Hi Everyone!
“Gobble …Gobble”
Hope you have had a grrrreat week, and are looking forward to a great Thanksgiving week ahead. Anyone have any good plans? I’m going to be hanging out locally with family and friends. My grandparents actually live like 30 minutes away from here, and my parents are coming in to town so I am super stoked for that. In the midst of projects/finals, it really helps to have family around to support you. Here’s a quirky little note about me, and it won’t be misconstrued about me being spoiled or anything, but I’m a really picky eater when it comes to big meals. So with Thanksgiving for example, I am really looking forward to having peas, corn, carrots, and mashed potatoes in addition to all the other side plates my grandparents are making. Guess that’s why they decided to put me in charge of those sides! 🙂
In more recent news I wanted to share with you that I flew with two of my close friends from my MDA class (see previous blog. We flew from John Wayne airport in Orange County to Catalina for a day trip. Brad is a senior in Industrial and Systems Engineering, and will soon be flying combat fighters off our Navy carriers. My friend Michael is studying Global Business and Chinese. We had a great time! We flew across the Long Beach Harbor Channel at about 4,000 feet on the V22 between SLI and SXC for the VOR/DME approach to AVX, for those of you pilots out there who know what that means.
Being cloudy on approach, we had a bit of a challenge setting up for landing, but that said, when we got low enough, we saw the runway but still had a bit of gusty winds to contend with. No worries- we put her right in there. Not going to lie, this runway is one that has every pilot letting out a sigh of relief when he taxies his plane clear of the runway. Here is a picture to show you why:
“Don’t overshoot or undershoot your approach, or you’ll be rolling off of a 1,600 ft cliff.”
With our windshear coming in to the runway, timing was quite important. Don’t worry, I am not going to break down and give you a flight instructor’s lecture on how to deal with/avoid encounters with windshear. : )
We got in to the airport, went to visit the airport manager in his little “tower”…it’s not an official control tower though it is meant to look like one.
“Come pay your $20 landing fee before taking off!”
Then the highlight of the day was setting my hungry teeth in to a juicy beef burger (and side of fries) at the airport restaurant. Here’s a picture of it!
We made it back to SNA just before sunset, getting great glimpses of the sun as it continued its Westward trek towards Hawaii.
To top things off, I found a lucky penny on the tarmac once we got back to SNA! What a great away to start off my week!
Hopefully you will all have a great week yourselves. For most of us, its probably just an abbreviated week with Thanksgiving. Whatever it is- enjoy it, and keep up the hard work. I will do the same, and see you in the kitchen later on this week cooking for Thanksgiving dinner. We all have so much to give thanks for. More on this in my next blog.
Until then-be well and safe!
