Yearly Archives: 2006

Lost Wallets

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I had the occasion last night and this morning to have completely lost my wallet.  This led to several panicked phone calls (sorry Steve and Paul) and a lot of tearing up the house.  In the end, I cancelled all my credit cards, my ATM card, and lost my Social Security card, requiring calls to replace them all.

I rarely lose things of such great value, but this time around I just sucked.  Moments after I put the call in on all these items I found my wallet, wedged into a small opening between the passenger seat and the rail it slides on near the carpet in the car.  This sucked, as I then had to go to the bank and watch them laugh at me for having the card they cancelled, then getting issued a new one while they cut up the old one.

I really do have to remember to put everything back in the right place when I’m done travelling, lest this incident become more commonplace and a lot more nerve wracking in the future.

Flights 13 and 14

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I can now say that a long break from flying does indeed dull the skills.

After my long business trip I had two back-to-back lessons and found that I’m not as sharp on my landings and pattern work as I once was.  Even going out to do the normal maneuvers proved to be a bit sloppy for me.  Lesson 13 was just about trying to remember what I had learned previously, and I did slip up a bit, but the landing went OK.  Lesson 14 took me to Livermore, where I blew the whole approach, landing, and pattern, but did OK on one of the touch-and-go’s.

Practice does make perfect when it comes to flying, that is for sure.

Back Home for a Bit

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I have finally returned from my whirlwind tour of Europe and NYC.  Although my body isn’t sure which time zone it’s in, I am sure that I’m home again.  Where else can you say that the taxi drivers speak less English than they do in other countries?

I’ll be travelling again later this week, but hopefully this stop will be long enough for some clothes washing and a little sleep.  Yawn is the order of the day, for sure.

Lost in the Netherlands

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On stop 2 of my long work trip I managed to get seriously lost driving from Amsterdam to Eindhoven in the Netherlands.  This seems to be a pattern with me and going places for work stuff these days: get off the plane, get in a rental car, drive around lost for hours.

In this case the rental car was a super crappy Mercedes A class mini-econo-box with a stick shift and a top speed of 130kph.  I did eventually make it to my hotel around midnight for a meeting the next morning at 9am.  But I proceeded to get lost searching for the next hotel in Amsterdam, so it seems that my navigation skills are sadly lacking.  Ditto on reading Norse road signs.

Nuggets of Strange Wisdom

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I have been flying around quite a bit recently for the job and found that if I sit quietly in the cab or bus to and from the airport I can pick up on some remarkable gems from the local population. On tap from this weeks trip is this little nugget:

Don’t marry an American woman. They expect too much and are just too hard to deal with. I’m 56, retired, and moving to Thailand. Those are the women to have. My girlfriend is 26 and she’s thankful for the little things. That’s how a woman is supposed to be. And boy does it get the blood rushing again, if you know what I mean, even for an old guy like me.

This really isn’t my type of advice, but someone out there might find it useful.  Feel free to discuss it with your significant other and let me know how that goes.

Flights 10, 11 and 12

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I’m now in the phase where all my flights are about pattern work, radio work, and landings and take-offs.  The short summary of the last three lessons goes like this:

Flight 10: engine runs rough, making the 3 touch and goes a little slow and climb out a bit challenging.  On the 4th attempt at the runway I call it quits and decide that this engine just won’t work today.  Just a half hour of flying this time around.

Flight 11: more touch and goes.  Getting a bit better at judging where the runway is, when to start down, etc.  Still not so good on flares at landing, and the steering on takeoff is a bit scary.  Get almost an hour in this time.

Flight 12: instructor decides to throw a curve ball: we fly from Palo Alto to San Jose, talking to Moffett in between, and then do touch and goes next to 737s.  The radio work is frantic and I really get lost.  And the pattern is higher, the runway longer and wider, so I don’t have a good idea of where I am.  Oh, and on top of all of this its raining and visibility is crud.

Again, the instructor says I’m getting better but I feel like someone beat me with a bat when I get out of the airplane.  I hope the goodness kicks in here after a few more flights, as right now its all very taxing.

Flights 7, 8, and 9

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At this stage in the game I’m learning to fly the pattern and pratice take-offs and landings.  It’s pretty hard going, as the lessons come fast and the margin for error is very low.  It also requires a lot of talking to the tower, watching for other planes, and generally going through a mental checklist very, very quickly.

The instructor says I’m doing well at the landing approach, and OK and landings, but I can’t help thinking that the issues I’m still having with take-offs and operating in the pattern are large ones.  Hopefully things will improve with time, since I’m now out at the field twice a week to keep the training flowing.

Why Commercial Flights Suck, Again

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This week I took a series of flights from San Jose to Austin, Texas, then on to Denver, Colorado, and back to San Jose again.  I shouldn’t be surprised at it any more, but the terrible conditions that now exist in airports is quite appalling.

Previously I would almost never check my bag.  Now, because I’d like to have toothpaste and shampoo available when I fly I must check bags in.  This leads to more time in line, more chances for missed flights, and of course, lost or severely delayed luggage.  Going through Denver, I experienced the severe delay and ended up leaving the airport far later than planned (1 hour later to be exact).

On the trip back I witnessed a conversation between a TSA agent and a weary traveler in the screening line.  In short, the agent told the passenger that if he had only limited his carry-on fluids to 4 ounces (or thereabouts) he could have gotten them on the plane.  In fact, the agent said that the TSA would have allowed the passenger to take on more than one container, perhaps shampoo, mouthwash, and toothpaste, if the passenger had been more smart about the packing.  In the end, the passenger departed with no toiletries.

At Denver I was given the choice to fly on my scheduled flight, but have my baggage arrive on a much later flight, or wait around for the later flight and go with the same plane that had my bag.  I took the later, and that was a huge mistake.  Nearly 3 hours late and a nearly unbearable wait later, I finally got on a plane an headed home.

The moral of these stories is to fly without toothpaste, shampoo, or any of the other comforts of home.  Give up trying to make things work the way they once did (and should again) and demand that hotels start providing these goods for the traveler.  Only then will some sanity return to commercial air travel.

Lessons 5 & 6: Crud and Partial Redemption

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Last week I did two flying lessons in the same week. The hope was that this would allow me to retain more of my know-how without sliding backward into regression. Well, it sort of worked.

On the 5th lesson I really blew the take-off roll and the landing was a mess. Too much rudder, then not enough, then a lot more than was needed: that was the take-off until the instructor stepped in and fixed things. On the landing I put the nose right in the middle of the runway, in a crosswind, and found myself on the far left side of the field just before time to land. Again the CFI (certified flight instructor) wrestled the plane back into position in time for me to land a bit hard, then nearly steer off the runway.

At lesson 6 I was still pretty heavy on the rudders on take-off, but not as bad as before. Most of the lesson was spent learning to stall the plane, something that really isn’t good to do, but important to know lest I do so accidentally during a landing. When it came time to land I remembered the last mess, and corrected by keeping the nose to the right of the runway. This allowed me to be centered up, but too high until just before the edge of the strip. CFI stepped in again to crab the plane down to a manageable height and I helped put it down on the tarmac.

The instructor says I’m getting better, but I still feel pretty terrible at the end of each lesson. We’ll see if I really get better as I get closer to 20 lessons.

Commercial Flight Suckage

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Again today I had to take a flight somewhere for just the day, then return home.  And again the wonderful TSA had to find a way to make it miserable.  In San Jose they have so few checkpoints that the line to get into the waiting area was out the door.  They also had only small paper signs telling people what could or couldn’t be taken on planes, so of course many people missed those signs and then got combatitive at the checkpoints.

On the way back, in Burbank’s airport, for an unknown reason all TSA checkpoints were shut down for at least 30 mins.  The national guard was on hand to randomly pick people for extra searches.  No explanation was given, but eventually the lines moved again, but not soon enough for a group of people to completly miss their flights to Phoenix, then get angry at the gate agent.

Thanks again TSA!  You’re the reason why we’ll all be traveling by bus in the not so distant future.