Me, Me, Me, Me

I have nothing new to post about the Himalayan Explorers so I'm going to write about the sad life I lead when Karin is away. Basically, every day after work I come home and drown myself in a bottle of Scotch Whiskey while watching 3 to 5 hours of Home Shopping Network. I have now purchased 9 sets of Ginsu Knives and 14 self-realization programs. Once sufficiently plastered, I make my way to the bedroom and cry myself to sleep - either on the bed, if I'm lucky, or, more often, next to or under it.

Well, that may not be entirely true. Most of my non-work waking hours now are taken up with blogging, trip research and planning, and flying-related activities . I have been trying to squeeze in workouts but this blogging thing is time-consuming - at least while I'm still learning how to do it. I think I've done a total of one mini-workout since Karin left. Atrophy-city.

As for the flying... I'm being checked out in a Liberty XL2 this weekend. Being "checked-out" in an airplane involves sitting down with an instructor for a while and going over the basics of the plane and then going flying together in the plane. It's part training and part an opportunity for him to assess if my skills and knowledge are current. This will also serve as a biannual flight review. Since I haven't been doing a lot of flying on my own recently, I have a fair amount of studying to do to make sure I'm on top of everything.

Flying the XL2 is going to be good fun for me. It is going to be the first "modern" aircraft that I will be piloting on a regular basis. "Modern" in general aviation in 2007 refers primarily to what is happening in the cockpit - it is controlled with a stick instead of a yoke, many of the instruments are digital and integrated, and it takes advantage of the revolution we have seen in navigation and communications over the past couple of decades (think GPS, satellite communications, and computers). Most of the rental planes out there were manufactured in the 60's and 70's (I can tell you why if you're interested) so this is pretty exciting. Mind you, the plane itself is not exactly revolutionary. We all fly in planes whose aerodynamics and propulsion systems were cutting edge in the 50's and 60's - from the tiniest Cessnas to the 747's that we all know so well. The real advances to date have been the so-called glass panels that newer aircraft use (as opposed to the more traditional panels).

On Tuesday evening I flew to LA with my first flight instructor, Jim Norman. He now runs a charter business and has a couple of sweet pressurized planes. The flight was about 30 minutes each way with a 2 minute stop in LA.

Once again I have blogged my way out of a workout. But I did promise daily posts. So there you go.