ET's Info-Stew

Why does it seem that, when it comes to household tasks, things always take longer than one would expect. This morning Jenny attempted to do a load of laundry but the washer wasn't working, at all. No water sounds, no buzzing, nothing. For months the dryer has been taking 2-3 runs to dry a normal load. Well these appliances are probably as old as the house, making them 12 years old. Knowing that they'd need replacing sooner rather than later, I decided we should go around shopping for new ones.

Today I took off half a day from work to take advantage of the clear skies and light winds, and do some flying. I did 12 landings in the 1.2 hours, with a focus on short-field and soft-field landings. This effort is in preparation for my upcoming long cross country flights, where I may have to land on shorter and softer runways than I'm used to.

I have come up with the following four flight plans which take into account airspace and terrain, while minimizing distance flown as much as practical. Here are the flights from shortest to longest (CO Airports not including APA; flight time assumes 5 minutes of operations at each airport, not including fuel stops, and no wind; flight time and distance does not include detours to avoid airspace or terrain):

North
Distance: 213 NM
Flight time: 3.0 hrs
CO Airports: 9
States: Wyoming
Route: APA -> FTG -> 18V -> 11V -> GXY -> CYS -> FNL -> LMO -> BDU -> EIK -> BJC -> APA

I need to come up with a plan for visiting the 35 other Colorado airports I plan to visit (I left out DIA, Greeley-Weld since I've already been there, and Centennial which is my home airport), as well as one airport in each of the six states I want to visit. I picked up this neat booklet for free from my flying club that contains detailed information on all of the publicly accessible Colorado airports, which includes an overall map. Looking at the map it is easy to see that I can achieve my goal with four flights.

It's a new year, and I have an aviation-related resolution. I want to make a landing at all of the publicly-accessible Colorado airports east of the Rockies, and I also want to visit all of the bordering states east of the Rockies. The whole point is to expand my personal limits a little bit, and to have some fun.

I've neglected to write anything in my blog about parenthood, mostly out of laziness, but also because Jenny is doing a great job of doing it on her blog, ericandjennythomas.blogspot.com. I will try to be better though.

As time goes by I'm getting less and less stressed about our adoption of Emily, and more and more excited. I keep thinking of all the fun times I'll get to experience with her. But there is one aspect of this whole thing that does keep getting worse. Would you be surprised if I told it you it had to do with lawyers?

I just spent the last 4 hours doing yard work, and I'm pooped. Jenny helped a lot, but she got to miss out on a bunch of it because she had some errands to run. All the work was in the landscaped front yard, and unfortunately it's still not done. We trimmed most of the trimmable bushes and plants, and pulled most of the weeds, but there still some work to be done there. Most of the time was spent trying to get all the leaves in a pile. Yep, the pile is still there, along with the bush trimmings, sitting in our driveway.

Today I finally finished painting the deck. I started on September 21st, and 12 days later I finally got it complete. Well, it's not a pretty job. For one, power-washing damaged the wood making deeper indentations than there would have otherwise been. So here an there are small divots of unpainted wood. Also, I had no good way of getting between planks, so it is easy to see the unpainted sides in between some planks. But if you don't look too closely, it still is a decent job, and one I hope to never do again.

Today I finished my bi-annual flight review with the local instructor, so now I'm able to get back in to flying for the fun of it. It was a good learning experience, as expected. Tom gave me some things to think about, particularly with having systems for memory. Acronyms are overused everywhere, but they are effective. For example, the 4F's for emergency engine failures: (Fly the plane, Find a suitable field, try to Fix the problem, and Fly a normal pattern).