a polite awakening

Before I do anything, I would like to direct you to the Page Turners Book Club, run by fellow blogger and amazing writer Carrie, from [carrotspeak.] The book review for the day is one of MINE! Ta-DA!

I'm immensely flattered and honored by this (thanks, Carrie), and I would suggest you go check out the above links, pronto.

As in, right now. Before you read any further.

Hey, did you hear what I said?

I said, "Go over there and read that stuff right now," dang it!

I'm waiting...

You'd better drag your sorry carcass over there in the next five seconds, buster, or I'll come vaulting through that fiber-optic cable and give you a swift kick.

Okay, okay, fine. I'll finish what I was going to say here, if it'll mollify you.

I caught a glimpse of my future today, and it wasn't pretty.

With a little help from my folks, I realized that I have dropped an enormous chunk of my hard-earned pay—money I don't have—to go to England. I really, really don't have the money to go anywhere right now. Now is not the time. This trip has broken me, people, and I'm not even over there yet. I don't even have enough money for iTunes downloads anymore. This is a deplorable state of affairs. Poverty is the pits, as Scrooge McDuck once truthfully proclaimed. There's so many things I need right now. A new pair of work boots, for starters. My old ones have no tread left. A pair of noise-reducing headphones, for another—the Mooney is such a loud plane that my ears are ringing after every flight, even through my regular run-of-the-mill Dave Clark. Oh, and did I mention that it's taken me six months to finish a two-week bartender's course? And that I have only three or four hours left to fulfill the requirements for a private pilot's license? And that I should really hurry the hell up and finish?

Thanks to Ma an Pa, it suddenly occurred to me tonight just what a foolish thing I've done. Frivolous. Unwise, too. I haven't got my priorities straight. This is my future we're talking about here. So far I've been fooling around and mooning about. I should've been finished with my bar-tending stuff months ago. By rights I should be finished with my private pilot's license already, even with the $135 price tag which flight lessons carry. I should be studying on my off-hours. I should really be pushing myself harder. I should be working toward a goal, advancing my career, securing my future, building a nest egg. And instead, I'm blowing my measly savings on a two-week trip to the United Kingdom. How did I get myself into this mess?

I'll tell you. I didn't get a job for eight months after arriving home from Korea. As my parents told me, "any money is better than no money." Common sense, right? But no. Somehow I still thought things would be different. Different from the six godawful months I spent in my parents' basement in Wyoming after graduating from college, desperately trying (and failing) to find a job in my field. Somehow, I thought, things will shape up this time. I didn't expect to be staying in my parents' house this long. I figured I'd be long gone by December.

So when I arrived home from Korea in July 2009, I thought, "I'd better try to get the highest-paying job possible, so I can save up the maximum amount of money in the shortest amount of time." The proper window for that frame of mind was probably, oh, two seconds. After that, I should've said, "Yeah, I'm not having any luck with this. I should just get any job and be thankful for the money I'm earning." Did I do that? Nope. I continued wasting time, and losing money.

Then I got a job at the local newspaper. Then I got fired. And I thought to myself, "The heck with it. I'm going to focus all my energies on getting my pilot's license instead of working." Brilliant idea, right? Instead of working, I could spend all my time flying, and breeze through the remainder of my training. For some reason, I didn't realize that I was bankrupting myself until after the fact. One day I looked up and discovered that I had used up all my money, couldn't progress any farther in my flight training, couldn't progress anywhere, and still didn't have a job. This is besides inching through my bartender's course so slowly that my future customers have probably all died of thirst.

My luck kicked in again when I landed my current job, chasing drones. It's not a pay upgrade by any means, but it's better than nothing. A lot better: I'm building flight time, which almost makes up for the fact that I'm not taking lessons anymore. No sooner had I begun to rebuild the financial dike when I went and shot everything to hell by booking my flight to England.

And here I am: living paycheck to paycheck, going without things I desperately need (let alone all the stuff I'd like), not progressing anywhere with my alcohol- or aviation-related ambitions, stuck in an agonizing vocational limbo. Here I sit, wondering how it took me so long to see the hole I'd dug, and how long I'd have continued living this way until I finally crashed and burned. If I wasn't living with my parents (insert weak laugh here) I'd have certainly starved to death by now. I need a couple hours to think about all this and come to a decision. Do I cancel my trip to England? Hit the books and bulldoze my way to a pilot's license? Finally save up enough money to move out of my folks' house? Or do I stick with it, go to England, undergo a few more uncomfortable months of pauperism, rebuild the dike once more, and then begin laying the foundations of my aviation career? What should I delay? My future, or part of the hell-raising I wanted to do in my twenties?

It's a terrible choice. No matter which way I turn, I get the feeling that I've wasted precious time. If I don't go to England, I'll regret it forever. I'll never forgive myself for visiting fewer than three continents before age 24. I'll forever feel the reproach of the travel articles I could've written. The beer I could've swilled. The parties I could've rocked. The immaturity I could've indulged in. On the flip side, if I do go—and obtaining my private pilot's license takes that much longer (I'll have been at it for two and a half years come July)—

Well, then I'll really feel like my life is passing me by.

And that, my friends, is my greatest fear. Of all the horror and darkness and death in the world, what I dread most is not having lived. It's awful for anyone to be stuck in limbo. It's a literal hell for me. My parents brought up a good point this evening. I'm good at doing the prep work. I get myself to the starting line. As far as groundwork and foundations are concerned, I'm a freakin' Greek architect. But once I'm at the starting line, there I sit. I can never seem to start. I never go anywhere. I perpetually languish. All I do is "rev my engines."

And now here I am, in my darkened room, staring out at the lights of the city twinkling far below. I'm faced with the hardest choice I've ever encountered Turn my back on a carefree adolescence...? ...or abandon my dreams?

Some choice. I have a plan, though. I'll pass my final practical test on Saturday down in Riverside; get a job within a fortnight; use the ferocious amount of tips I'll (luckily) be making to fund my flight training; finish flight school; and still have my regular salary to pay for the England jaunt. Wish me luck.

how to land a Mooney

One of the advantages of flying twice a day, four days a week is...well, you fly a lot. And when you fly a lot, you learn a lot—especially if your flight instructor spent 20 years in the Navy doing crazy things like landing on aircraft carriers and riding around with suicidal low-flying Germans and thumping Russian bombers.

Don't even act like you don't know what "thumping" is. Trade secret. Nonstandard navy fighter procedure during the Cold War. The trick is to come up beneath a Russian airplane—bomber, preferably—pile on some thrust, and rocket straight up, right in front of him. This has the twofold benefit of (a) scaring the living daylights out of the Commie bastard and (b) forcing him to fly through your shock wave. (Hence the "thump" part.) It's a ticklish business. You've got to leave enough space between yourself (going relatively slow, climbing straight up) and the oncoming Russian bomber (still flying at 450 knots)...or else, WHAM. You can't leave too much space, either, or the "thump" will be more of a "kerpuff."

Spud wasn't the first instructor I landed a Mooney with (that was actually Mr. Mooney); but it was with Spud that I truly refined my technique. All last week he taught me the finer points of landing, and I think I've finally got it down. Let's get the mechanics out of the way. You'll want to be at 100 miles per hour on the downwind leg of the pattern, and on base—

Aw, crap. I haven't explained landing patterns yet, have I? Here:

As I've mentioned before, you'll want to land into the wind. Therefore, when you're flying past the runway (before you make that 180 degree turn to land), you're going downwind, and are therefore on the appropriately-named downwind leg of the pattern. After the downwind, you turn base: 90 degrees to the left (or right, depending). Then you turn final, and land. From the time you're on downwind, abeam of the numbers on the end of the runway, you should be descending steadily.

Got that? Good. Now where was I?

Oh yes. So, in a Mooney, you want to be going 100 miles per hour on downwind; 90 on base; and 80 on final. You'll touch down at about 65. Gear speed (the point at which it's safe to lower the landing gear) is 120 miles or less. Flap speed (the point at which it's safe to lower the—well, you know) is 100 miles or less. Pattern altitude at Apple Valley Airport is 4,000 feet (because the airport itself is at 3,000 feet; pattern altitude is 1,000 feet AGL in this case). It's left traffic for Runway 18 (which means all the turns you make in the pattern will be left turns).

You might want to write some of this down. It'll come in handy later.

You can lower the gear whenever the heck you want. Mooney pilots know a neat little trick that greatly aids them during landings: the Mooney's landing gear can be used as an air brake. Having those big clunky wheels sticking out into the slipstream slows you down something righteous. This is how it's supposed to go: enter the pattern on the downwind leg at 4,000 feet, preferably at 100 miles per hour; lower the gear to help slow yourself down and lose altitude; once you pass the numbers, pump in some flaps (which slow you down more, and also help you stay aloft at slow speeds).

When you reach 3,800 feet MSL, turn your base leg. Keep the speed at 90. Look around carefully to make sure there aren't any fiery airplanes streaking in from the north to land on the runway you're trying to land on. Then turn final. Pump in full flaps. Keep speed at 80. Pull the throttle all the way out. This is so the plane will actually come down to the ground instead of floating forever 100 feet off the deck. If you've judged the distance and altitude right, the plane will just drift on down to the runway (with you keeping an assiduous eye on the airspeed indicator, keeping the plane at 80). When you get to the ground, flare. (That means raise the nose so (a) the plane slows down; (b) the plane touches down on the runway; and (c) the plane touches down on its two main wheels and not the poor little nose wheel.)

I had a dickens of a time getting all this down. For one thing, the airplane I took most of my flight lessons in didn't have retractable landing gear. The gear was always down; I didn't need to worry about it when I was coming in to land. In my complex Mooney, I've got about three more gauges to watch and a few more steps to take. Not to mention that I have to really yank on that Johnson bar to get the gear down. This Johnson, apparently, is even more stiff than the one in Mr. Mooney's plane...

Gradually I nailed it, though. One of my landings with Spud was so good that he said he wanted to patent it. I just sort of floated down, hardly had to flare at all, and touched down so smoothly that you couldn't tell we were on the ground. That's right. Me. The Postman. I landed a Mooney smoothly. Don't you forget it.

Today, during my landing with Mr. Mooney, I did everything right except pulling out all the power. The flaps were down, the gear was down, the speed was perfect...we were just floating forever 50 feet in the air. It was another gentle landing, though, let me tell you. Grandma could've been sitting in the backseat buttering toast, and never would've spilled a crumb.

Now, if I could only figure out how to trim the dang thing properly, I'd be on Cloud 9. Literally.