Day....2?

Strange, as I said in my first post I'd do this a couple times a week. Here we are a month later.....

Anyway things have been looking up. I've found a job at the local airport being an errand boy/fuel driver. It's work but it's fun. Praise the Lord.

Last week I went to Fort Worth to get checked out on a new airplane. This sucker is sweet. It's got a cockpit called "glass panel" and all kinds of bells and whistles. It flies like a dream and soars like an eagle. It doesn't climb worth a crap but what do you expect for 120 bucks. 

The flight instructor who checked me out in the plane is a different story. Let's just call him....uh...Tom. Ya Tom will do.

So Tom is Polish....or Russian. I don't know it's middle eastern or Brazilian or something. Anyway he's a pretty cool guy on the ground. Goofy accent. Picks his nose a lot. I ignore it.

Czechoslovakian?  Perhaps.....

Whatever it doesn't really matter. He talks funny and walks like he's always got a load in his pants. He's kind of a bumbling tool once we get airborne. Actually he acted like a tool before we even got off the ground.

(In thick accent - think Russian) "Ok start engine and monitor gauges."

"K"

"Vhat are you doinggg?"

"Huh?"

"Vhat are you doinggg, that's not how you do it"

"Uhh....K...show me how then?"

"Like zis..."

(Engine comes to life, sputtering and almost dies.)

"O ya your right, that's much easier...." (eye roll)

I get the clearance from the ground controller and we start to wander towards the runway. New airport to me. I'm asking questions. Tom gets annoyed.

"Vhy veren't you prepared for this airport ground layout?"

Why wasn't I prepared? Because screw you that's why. Sheesh. This is gonna be a long flight....

We get to the end of the runway. Tom complains the whole way about my taxi speed and lack of braking control. He shows me how to taxi and I about lose my lunch. Apparently you have to keep 30% power in (an asinine amount) and mash the breaks at every other second. Tom complains about the tires being out of balance. Well no freakin duh Tom. With the way we're bouncing along the ground here chirping the tires every other second like some sort of clown mobile it's no wonder those suckers are out of balance. We look like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang having a nervous breakdown. Airsickness and we're not even wheels up yet. Good grief.

Run up goes ok. Tom complains. I learn quickly to ignore it and soon we're going down the runway and we're airborne. I make the right turn out towards the lake and start my climb to 3500 for some maneuvering. Everything goes along pretty well for about half an hour. I fly the whole time as Tom fumbles with the GPS. After 20 minutes of head scratching and rummaging through his flight bag he figures out how to program the airport we just took off from into the MFD (multi-function display). Thank God Tom. Man had we had an engine failure I'm sure glad you could get that airport in there when it's literally 30 miles behind us and completely out of gliding range. Why don't you program some approaches too since I'm not even instrument rated? And since we're on the subject of productivity just do us both a favor and open up your door with your seatbelt off. There's a parking lot coming up that's looking mighty nice. 

I could've literally flown us into the side of a hill and he would have been up to his peaches in programming information that had literally no bearing at all on what we were doing and he wouldn't even notice we were dead.

"Ok let's go back to airport now pleezeeee"

"K"

I get us inbound on the tower controllers freq and start to descend to pattern altitude. Tom tells me to watch my altitude. I watch it. The pattern altitude is 1700 feet MSL. That's about 1000 feet off the ground. It's a safe altitude in the pattern so if you lose an engine you can easily glide to the runway. This is pretty universal anywhere you'll fly. Pattern is typically 1000 feet above ground. Tom decides he'll show me the first one just to demonstrate what he wants to see from me. Fine. Do it up Tom.

As we approach the pattern Tom cuts the power and blows through 1700 feet like it's not even important. Around 1300 he glances at the altimeter for the first time the entire flight and realizes that maybe flying by "the feeling in the seat of his pants" isn't as reliable as he thinks it is.....instruments typically don't lie....typically.

Tom guns the engine and we climb. He decides it's about enough at 2000 feet and dumps the power off again. Full flaps typically come down on final approach at around 70 knots indicated. Tom drops flaps at 86 knots and we turn final a good 500 feet high. He yanks the power completely out and dives towards the runway like we're in a bomb run on Pearl. Tom's last job must've have been for the Japanese government....I enjoy every second of it.

50 feet above the ground and probably two-thirds the way down the runway Tom pushes the power in and calls for a go-around. Tower controller chuckles. I'm digging for a sick sack. We try again.

This time Tom says he'll get it a little more "comfortable." By comfortable I assume he means "not flying like a 7 year old." I move my seat back and let him manhandle the Cessna beast. Tom's only 300 feet high on this one and after a diving spiral base to final turn he dumps flaps and power and sets the airplane down only halfway down the runway this time. By sets down I mean if a 3 year old was setting down a toy. *SLAM

"Nice one Tom" (I squirm in my seat trying to get my spleen back in place)

"Ok youre airplane now let's see you do a few approaches then ve'll be done for za day."

"Sweet"

Since I don't have a type rating in the space shuttle I decided I'd do my landings a little more structured. I do my few landings, not stellar but doable. Tom complains some more. I ignore some more. We taxi in.

"Ok I sink it's pretty obvious you haven't flown in quite some timeee so I want to have you back to do a few more landings vith me next veek."

"Uh...really?"

"Yes just to be sure. You came in on nosewheel almost."

Yes. And the Hindenberg almost didn't blow up. Thanks Tom. Next time I'll fly with my eyes closed and maybe I'll be up to your standards. In fact while we're at it I'll just bring a sawzall and hack the wings off on downwind so we can have us a real challenge. I've seen Penguins fly better than you. I'm pretty sure he's got one of those bumper stickers that says, "If the mechanics don't have to fix anything after every landing you're doing it wrong." or "Screw flying by the book, this is AMERICA."

Twerp.

I came back this afternoon and after some more aircraft carrier Tom approaches did my time and got checked out. Hopefully I won't have to fly with him again soon. Brutal. I'll give him some credit though, he's a nice dude on the ground. He tells great stories and in between nose picking his accent is rather humorous. Cool dude. Crusty pilot.

That's it. Get out.

Day 1

Day one finds me at home and out of work. I drive a school bus for a living usually and in the summer the work dries up while the bills still need paid....I have about a months worth of reserves in the bank so I'm hoping the situation changes soon. On a lighter note, the unemployment gives me some free time to get some modeling done. As anyone reading this knows, I build trains for fun. It's goofy but it gives me something to do.

On the subject of model trains I posted on Facebook this morning how I'm glad I did that in high school as my athletic abilities are.....well, lacking. My mother promptly told me that she couldn't remember any time my "abilities" had ever actually been tested. I love my mom but she has totally forgotten about the year I played little league. As my mind wandered back to that summer I thought it would be fun to share my experiences with you all.

The year was 2004 I believe. It was either 2003 or 2004....I don't know I can't remember. Whatever that's not the point. Anyway, I had a buddy in junior high school who played little league at the local baseball diamonds. There was a whole club of teams there and it was the biggest place on our side of town to play baseball. My buddy told me how awesome it was and that I should join a team and play in the league. I figured I'd give it a shot.

Now let's not beat around the bush here, my buddy was slender and athletic and had played there for the past few years. I on the other hand, was overweight and cheesy, and the only time I'd ever picked up a bat was to put it back in the hall closet. My confidence was pretty much non-existent but he convinced me that trying out was a great idea. Well "trying out" is a loose term.....basically you walked up to the guy with the hat, said, "Hey I want to play ball here", handed him 90 bucks, and you were in. It wasn't exactly a physical hurdle.

My first day at the league happened to be the opening day of the season and the team that I had been chosen for (The Cardinals) was scheduled to play that afternoon. I donned my new jersey and wandered out to meet my new teammates and coaches. I would soon regret this whole thing....

The coach looked like some doper who just walked out of a Vanilla Ice video and was still "living the glory days" from when he was in high school. He was the kind of guy you'd expect to see on the 6 o'clock news having fallen asleep in a dingy Vegas hotel room with some disease-ridden hooker, only to awake 6 hours later to find himself tits up in the bathtub with a kidney missing and cops searching his pockets for loose change. The cops would be completely surprised to discover he hadn't been dead that whole time; the only belongings in his possession being a small rectangular mirror and a fresh pack of razor blades he scored at the "Handi-mart" down the street. He was the kind of guy who sold reefer after the local high school let out for the day out of the back of a rusted out El Camino; the kind of guy who bought low quality Colombian bam-bam from his dealer behind the Snack Shack before every game. In other words, he was a winner for sure.

The coach's dad on the other hand was another story. He was twice as old as the coach and looked like a farmer lost in the "big city" of Altoona. He always had this hung-over attitude and smelled of cheap liquor and Virginia Slims. He was the kind of coach who, immediately after every game, would purposefully pretend not to know you so he could get to his truck faster. The post game talk typically went something like this...

"Well guys that game sucked. I'm not gonna lie you kids are just awful. I'm getting the hell out of here before your supreme lack of talent makes me throw up."

"Hey coach do we have practice this week?"

"Piss off, loser"

"But coach, what about the prac-.."

"I said get lost dipweed!"

"Yes sir..."

Aside from the stellar coaching staff, the team wasn't all that bad. Actually we were. In fact by the time the season was over we had racked up an incredible 19 losses only to win one game the entire season; and even that didn't count as the opposing team had to forfeit due to most of the players being sick on bad pizza from a party the night before.

We had all of 4 practices the entire season and the one time we tried to go to the batting cages as a team turned into a miserable failure as Vanilla Ice was the only coach to show up and his dad was the one with the key. I guess being passed out drunk on the couch was more important than further poisoning the minds of America's budding youth that day...whatever.

I always felt bad for the other teams because our batting average was like a .000 or something. The outfield was a ghost town with kids literally napping in their little outfield dirt holes. The 'clink' of metal bats and the excited cheers of parents could always be heard coming from the other diamonds but did ours sound like that? Nope. Dead silence, with the occasional indecipherable moan from the opposing teams coaching staff as our teams supreme lack of skill literally made us so easy to defeat, that they had actually grown bored with us. Our outfielders were all overweight pimple kids and the infielders were so incompetent you might as well have tied their hands behind their backs. Every time the other team hit a grounder to the infield every single guy would go diving for the ball with literally no one covering a single base. It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion.

The entire season ended up that way and I learned literally nothing about sports or self-esteem or team spirit. I did learn that Cocaine and coaching typically don't mix, and that clubbing stray animals with the bat after a game was frowned upon to the point of the police being called. Coach's taking out anger on children is always ok as long as their parents didn't come to the game that day (which, let's face it, after the first three horrific performances, every parent miraculously had some "excuse" to not show up).

Life was good. Baseball sucks. I'll stick to model trains.

This New Blog Thingy....

Well this is obviously a new blog. Different from my other blog "Life in Texas" which should probably be retired. I feel like there's many folks from my home back in Iowa who may enjoy a little peek into my life now and then. This probably won't be a daily thing but hopefully it'll be a once a week or so thing just for kicks. Much of what I write will likely be mundane everyday stuff with (hopefully) a little humor thrown in. I'll probably share crap I find online every once in a while too. There's always some new funny thing out there everyone's talking about so we'll see how that goes.

Enjoy.