I’ve been on a three-day
break this weekend which has been nice.
I thought I would be bored but I have actually managed to entertain
myself while doing just a little bit of studying for the big event on
Wednesday.
I’ve done 10 out of my 11
simulator lessons with the last one occurring tomorrow night. I feel good about my flying and ready for
this checkride. Tomorrow night’s lesson
will be to polish up the skills and iron out any remaining mistakes.
But today’s report is really
inspired by the little road trip I took today.
I got up early (noon) and struck out west of here to Shenandoah National
Park. The park is at the edge of the
Blue Ridge of the Appalachian mountains (which I think was appropriate since
ACA’s call sign is “blue ridge”). I got
lucky with my timing – it has been raining here for the last two days straight
but today was a beautiful sunny day, and the bonus was that all the rain here
in Manassas fell as snow in the national park.
So after driving about 70 miles in my rental Dodge Neon I arrived at the
Skyline Drive which meanders along the top of the mountain ridge. There were several rewarding overlooks and I
took a short 1.5-mile hike through a snow covered forest.
It was great – really
cleared my head and was a nice diversion from the last two months of
training. Plus I wanted to see some of
Virginia before I leave here this week and I think I saw some of the best
parts. I haven’t seen significant snow
in a couple of years and it brought back memories of being in Oregon and waking
up to see all the snow knowing school would be cancelled. I have always been of the belief that there
was no good scenery east of the Mississippi but I found out today I was wrong!
I imagine I will be very
sick of snow in just a couple months time after spending a winter in Chicago,
but for today, it was great.
Next update will be in three
days to report passing my checkride.
And if I don’t pass the checkride, I’m going to edit this line out of my
report – hoo hah!