Randomly

I was watching morning TV as I was getting ready the other day, and the story that came on was about how the #5 most popular Halloween costume this year is Miley Cyrus's horrid outfit at the Video Music Awards.  This just kind of bummed me out.  She's not my daughter or my problem, I don't care what she does per say, but the fact that America just backed her up on that whole thing as being "cool" and "awesome" just...makes me shake my head.  She's a ridiculous 20 year old kid who is singing "It's my house, my rules, nobody can make me stop partying" including talking about various drugs, while she's mostly naked and...gross.  She doesn't even look like a grown woman being sexy, she looks like a scrawny kind of pathetic kid trying to be a grown woman but not cutting it.  But she's a rich, scrawny pathetic kid, because her childish song is way up there on the charts, she's all over the place (Jimmy Fallon Show, Tonight Show, Good Morning America, Saturday Night Live, all of it), her record sales are through the roof, and mainstream America has decided this is awesome.  She's also been very smug about it on interviews, smug that people are still talking about the VMAs a month later, smug that she was 'popular' right now.  I guess this is what we get for the Honey Boo Boo and Pregnant Teen Mom and Housewives of whatever generations.  Annnnd, I suppose if I feel this way it means I am officially getting old, but honestly, I'd rather be old than think this was cool.  Ick.

It looks like this weekend I'm going to fly a tailwheel Yak 52.  There's a guy in the formation group I fly with who has two Yaks, and the other one mostly sits all year, so he's offered to let me borrow it now and then, which is nice of him, and gets his plane to fly a bit more too. I guess I cannot in good conscience call them Yuks any more now, although I still think the nosedragger versions are really ugly.  ;)  His insurance company didn't want anything for me to be able to fly the plane, which is pretty cool.  It's nice getting to a point where everything isn't so hard to get into!  Anyway, if the weather holds out, I'm going to go up with him this Saturday, because regardless of what insurance wants, I still want somebody who knows the plane to tell me the best way to operate it kindly and any little tricks to make life easier.  I've spent some time making fun of Yaks so I feel a bit hypocritical, but I actually am looking forward to trying out a new to me airplane.

There was a C-340 that went down the other day, so I sent the information on to D, as my student and fellow 340 pilot.  The short version is that the pilot had 30 years experience, bought the plane 3 weeks ago, and this was his first big trip in it.  He flew from Florida to Virginia the long way, spent 4 hours and 15 minutes in the air, went missed approach at his low IFR destination, and then either lost it on missed approach at 2700' or more likely based on how much time he was in the air, ran it out of gas at 2700' and went in.  So my discussion with D was reiterating why, when we went to Hattiesburg, which was at the end of our range of fuel, we'd go non-stop if it was VFR, but any time it was IFR we'd stop short by about 75 miles there at a nice little place and top all the way off, then re-launch for that last little bit with plenty of gas to work with.  I'll work around a lot of things--ice, storms, fog, maintenance, etc. whenever it's possible, but I am not backing myself into a 'you get one shot at this or you're done' WAM approach (We Ain't Missing!) if I have any way of helping it.  I just cringed reading this, because they went the long way over land, adding almost an hour of flight time, apparently because they didn't want to go over the water--and then it took so long they ended up out of gas and going down in The Great Dismal Swamp (no kidding).  Shudder.

Kaylee came out of her Taekwondo today wearing a brand new yellow belt on her Gi.  The instructor wrapped it around her after a few words of congratulations.  He also said "When they pulled out those thick boards, I think her eyes got as big as saucers."  Mine too!  She's pleased and proud, and has said she'd like to go on to her black belt.  Steve stopped after the 3rd degree black belt, and if she goes to black belt, I'm going to be seriously out-gunned in my family.  I might have to secretly take martial arts classes out of pure self-defense.  ;)