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.