Colors of Fall

Sunday, Husband and I decided to fly to Sporty's in Batavia, OH. Our route took us over the most magnificent Fall scene-- the foothills and mountains of West Virginia in peak Fall color on a beautiful CAVU day. And I got to experience it all from the sky... behind a hood. Yes, we got 6.6 hobbes time and 6.3 of hood time, while Husband served as safety pilot and enjoyed the beautiful scenery. He did occaisionally tell me to lift my head/eyes for a moment to gawk at some particularly beautiful site.

The good news is: I'm just about done with my instrument requirements! In fact, I'm going for a last minute mock stage/checkride with my instructor to prepare for my stage 3 check. Hopefully, I'll be able to do the stage 3 check later this week, and then get signed off to go for the real checkride. This is all a little bit of a surprise. Last week, we were looking through our logbooks and I discovered a few minor and one major errors in my addition (5+11 does not equal 26!)... Suddenly, instead of needing 5 hours of hood time, I needed 12.5! So-- I started getting agressive about getting it, and managed to whittle that down to under 11 hours... then with Saturday's lesson, and the additional 6.3 on Sunday, I now have what I need (given that I will do a long-ish lesson tonight, the stage check later this week, and possibly a follow-up to clean up any last bad habbits). Though we've been saying all along that we wanted to finish at the end of October, it now seems quick!

My other instructor is tied up all week with an unexpected, full-time student, which is probably a good thing as I really need to focus on reviewing for my oral. While it will be really nice to have this behind me, I have trouble remembering what Husband and I will do with our weekends! Then again, holiday season is almost upon us.

I'll post more about the Sporty's experience once I download the pics from our camera. I've also got amazing pics from our long IFR cross country a few weeks back-- we flew right over top of JFK!