The Road Less traveled

Well, as it turns out, Monday's "rough" flight was the anomaly. I've been flying every day this week with good results. I get a little better every time. I'm one full lesson ahead now, and only two more flights before I'll be up for a solo. Today I flew with "Rocky" Kemp, a somewhat crusty ex-marine who at almost 70 years old has more than 22,000 hours of total flying time in all kinds of fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft. He has a reputation around the school for being a tough critic, but even he seemed to think I was on the right track and would have no trouble.

The trip home was a bit rough. For some reason, drivers in the great state of Alabama seem to have an undue amount of difficulty coping with lane closures due to construction. Even in only light-to-moderate traffic, a lane being closed causes traffic to back up to a halt for at least a mile. I've seen this happen several times. But today there was an exit along the way, with still a mile of crawling traffic to go. I decided to be adventurous and look for the back roads to take me home. No map or anything... But I knew if I headed south there was a US Highway that ran roughly parallel to the freeway between Pensacola and Mobile. It took me about half an hour and several lengthy runs in the wrong direction to finally find the road. But, it was an adventure, an excuse to see more of the Alabama and Florida back country, and I wasn't in any big hurry to get home anyway. It probably would have been faster to just wait it out on the freeway, but what fun would that be?

My flight tomorrow may be cancelled. One of the aircraft broke some little part in its electrical system that caused the battery to drain. If the plane can't get fixed before my flight tomorrow at noon, then I'll lose my plane to students who are "ahead" of me on the priority list. But, I can't complain... Flying four times in a week is still making good enough progress!