Private Pilot: Up in the Air!

Posted on by AstroPilotDad

This will be a short but exciting post! Now that we have decided to increase our risk tolerance and send our son to day care, and the fact that I am fully vaccinated, I felt a bit more comfortable flying with an instructor to get current on my annual review so that I can get going on my IFR training. So that’s what I did the weekend of 05/15. My instructor had gotten his first shot so wasn’t fully vaccinated yet but given that I was fully vaccinated and wearing an N95 mask, I felt comfortable.

The weather was nice and the review was pretty straightforward. Took off from Paine field, went over lake Steven’s did a few maneuvers including but not limited to steep turns and stalls. After the CFI assessed my proficiency at that, we came back to KPAE to do a few touch and gos. Most of the landings were decent but not great showing that I had gotten a bit rusty due to the lack of practice. For one particular landing, I was a bit high and the CFI asked me to do a forward slip. I did not do a good job at it keeping my airplane nose higher than it should be leading to lower than desired speed for the slip. I corrected for it and made a good landing but the CFI had to remind me to watch my airspeed while doing the slip. Something for me to practice on my next flight

After just under an hour of flight time, the CFI signed my log book and my review was done. I can now freely rent an airplane and finish up on my cross country requirement for IFR. I also spoke to the chief instructor about restarting my Instrument rating and he was going to check on availability and get back to me. I am looking forward to getting back to the training and getting my instrument rating as soon as practical! First up though, some touch and goes and local flying the next time I rent the airplane on a weekend with nice weather! Boy, I am excited to be able to go flying again!!

Personal: Out of the burrow!

Posted on by AstroPilotDad

While technically the zoo visit a few weeks ago was what we should call coming out of our burrow from hibernation, this past weekend we took advantage of the amazing Pacific North West spring weather and finally ventured out for some physical activity. I’m voting to call that as the official out of the burrow activity 🙂 . What better way to enjoy spring weather than going for a hike on one of the several thousand beautiful trails offered by PNW.

It was the first time that we were outdoors with our son for such a long period of time, burning some calories and enjoying the sunny skies and clear air. It felt real good, even though we were/are grossly out of shape. We ended up doing a 3.4 mile hike partly through forests and partly through the cityscape. It’s amazing how in PNW it is very easy to go from the concrete jungles to the natural forests with a couple mile drive!

This particular hike had a gradient and is usually done from elevation down but we did it the other way round to burn some more calories 🙂 .While we did not end up burning as many calories as I’d initally thought, I’m sure the added weight of carrying my son is not reflected in the stats so the numbers should be slightly better than below. Here is a snapshot of our hike:

Did you look at the temperature? It was hottt!!! Luckily though the trail was mostly through shaded forests so we did not feel the heat as much. The trip back through the neighborhoods adjacent to the hike was through the sun but it wasn’t bad as the trip back was quite quick given the descending gradient and paved roads.

Like I mentioned before, it felt really nice to get out there. It sure brought in some sense of normalcy. We plan to keep this trend (n=1 is definitely not a trend but I am choosing to call it that 🙂 ) and hope to get out more often during spring and summer. With me fully vaccinated and my wife about to get her first shot soon, we feel a bit more comfortable hanging out with friends outside. Hopefully indoors (with other vaccinated familes) once we are fully vaccinated.

Looking forward to a normal and fun filled summer! For now, time to close out this blog. I will leave you with a picture from our hike:

Our first hike as a family!

Personal: Mountain Biking with friends!

Posted on by AstroPilotDad

Yesterday was an eventful day. My wife was gracious enough to manage our kid for a few hours (not that she doesn’t on other days 🙂 . She does most of the work anyway and still allowed me to go and have fun while she was with the baby ) and I went Mountain biking with a few friends. Later on, we, as a family, went on a stroll in the park where we met up another family. Finally, we were hoping to round out the night by watching a movie in our home theater but the chores took longer than expected so we just ended up watching a movie in the living room.

As for Mountain biking, this is the second time during the pandemic that I went Mountain Biking. First was when we had a 5 hour session few months ago with some basic training and then biking on easy trails. We liked the experience so we decided to go again this past saturday. The weather was nice and a couple of more friends joined us. We headed back to Duthie Hill Mountain BIke Park and decided to go through the same trails as last time just because we were familiar with them and wanted to make sure that the friends who were doing this for the first time were comfortable as well. We ended up spending close to three hours biking covering over 6.5miles. Here is a screenshot of a part of our journey through the trails:

Map of the trail

I did also capture our biking adventure with my camera. Here is a short video from the over half hour of footage that I captured:

MTB Adventure

While it was a fun and eventful Saturday with several hours of intense activity, recovery from it is another matter. Especially since the mountain biking happened after several months of physicial inactivity. That’s why today is what we call sore Sunday 🙂

Here are a few more videos from the day: