“Check out the photos on the camera” I told my wife as we pulled out of the California Airways parking lot.

My alarm starts screaming. I stand up out of bed, walk to the dresser to turn it off. I’ve never woken up well with alarms, placing my phone across the room forces me out of bed, greatly increasing the probability that I’ll wake up. It’s miserable. My eyes sting from tiredness.

I’ve fallen a bit behind on my flight-related writing recently. Believe it or not, blogging tends to fall lower on the priority list than things like sleeping or eating.

After my less than desirable landing performance the day prior, I set out this past Sunday to get some needed practice on my own. Since I’m cleared for solo pattern work at the field, what better way to start a Sunday than with some circuits?

After a brief hiatus, this past Saturday my instructor and I embarked on the next part of my flight training: cross-country flying. Up until now, everything has been within 20-30nm (nautical miles) from Hayward (KHWD). I originally planned a flight up to Santa Rosa, but an airshow this weekend caused me to look for alternative destinations.

With increasingly foggy and overcast weekday mornings, my flight instructor and I have had a few missed lessons due to clouds. This past Tuesday he decided to file an IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) flight plan to get us out of Hayward and to another part of the region with clearer skies.

After a completely stressful week filled with project deadlines and a summons for jury duty, this past Saturday I finally managed to get back up into the air. Like the weekend before it, which I neglected to blog about, I was flying in yet another plane in the California Airways fleet. With a couple planes of the fleet in for annual maintenance, the only bird available was 733PV

Wiping the crud from my sleepy 6am eyes, I shut off my alarm and grab my tablet off the nightstand. As is becoming increasingly common, my days are starting with weather before I even leave the bed. I open up the forecast for Hayward: clear skies, winds at 0 knots.

After almost ten days of foggy mornings and scheduling mishaps, I was finally able to get back up into the air this morning, in 738VU. Unfortunately the Ugly Duckling has been having its annual maintenance done for the past week, leaving the California Airways fleet one plane short, and forcing yours truly into a less welcoming bird.

Thus far I’ve never received a dual lesson with my instructor on a Sunday, as it’s his only day off. Today we managed to get up in the air on a Sunday afternoon for some instruction covering steep turns, stall recovery and spin prevention.

After a long week of entirely fogged in mornings, and therefore no flying, today was just about as perfect as it could possibly be. Unfortunately my instructor was all booked, but that didn’t prevent me from going for a flight by myself.

This past weekend I went flying twice, something I’ve not yet done. Usually I only fly Saturdays because my instructor takes Sundays off, but this weekend I was on my own, allowing me to fly both days.

As frustrated as I was with my performance in my last lesson I was anxious to get back up in the air again today and prove to myself that I was capable of gentle landings.

Afternoon flight lessons are always an interesting experience for me, both the temperature and wind speed pick up in the afternoons; makes for fun flying.

A family vacation can only entertain me for so long before I need to go flying again. Fortunately I had arranged to go flying with an instructor while on vacation in central Florida. For some reason or another I found an instructor foolish enough to go up with me for a couple hours out of Sun State Aviation.

I have a lot of respect for both my flight instructor and his judgement, but for one reason or another today we taxied back to the parking area, he stepped out of the plane, wished me luck and told me to go fly some circuits. Leaving me to fly the plane by myself, without adult supervision.

As I creep precariously close to my first solo flight, the only things stopping me right now are weather, and myself. When I called to get a weather briefing last night, the outlook for this morning’s lesson was not looking positive at all. I had some doubt that I would be able to fly at all given the low hanging clouds and higher winds that have been moving in to the bay area.

Due to some scheduling challenges, my instructor and I decided to move up our standing appointment from Saturday to Friday in order to ensure that I got two flights in this week.

I’ve had a good cadence of writing post-flight-lesson blog posts, so how about another one!

Last Saturday my instructor and I decided to head out to Livermore for our work on approaches and landings. With temperatures in the triple digits (38+ for the non-Americans) around the Bay Area today, we decided to look for cooler air this weekend towards Napa County’s Airport (KAPC).