ET's Info-Stew

Tomorrow I'm waking up before the crack of dawn to go to Lassen Volcanic National Park, where Carl, Bill, and I will be taking a three night backpacking trip. This trip I'm being slightly more liberal with what I take. I have a bit more food and I'm bringing my Rubik's cube in case I get bored. I'm leaving at home my rain clothes, because I somehow misplaced the rain jacket. I'm taking a poncho though, just in case. Inspired by Bear Grylles, I'm taking a heavier knife and some flint, in the nearly zero percent chance I need them for survival.

I now have 27.9 hours of flight time under my belt after a kind of marathon flying week. By 33 hours, all I will have left to do is 3 hours of checkride prep time, so I'm asking whether I can switch to a Cessna 172 with those remaining 17 hours. My goal is to have my certificate and Cessna 172 type endorsement by the time we go on vacation to Colorado. It would be fun to take up Jenny, Liz, and Cy.

I can see the finish-line ahead, but that just means that I have a lot of work to do in a short amount of time. I have some pictures from today's flight that I will eventually put up.

Today I did my long solo cross-country flight from KHWD to KMHR to KTCY back to KHWD in 2.4 hours. I'm happy I finally got to do it, and now that that milestone is past I can start with the remaining requirements: night and instrument time. I still have more solo time to do, but I imagine I'll do those occasionally, kinda on my own time.

Yesterday I was supposed to fly my cross country stage check with Joe, but instead I flew with a new instructor, Erick. I passed easily, and even made a pretty descent landing at the end of the flight!

I intended to fly solo to Modesto today with Nick's endorsement, but Nick wasn't so sure. When I check the winds at KMOD and they were 350 at 11, which is higher than my allowed crosswind component. So Nick decided to come with me. I did very well in the planning and execution of the flight and with the other aspects. The high density altitude was instructive: we never actually got to 5,500 feet! It turned out that when we got to the airport the winds were 300 at 12, which is within my allowed range. Oh well.

Today is the first time I've flown in nearly three weeks, and it shows. I had planned a flight to Fresno, but my checkpoints were weak and we didn't have that kind of time anyway so I quickly planned a flight to Modesto and we flew that. I didn't even plan the return flight. The plan worked out pretty well but there were a couple mishaps. One, my radio didn't seem to be working well and some of the controllers couldn't hear me, so Nick had to do much of the talking. Two, I had more trouble seeing my airport checkpoints than I expected and Nick had to help point them out.

Yesterday Jenny did the difficult work of tracking down a person who witnessed Lassen's death and that led to finding Lassen's body at the Animal Shelter. Today, his body was taken to Adobe Animal Hospital so he can be singly cremated. We finally have closure to this sad event and are finally able to move on.

Even if nobody reads it, this blog is very theraputic for me. I've already noticed several changes to life now that Lassen is not with us. I'll use this blog post to keeping a running list of ways my life is different without Lassen.

• There is no dog to feed leftover food to.
• There is no need to stay in outside clothes until late, since I don't need to take the dog out to go to the bathroom at night.
• On weekends, I sleep in until whenever my body wakes me up.
• We have the opportunity to move to a new place that doesn't take dogs.
  

It is healing for me to think about the fun things Lassen did. I'm going to keep this a running list so I can always remember the joy he brought us.

Today, June 1st, 2007 Lassen Benjamin Thomas died at the age of seven years and two plus months. In the morning he was struck by a car after having wandered onto the freeway in Livermore, Calfornia. Only two other times can I remember crying uncontrollably: the day my lizard Gordon died (I was around 10) and the day that my mom told me that I was going to live with my Dad (I was 12 and it wasn't such a bad thing, just that I was leaving my mom). I sit here writing this crying with such feelings of sorrow and loss that I cannot believe I have ever been or will ever be sadder in my life.