There was a lot of reading, learning, and flying that went in to gearing up for the rating.  I took the written test and passed with flying colors a few weeks back.  Today I took the flight test and aced that too.  It certainly doesn’t mean I am invicible or an expert pilot.  I am still not going to go fly in to bad weather, nor do I think I am suddenly capable of handling any scenario.  It does however mean I have reached the next level of proficiency and has removed several restrictions.  Now, I basically have to rely on my own good judgement.

Anyway thanks to Glenn, my instructor for doing a great job, and Lisa for putting up with my stress level.

However, I can already tell you that at least in my algorithms class, my peers will be hating me for ruing the grading curve. I managed to get a 107% on the first assignment. The funny thing is that there was no premeditated extra credit. I just did such a complete and thorough job, the instructor decided to give me a little bonus. Yeah, I am that guy. Sorry.

If that’s not good enough, I got randomly picked to be the guy that went down to guess the attendance of the game on the big screen during the 8th inning.  I went, I won.  The prize was a signed game used bat.  Pretty awesome.  Oh and the Pads won… a rare occasion these days.  Great night.

Thanks to John and Sandy for making it possible.

So yeah.  I have been busy.  No excuse really.

The meeting was well catered and held in the Crown Air Hanger at Montgomery Field.  The general membership meeting was fairly quick and the session moved on to a talk and Q&A with Mr. Fuller.  He have quite a few interesting things to say about the state of affairs in general aviation.  Interestingly, his number one concern is the shrinking population of pilots, and specifically the poor retention rate of those seeking primary flight training.  Getting people to take the first step and begin their training is hard enough.  The fact that the great number of people do not finish the training is startling.  Mr. Fuller’s point here is that there is strength in numbers.  For our voice to be heard in Washington, we need many voices.  We need to do all we can to help grow our numbers and provide a strong and healthy community for which AOPA can advocate.

During the Q&A session I was able to stand up and ask the final question of the night.  I basically asked Mr. Fuller to comment on my concern that, in the long run I hope that flying is something I can share with my children and grandchildren.  Currently there exists a number of threats to GA.  From funding, to the price of fuel, to regulations stemming from fear or terrorism, to bad press from accidents.  I asked Mr. Fuller to speak to those concerns in light of  Lisa and I are currently a lot of money into flying now in the hopes that it will be a life style our family can have for generations.  His main point was that AOPA will do everything it can to secure that future, and that in the end pilot’s will always find a way to fly.  Looking to Europe where these threats have already materialize, people still fly.  They way they fly might be different but they still do.  Pilot’s are a resourceful bunch and will find a way to stay in the air.

It was a great night.  Just another reason why Plus One Flyers is the best flying club in the country.  After the talk, we got an opportunity to take a picture with Mr. Fuller.

We are very excited and are looking forward to starting a family.  Given the due date, we are just now entering the second trimester so things are still in the early stages.  While we will find out the gender of the baby, we won’t know for several weeks.  At this point we don’t really have a preference.  As long as we have a healthy baby we are fine either way!

In absence of knowing the gender and or picking names, we are referring fondly to our little one simply as “Baby Mac”.

I am sure over the next few days / weeks / month, I will post a lot more on how things are going, updates, and thoughts in general. For now though, I simply wanted to put the announcement out there to share our good news!  Here are a few pictures from our latest ultrasound:

As a special treat Trevor Hoffman ran out from the Bullpen to through out the first pitch and to signify his official return to the Padres family.

Beyond that the crowd was really amped up.  The giants fans were out in force also, which gave to some great trash talking.  All in all it was a great day.  Padres won!  Here are some pics:

Stepping out of the tram in to a completely different climate was quite a trip.  From the mountain station, we hiked over to the ranger station at the beginning of the summit trail and checked out with them.  At that point we just b-lined it for the peak.  There really aren’t any trails to speak of in the winter, you just go where you please.  The acense was probably about 2300 feet through variable conditions.  Just before the top we found a summit shelter hut, which was nifty.  From there we made the last push up to the summit where we grabbed some lunch and enjoyed the view.

We took a significantly different route on the way down, which included a torpedo butt slide dow the steepest part which was to steep to practically snowshoe down.  We meandered down the stream back to the ranger station, checked back in, unstrapped the shoes and headed back to the tram station to get a drink.  We chilled out there for a little while and then caught the tram car back down.

All and all the trail took us about 5 hours.  It was beautiful, relaxing, and some hard work that got the blood flowing.  Not a bad Thursday.  Check out the site here:  http://www.pstramway.com/

Here are some photo’s of the day:

The on Saturday, I went up with Kurt in N6253V.  The trip started out fairly normal with  quick trip down to Brown (KSDM) for some gas.  I decided it was going to be a VFR day.  I figure I will be getting enough IFR time over the next several months.  I realized on the way down how little time I have spent looking outside while flying in San Diego.  I still have no clue where anything is.

While on the ground at Brown Kurt suggested we do the “Harbor Tour” on the way back up.  We headed to the south end of San Diego Bay.  We called up North Island and requested the Harbor Transition.  It was really cool.  We flew right up the middle of the bay.  The route takes you over the Navy Ship Yard and the Coronado Bridge.  You get to see all of Coronado (Hotel Del, etc) and you basically buzz the downtown skyline and snag a nice view of Petco Park as a bonus.  From there you head up and around where you get to see San Diego International and the North Island Naval Base along with all of the Sailboats in the Harbor.

On the way out you fly over the Submarines parked on the south side of Point Loma.  As an added bonus, there was an Aircraft Carrier right of Point Loma that we got a great view of as well (see below).  From there you head north up the coast at about 500ft AGL.  While on the way up we saw a few dolphins and got a view of Mission Bay, Crystal Pier, and La Jolla.  From there we gained some altitude and headed back in to Montgomery.  It was the most interesting flight I have had in San Diego thus far.  A big thanks to Kurt!