now. As you may or may not have already guessed, Jen and I are going to see Spider-Man 3 today. The theater in Sierra Vista had not 1, not 2, not 3, but 4 midnight showings last night. Jenny gave me the choice of going alone last night, or waiting til this afternoon and going with her. Hopefully, everyone will still be in work this afternoon, so we won't be crammed into a packed-out theater. Also, we'll get matinee prices (movie tickets are pretty expensive here).

Speaking of Spider-Man, our niece, Mady, is apparently looking for a radioactive spider so she can coax it into biting her and making her into Spider-Girl. On the outside, I laugh and say, "Oh, how silly little children are." On the inside, I'm wondering if she'd let me borrow that spider when she's done with it.

Remember when I first started posting on Blogger, and I was always talking about my training? Well, It's been a while, so I should probably say something about my training. We're in the summer months now, which means two things: wind and turbulence. You can't appreciate the turbulence here unless you've flown in it. Since I, until about a month ago, flew early in the morning, I never had a chance to really experience wind or turbulence. As a result, I'm now trying to get myself accustomed to both, especially during takeoffs and landings. The problem is that I find it very nerve-wracking to take off and land in these conditions, so I usually wimp out after 2 landings. Yesterday, for instance, Erin and I went up. Just after my first takeoff, we hit a wicked bit of turbulence. The nose of the plane started swinging back and forth pretty hard. After two landings, I was ready to call it quits. But then, as I was tying the plane down, I realized I need to stop wimping out and just learn to handle it. As I was debriefing in Erin's office, we talked out that a bit, and she told me during summer break we're going to fly from 12:15 until 3:30 every day. She was sort of kidding, but I told her that would be okay with me. I need to quit being a fairweather pilot and work my way through turbulence and crosswind training.

I was supposed to fly a cross-country this morning, but the forecast was calling for pretty severe winds today, so I decided against attempting to repeat my last cross-country (not the route of flight, but the near-emergency conditions). Tomorrow is supposed to be more of the same, so I guess I'll try that flight again next weekend. I really need to get these last two flights knocked out before June 7 so I can take my stage check for commercial stage 1.