Flying high

There I was, just minding my own business on Saturday afternoon, when I got a call from Jerry, one of the members of our flying club (he's a "retired" American Airlines pilot who is big into fly fishing, as you can see).

Jerry: "How you feeling?"
me: "Not too bad."
Jerry: "Wanna go fly?"

It's the three words that cause time to stop for any pilot. I can think of only a handful of situations that would ever cause me to turn down the opportunity to fly (and in some cases, I might try to get out of those situations). Jerry is a flight instructor, so as long as he's in the right seat doing anything instructor-like, I can fly the plane from the left seat. We made a deal - he'd pay for the flying time, and I'd pay for the gas and put the plane up when we finished. He also got to work on some of his instructor technique, so there was some symbiosis.

We didn't go anyplace special, just cruised around and practiced some stalls, then some takeoffs and landings. But it was flying. Jerry's almost finished with his instrument instructor certificate, so we might make some plans for future flights. Plus, we finished just before the rains came and the Seattle-like "kill yourself weather" returned.