Jaime O. was unlucky. He was born with trouble with his small bowel and liver. But he was lucky, he was born in the state of California, so the state will help him. He’s on a list to get a new liver. The UCLA medical center is helping while his liver fails and while he waits for a new one. Jaime is two years old. He has a social worker who helps schedule the visits to UCLA’s medical center in Westwood and helps translate, when necessary, for Jaime’s mother, who only speaks Spanish. Click to continue »

On February 15th, a Thursday, I flew my newest niece (Eleanor Electra Lehman) up to Santa Barbara so that she could have lunch with her dad (Sharalyn, her mom, rode in back with her). Ellie is already a veteran of small planes, having ridden out to Catalina months ago with my brother at the controls. And he then flew the three of them all around Florida, staying clear of a tornado that was passing through at the same time. Click to continue »

Would you fly with this man?

My father-in-law, Mel, and his wife, Lilla, were in town for the month of January and wanted to spend a couple days in the Bay area. I offered to fly them up and, even faced with a slightly nervous travel companion (Lilla) and a two-and-a-half hour journey, Mel agreed.

I tried to make other plans for the time up there, so I wasn’t just an air taxi, but my cousin was going to be in SoCal for the day and my friend in Atherton was having lunch with someone from even further out of town. I tentatively planned to have lunch by myself at Half Moon Bay. The diner gets good reviews and I love that part of the coast.

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When I was small, younger than five, my family went to my grandparents’ house for dinner every Sunday evening. In the autumn and winter months, even though it was an early evening meal, we drove home in the dark. Click to continue »

Yesterday I was in the family room while the boys were finishing up their reading before lights out. I had my laptop open and a soft voice was droning along. I struggled to remain focused. Nell walked by and said, “What are you watching?”

“Another IFR course.”

“I thought you were finished.”

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It was time for another visit to the Castle site, so I scheduled another milk run for Thursday. My friend Art was available, and since he is training for his IFR it was a good opportunity to spend some time under the hood and some time as pilot-in-command for a cross-country flight. (You need fifty hours of PIC time to get the IFR ticket. I no longer need time for anything in particular, so there’s no reason Art couldn’t be pilot-in-command.)

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I wasn’t sure if it was worth paying my CFII to accompany me up to the check ride. I went back and forth about it. The check ride was schedule for Tuesday, October 24 at 11am. It was going to be up at Paso Robles, about an hour and a half flight from Santa Monica. I watched the weather for a week before. I couldn’t go flying, since the plane was in the shop for its annual, so it gave me something to do. I first started worrying about it on my IFR cross country when we arrived at KPRB, also at 11am. The airport was covered with a blanket of nice, soft clouds. If I was VFR I would not have been able to land. So I booked Liz’s time, and then worried about whether it was necessary.

It turned out to be a great decision.

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Previously, the most exciting thing that happened during a lesson is when the wind picked up the tail of the Cherokee while I was starting my flare for landing. If my instructor had not been in the right seat, I might have bent the nose gear. (Now I am alert for this sort of gust as I am landing. At the time it was a surprise that the wind could switch from headwind to tailwind in an instant and shove the plane around like that. I froze for a moment.)

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