Mortaine’s Blog

We arrived at the airport at about 6:30, for the 6:45 flight. Abe, the instructor, had called to let us know he was delayed by traffic, so we sat in the Santa Cruz Flying Club office until he arrived, chatting with the folks there and generally trying to calm my nerves and excitement.

Anyway, when Abe got there, he checked out a spare headset for John (my husband), who would be in the back seat of the 4-seater Cessna 172. Renting the 172 is about twice the cost of one of the 2-seater trainers, but we wanted John to go with me– it was pretty hard for me to imagine flying around for my very first time without him, you know?

Anyway, Abe briefed me on our flight plan– I thought he said he’d take us up and down, and turn control over to me once we were in the air flying around, he’d let me do whatever I wanted. Went out to the plane and started the pre-flight check. I followed Abe around the plane as he explained what to check for, how to check the fuel, etc. It was fascinating, and always good information to know. We got into the plane and did the pre-flight instrument check, then got underway.

Abe taxied us out of the lot, but he decided that I would take off and land the plane, which kind of made my heart leap pretty well into my throat. He did reassure me that he would take control if anything bad happened, which helped a lot. But still…. a huge amount of fear and adrenaline and excitement was going through me. I had butterflies in my stomach, and I was glad I’d gone to the bathroom before we took off.

I should mention that we were taking off at about 7:00, when the sun was low and setting, and it was hard to see from the glare sometimes.

Under Abe’s direction, I taxied the plane over to the runway and waited for it to clear (there was another plane doing a touch-down-take-off before us). Then it was hand on the throttle, hand on the yoke, and go!

I swear, I didn’t even realize we were off the ground yet when we started climbing! It was excellent! We climbed to 2,000 feet, headed out over the ocean, then climbed to 4,000 feet to go inland towards Salinas. There were clouds and fog over Salinas, and I wanted to fly out over them. So we did. We also flew over the Salinas Airport, which is uncontrolled like Watsonville (no active tower). We almost hit Monterey airspace, which is controlled, but we steered away from it.

Since I didn’t really know what to do or where to go once we were up there, Abe had me do a couple of turns. Since the 172 is a 4-seater, there’s some sort of coordination that one needs to be wary of, if you don’t want your passenger to get sick, that is. Abe had shown me the little bubble and how to keep it steady, so I made sure to keep that in my awareness while we were flying. When it rolled too far over to one direction, I corrected with the pedals. Neat! John says he didn’t get motion discomfort at all.

I did two 360-degree turns, running into my wake on the second one– neat! Scary, but neat! I didn’t know why we had just bumped, but I figured it wasn’t something to panic about, since we were still in the sky.

At one point, Abe turned off the engine and explained what we would do if the engine had died, where we would land, and how long we would have to land. Scary, but also not terrifying. It’s always good to address the biggest fears one might have in a potentially dangerous sport. A bit like all the training we get in SCUBA for what to do if you run out of air. He also took control of the plane when the engine was off, which I was immensely grateful for.

The sunset– need I say it was gorgeous? It was. We turned just so we could watch the last bit of it. Of course, sunset means the last 20 minutes or so of the flight were done in the dark.

Eventually, we turned around and headed back to Watsonville, using landmarks I recognized (the Moss Landing plant, the Salinas River, Highway 1). I’d say it was late dusk– there was still light in the sky, but it was fading fast. I did ask, as it got darker, if we should put the lights on in the aircraft– smart move, cause I was starting to squint to see.

Our approach was good and clear, My first landing was a little rough– I think I came in too slow or too fast or just too steep. Anyway, when we’d taxied to a stop, Abe asked if I wanted to try it again. “Um, sure?”

So we took off, circled the airport once, and came back to the runway for my second landing. That one was much smoother. Still a bit of a bump, though– I was a little panicked because, during takeoff my brain had processed so much information between the previous takeoff and this one, I forgot how to do it. And then landing was kind of the same– I didn’t really feel like I knew what I was doing, but I followed Abe’s instructions and brought us down without more jarring.

Afterward, my stomach felt like I would probably have felt a little motion sick– if I hadn’t been paying so much attention to what I was doing, that is! Very exciting, and Abe was really confident about the way I’d handled the turns and the taxi-ing in particular. He politely did not say anything about my landings.

Me at the controls of the Cessna 172

More pictures here!

From the Abuse Team:

Please post your full name, date of birth, full address, and telephone number (plus cell phone number, if you have one) to your journal, as the first chronological entry (backdated) in your journal, with Private security, and leave a note in your userinfo indicating that you’ve done so. The life you save may be your own. In the event of an emergency, LiveJournal administrators can view this information — and please believe that it is only used in the event of an absolute emergency. But you’d be surprised how many of those there are on a service with four million users. And in an emergency situation, every second counts.

Yes, the Abuse team occasionally hears of users who plan to commit suicide, but there are other situations where having this information could possibly be of use to the police. There have been, for instance, phone posts that were interrupted by physical violence before, and other such situations. The Abuse team often gets reports of these things, and oftentimes, there is nothing we can do to help, because we can’t find you.

Please take a moment of your time and make this post. Your privacy will never be violated except in absolute need, and though we hope it will never be necessary, it could prove to be very necessary indeed.
—

I also added my work contact information, my emergency contacts (John and Mom), and my medications and allergies, which can also be helpful info, in my opinion. If you have a DNR status, you might want to put that in the contact entry as well, I suspect.

I’m heading out for the introductory flying lesson right now. Will post when I’m back– full birthday update post, I promise!