Unwind

I'm not expecting any violins playing here, so this is not a complaint, just a conversation. ;)  When I got home last night, after 3 flights encompassing almost 8 hours of the day "door to door", I was really pooped, and just about everything on me hurt.  That's a situation in which you never really relax.  (Just bombing along and having fun and relaxing with another plane is a different scenario than the four ship training stuff.)  It's not that flying along itself is hard, really, it's that your mind can't take a vacation, and neither can the rest of you, and you're constantly making adjustments, you're being moved around, doing different maneuvers, and there's a lot going on.  Even landings, which are usually not all that interesting, can (should) now be a high focus time.  Yesterday it was a little gusty and we're going into a place with a direct crosswind, and I'm supposed to do a wheel landing on my half of the runway and fast taxi with the tail up to the end, moving over to the other half of the runway, behind one guy I can't otherwise see and in front of another I can't see, which leaves you sorting through your options as we all get ready to come down.  There isn't one time from before you start up the engine until after your airplane is parked that you can let your focus drift or relax, which is different. In most things, except talking on the phone, I'm a multi-tasker.  I can think about lots of stuff, fly, talk on the radios, listen to music, etc.  So for me it was hard to let go of that in formation.  I'd wonder where we were, I'd wonder if we were high enough for the obstacles, I'd wonder about traffic, I'd want to look at my gauges, I'd be thinking about where we were going, I'd be yelling at myself, I'd be thinking about how cool it looked out my window, I'd be wondering how long I'd been running on that fuel tank (I still need to do that), I'd be thinking about the paint job on the plane I was looking at or the clouds around us that looked like an animal, I'd be telling myself to quit thinking about stuff...and I'd be all jerky because of it.  While learning anyway, there isn't room for much of any thinking at all.  You don't look around, you don't take your eyes off of the plane you're supposed to be watching, you don't think extraneous thoughts, you let Lead worry about all the other stuff and you just focus. Get in the Zone. The "Zone" is key.  Ironically, once I was able to start doing that, and I got better overall, then I found I could think about other things too and not lose the groove.  Sometimes. ;)  Having said all that, I do really enjoy it.  It's different.  It's neat.  It's a lot of work. It's not something you see everybody do every day. It's a challenge to be smooth.  It's fun.

So today most major parts of me are in various stages of soreness, but a nap and a self-induced chiropractor session helped some of it.  ;)  I was supposed to go back out and do another one today, but he canceled and I was glad for once. I put up some photos from the BBQ Bash and various things we've done in October.  Steve and Kaylee are taking on the "totally scrub out the fish tank" challenge, we're watching football, napping, snacking, relaxing, piddling, Steve's working.  Nothing too important, just getting ready for the upcoming week of much busyness...