Coming out here to Florida, I knew that I wouldn’t have my AMG with me. Finally after 3 months of bumming rides and going through some mellow dramas, I took the plunge and bought a FWD car. The 2005 Acura TL 3.2 AT w/ Nav. The TLs are built in Ohio, which if anything should hopefully not mean anything. But here are some pics.

Check out my bracket status! Go Illinois!!! I bet you can’t tell where I am in the bracket! What pathetic names eh? You have to click on the link and check it out!

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So the latest and the greatest. It’s been quite a while since I updated my journal thingy because we haven’t been doing anything new. But in other parts of my life, I’ve totally started up on fishing and got a whole rig and everything! It’s been great going out. Definitely passing time and I get to study a little bit too. Good times at the Intercoastal. I’m in definite need of a car. I don’t know what to get out here. What do you guys suggest? I’m looking at a TL. I’ll probably keep this one too for the rest of my lifetime until I can move up again.

“I love you baby!”

Well, the weather here is crazy. I’ve experienced two of the worse storms in my life. They were just short of hurricane status due to slow winds at 40-60 miles an hour. Thunder, lightning, the whole works. It was outrageous. One minute, its sunny, then next its pouring. So as of now, my class has fallen a bit behind, but not to say that people who are also in the VFR stages are a little behind too.

So, get this! I did an actual soft field landing today on a real grass strip. I have to say that it was surreal. Felt like we were back in time. All the planes in the pattern didn’t have radios either and they were all tail draggers. We didn’t fit in at all. Doing the approach and take off was ridiculous. On the ground, we had about 19 inches of manifold just to taxi. You really have to hold that stick up too and get that front wheel off the grass. The roll out to take off is nutty. I can’t say that I did that bad though. I have the video but don’t have a DV cam yet. Hopefully I’ll be able to put it up sometime on quicktime or something. But, it was a blast. I think that everyone who gets their private pilots license should actually get a chance to do this too! I really want to go back and do more practice landings.

My friend Andy always impressed me when he could land on a dime. I would point out a place on a landing strip and he would just hit it like no other. I’m learning, but still have a little bit more to go. But I’ll hopefully be able to do in no time.

Here is a picture of the “runway.”

My wings were handed to me today from Mr. Chris Kokai, the Cheif Pilot of CAPT. This makes me an official cadet! Only a couple of more weeks until I get my private pilot’s license!

Well, I just finished my solo on Friday, March 11, 2004 and earned my wings. I’ll take a picture of them later. Here is a picture of me before I took off in the Diamond DA-40. It was great. My landings were on the money and I definitely feel as if I have learned so much more than what I did while in San Diego. The environment here is so filled with others aspiring and dreaming about flying, it really helps to talk and be surrounded with that everyday.

You guys like the uniform? Adelle asks me what I wear everyday. Being that we have a uniform, I rarely am in “street” clothes. I am just in between my uniform and pajamas everyday. Even on the weekends, not having a car and all, I’m just at home, in my pajamas studying.

So, this upcoming week, we’re going to be concentrating on the cross country flying parts of things. I’m actually the first in the whole group to solo and am the only one with the wings. Hopefully my partner will get his this Tuesday. I can’t wait to finally get my Private Pilots License!

Today was a good flight to St. Augustine. I really got my landings down and got to check out the local Aero Sport Restaurant. That airport really has some money too. There were Citation X, Cirrus’ (like about 12) Gulfstreams, just so many other types of planes just “hanging” out.

When I got inside the FBO, I saw a pilot lounge but I didn’t feel worthy enough to enter so I just decided to kick it in the planning room for a bit while we just relaxed a bit. Flying is getting a lot better and I’m almost 100% use to it now. That is that I’m getting use to sitting in the back writing and calling out stuff without feeling nauseated.

Can’t wait to go back to St. Augustine. Oh yeah, flying in the rain was fun too. Check out this radar from 5:00 EST. Yeah, we were flying in some of that.

We are right in between St. Augustine and Daytona Beach. Nearer to the green section.

So, I was going to fly first today, but I decided to chill. Next thing you know, while we were ramping out of the CAPT Facility, our instructor gets an emergency phone call cutting our time together down to just one lesson for one flyer. That means that Forrest got to do the steep turns and I just sat in the back doing the Secondary Piloting stuff which does include a slew of items. It’s really neat to do all the callouts and readbacks, etc. But, so having a lot of time on my hands, I decided to be an artist. What do you guys think?

Side by side. My illustration and a real photo.

It was such a nice day too to go flying. We already made plans to go to St. Augustine (KSGJ) and I was on top of the weather like always. We had a busy traffic pattern and Forrest executed his lesson in an excellent and tremendous effort. So, till tomorrow. I hope that our instructor is alright. :-\