interesting day/night.

I talked to an old friend I haven't spoken to in over 4 years and gave me an idea that I think could work. If you just stop caring about everything, then anything that happens to you will be better than your original state. I guess this holds true. I've hit the bottom and the only other direction is to swim back up to the surface. 2009 so far is the worst year for me ever!

So anyway, going to Japan in a little over a week, and I just don't give a shit anymore. Whatever happens will happen and yeah I can't really do anything about it.

Other than that I did some fun things today: Helped my friend break into his car because he locked his keys in it. Coat hanger through the cracked window. This was better than the first option which would have been to borrow one of the airplanes (he's my instructor) and fly to Morristown, have his roommate drive his spare keys to him, fly back and then drive home. Would've been exciting but a little sketchy since the weather was not very good and we'd be scud running which is not recommended and it was dark too.

Scud Running is lowering your altitude to avoid clouds and remain withing visual contact with the ground. In theory it's better than being inside clouds and flying on instruments but there are other things such as radio towers, high tension wires, other tall things on the ground that are hard to see when you're zipping along at 120mph or worse are not lit at night. A lot of pilots who smuggle drugs from Sout America do this near the border to avoid detection by radar. The costs far outweigh the benefits as you don't have enough altitude and time to look for places to land if the engine quits, and you don't have the reflexes to adapt to "hugging" the terrain and most of the time people, aircraft and the ground meet to become one with each other. This is commonly referred to "buying the farm," or "auguring-in." (Something that I don't ever plan on doing.)

So got the car unlocked and then he decided to show me that we could drag race his Jetta on the runway at night. The owner of the airport is ok with this otherwise it's highly discouraged. Wasn't as fun as I thought it would be, he was only able to get it up to 90mph before we had to slow down. Too bad we only have a 3,500ft strip at Princeton though I doubt the Jetta will go much faster.

I gave my resume to a group of people in a small sub of a subcontracted engineering firm that takes aerial photos of traffic congestion in NJ and then runs a program that figures out if urban planners need to do things like add extra lanes and or exits to improve flow. They hang out at the airport all the time (I practically live there now,) waiting for good weather to go take their surveys. Sounds fun and what I'm into. They use GIS, play with cameras and fly around which makes them awesome in my book :)

Almost there....

So I've been practicing the FAA's written test for private pilots for almost 2 months now. It consists of a a 61 question test on all aspects of general aviation. Topics such as weather, mechanics, performance, procedures, psychology, navigation, NTSB, medical, aerodynamics, and much more. I'm scheduled to take the real thing tomorrow morning at Princeton and hopefully pass. The amount of stuff you need to know is very tedious and it costs $100 to take. Once I pass, I'll be ready to pass my final pre checkride lesson where I will go up and demonstrate that I can perform all maneuvers, handle hypothetical emergency scenarios, and most of all be smooth with the handling. After exactly a year of flying, I've gotten much better at "feeling the air" and working the controls to "nail" altitude, airspeed, heading and keeping the ball centered. I am very satisfied with this. Once this lesson is over, I'll be cleared to fly solo to 2 different airports and back on a multi-leg trip of at least 150 nautical miles. Actually this particular trip will be more like 270 nautical miles. I'll start in Princeton, go to Lancaster, PA, then Williamsport, PA, and finally back to Princeton, NJ. After that, I'll have to make sure I can do everything up to the standards if not exceed them and hopefully pass the checkride. It's been a long year, lots of setbacks recently, but I'm happy to have nearly completed a life goal I've had since I was 4.


One a side note, I'll probably be off to Japan for about 4 weeks in Sept. As I will be doing an accelerated course on credit, risk, finance, and banking with my dad and perhaps I'll finally understand what it is that he does for a living :) Perhaps could use this to my advantage to start making some serious cash in the near future. Probably try and make enough to pay for graduate school. Which reminds me I need to get on with starting my apps for that. Really like the idea of being somewhere warm and near a beach or at least a location that isn't too far from an outdoorsy kind of place, bike, hike trails. I'm thinking I might try and hike up Mt. Fuji finally, start in the evening, make an sunrise accent, put the new hiking boots to good use.

Can't wait to drive the M3!