HerdingChaos

Sunset during the return flight from North Carolina

Making 190+ knots over the ground and only burning 14.7 gal/hr on my way to NC to visit family on new year’s day.

I got my new scooter in today. It is a Z20a from EVT America. (warning: annoying noise in flash animation at the head of every page on EVT’s site).

It is all electric. I have a eGo Cycle2 that I am replacing with the z20. This thing has a really nice ride and is way faster then the eGo scooter. Should be a great commuter bike for getting back and forth to work.

As you can tell I have not updated this blog for 5 months. The super abridged version of the past five months follows.

Early July: Loren became potty trained.

Mid August: Celebrated 11 years of marriage.

Late August: Went to Sea World San Antonio with the family and had a blast.

Mid September: My beloved dog of 8 years is diagnosed with splenic hermangiosarcoma.

Three days later: I have to take him to the vet and say goodbye because he cannot breathe without pain and cannot eat or drink.

Late September: I spread my wings and complete my bi-annual flight review allowing me to execute the privileges of my pilots license once more.

Early October: Took Andrew and Tracy for a flight in a rented plane. They loved it.

Late October: Tracy turns 6.

Halloween: We all dress as pirates!

Mid November: I bought a plane.

Late November: Andrew turns 8.

Which brings us to this month. I have been working more crazy than normal the last couple of months. Not that work is a good excuse to miss out on other stuff, but that’s what was happening. After tying up a few milestones at work, I took vacation from the 7th through today and did PIC’s 10 day instrument rating course. Today at 2pm I did my check ride and I am now an instrument rated pilot. I am also tired. In the last 10 days I have flown 30 hours in the plane and 9 in the simulator. Probably would have been more but the weather was really bad for three of the 10 days and we focused on ground instruction. Regardless I am looking forward to going back to work for a break from this intensive course. I think the course was great and would recommend it to anyone. But do not fool yourself, it is a lot of work.

It has been raining for a month. The large flood control lake nearby has been full for a while. A couple of nights ago a huge storm system parked over Austin and the area to the north west which also happens to be upstream. I took the following graph from LCRA, who operates the dam.

I was out in the area Thursday night (technically Friday morning) and I decided to lug all the camera gear out and try to get a cool night photo of the release from the dam. The dam had four flood gates open and max hydroelectric power generation running for a total release of 30,000 cubic feet of water per second. This equates to around 225,000 gallons per second or 13.5 million gallons per minute.

Both of the following photos were taken with 2.5 sec exposure and f/2.8 aperture. I took quite a few, but these were my favorite.

Today I called a seller about a plane.

Today I called a aviation medical examiner and made an appointment to update my FAA medical.

Today I called for an insurance quote on 2 different types of planes.

Today I put together a spreadsheet with a breakdown of expenses, investments, and rates we need to reserve per hour of operation for the plane.

Today I still have not flow since I put .6 on a Piper Warrior on Jan 7th 2003.

Today two of my children are old enough to go flying with me, and the third can come if I have mom along to help.

Today I resume my course because now I can take my family along.

Tomorrow (well not actually tomorrow.. I mean the figurative tomorrow); Tomorrow I fly.

I waited until Friday this week so here is a double feature. It was getting really dark so these are a bit blurry.

And the master S’more maker.

I am actually going to try and bring back the picture of the week. My last was from September 2005.

This was taken while on vacation last week.

I am now 10 weeks out from my jaw surgery. I can now eat pretty normal again. I still avoid anything hard to chew. In the last 2 weeks I have really started to feel like myself again. On Monday, the surgeon told me things were looking great. I saw the orthodontist a little over a week ago and he said I would be able to take off my braces in about another 4 months. I would have never thought that a softball to the face would cause 3 years of recovery work.

I expect I will be very pleased with the end result. But I sure wish none of this had ever happened. Like my friend Derek told me, “You should just kickbox, it does not hurt as bad.”

I am just looking forward to not having crap glued in my mouth anymore.