Howdy. I’m sitting here at Pizza Shoppe. To answer the question some of you are undoubtedly asking by now, no, I don’t spend any time at home. The din of an end of season party for some sort of little league group filters through the Jeff Buckley in my headphones. “We’d like to recognize Johnny for…Wade in the Fire!!, and the winner is… Wade in the Fire!!” It is a beautiful day outside; perfect day for a check ride. I just left the airport where my first private pilot candidate is in the middle of his practical examination. He’s a really sharp guy. Meteorologist. He should do fine. I sure hope he does.
Yesterday was a good day. It was the first day in probably a month where I’ve flown more or less all day. Pretty average lessons for the most part. There was an intro flight though that was kind of interesting. I’d been sort of curious about it since the gal called and scheduled with me one day when I was working the desk. She said she wanted to get her friend a birthday gift. I don’t usually take birthday flights because I don’t get paid for them and they usually don’t turn out to be serious students…..
I hate to interrupt the intro flight story, but now I’m sitting at the coffee shop open mike night listening to some monotone little high school pipsqueak droning about wishing he had the answer. I really want to tell him that the answer is not a career in music. That’s probably not a very good-citizen-like thing to do, but Jesus Christ!!! If I sounded that much like Wesley Willis, I would want someone to fucking tell me. For those of you who are unacquainted with the genius of Wesley Willis, he was a semi-retarded guy with a toy keyboard who somehow got recorded. All of his songs were non-rhyming, monotone monstrosities with a prefab percussion background courtesy of his toy keyboard. They had titles like “I Whooped Batman’s Ass” and “Rock and Roll McDonalds.” The thing that really scares me about tonight is that this squirrelly little red head has a notebook of all of his songs. He’s taking this pretty seriously. I think he’s on his fourth song. I wish I could be that prolific as a song writer. Now envision a conspicuously older gentleman sitting at a table in the middle of the room. He’s reading a menu and nodding his head with the irregular beat. Perfect.
So…Back to the intro flight….The girl who called told me that she might get her friend more lessons if she liked it, so I thought, “What the hell!” My co-worker, Greg, saw the girls’ names on my schedule, and raised his eyebrows inquisitively. Most of our customers are men. I told him that I thought they were porn industry representatives. That fantasy was immediately shattered when the happy couple moseyed into the flight school. I saw more tattoos and piercings on these two girls than I’ve seen collectively in my year and a half as a CFI. There was some deliberation as to whether the gift giver would come along on the flight. I told her she should come. She worried that she might get sick. Greg whipped out some sick sacks. I gave her a headset with an inoperative microphone and she joined us. The flight went pretty well. The birthday girl seemed to enjoy herself, even if she didn’t pick up on things too quickly. We were on final for the last landing when I remembered our passenger was incommunicado. When I looked back, she held up a barf bag like a trophy. “How did I miss that?” I wondered.
“Maybe it was the Guinness I had this morning,” she reflected walking in from the ramp.
“At the garage sale?” birthday girl asked incredulously.
“Yeah, At the garage sale.”
I ended up leaving Pizza Shoppe to fly with a random guy who just wanted to take an instructor up on his recreational flight because he hadn’t flown in a while. I was happy to have the diversion from wondering how the check ride was going. It didn’t really work out that way, though. The oral portion of the exam had gone well, and my student took off with the examiner right after me. I was distracted during the whole flight. We flew to Lawrence, Ottawa, and back to Olathe. It was half way in between Lawrence and Ottawa when I looked down and noticed that there was still ten degrees of flaps out. I just pointed down at the flap lever and left the sheepishness to the guy I was flying with. I did sort of want to slap myself in the face and tell myself to snap out of it.
Finally, we were inbound to OJC and more importantly back on executive tower frequency. Just as we were about to call the tower, I heard my student call in and request touch and goes. I knew that the examiner he was with usually did the take offs and landings at the beginning of the ride (this is opposite of how I usually structure my lessons), so I wasn’t surprised when he called back a moment later to request a full stop. I knew it was a good sign that they were still up after an hour and a half. If something had gone wrong in the pattern they would have cut it much shorter. As I taxied in, I saw My student getting a hug and a pat on the back from his dad. Amen. Hallelujah. Two for Two Baby!
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