A good week overall. How can it be a bad week when it starts with a holiday and your birthday is in the middle? My back is doing much better thanks to just relaxing on Monday. I think part of the injury was a reaction to having to be back sitting in front of a computer for many hours a day...man isn't meant to do that! But the week at work is good. The company just hired a new CFO and he's very interested in flying so we car pooled and talked about planes. The company is about at the stage that I expected and we have lots of work to do so it will be busy. I'm already finding myself thinking about what needs to be done and how to do it in the shower, at night and on weekends. So much for deep philosophical musings for a while.
I had a great birthday on Wednesday. All the boat parts are now together and I was hoping to go sailing but didn't have enough light (maybe this week!). Got birthday calls and lots of Facebook cheer from friends and family. Amy, Shane and Virginia and Andrew came over to bring treats and balloons (see picture). You would think that a guy with no family should be able to retire at 55 but I'm not there yet...as much as I'd love to be! I have some friends that just bought a place in Las Vegas in a "55 and older" community. I used to think that act (buying into one of those places) and age was the jumping off point for the end of "real" life.....I wonder if that's what the BYU kids are thinking of me?
The weekend has been awesome. I debated whether to drive or fly to Idaho and whether to go Friday night or Saturday morning but drove straight to the airport from work thinking I'd maybe just fly to Nephi and do some landings but the air was still and the sky completely clear so took off to the north and headed for Provo Canyon. I knew that the sun would set at 7:44 pm and it was 6:30 pm when I took off. Since Soda has no lights and there was no moon, I hoped I would have plenty of light and I did. I managed to land just after the sun went down even after squeezing in a flyby of the house.
I called Don who was at the Soda football game. I'd come in from the north to land and he'd seen me fly over the game. He fixed nachos and we talked and ate some of Grant's birthday cake (HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANT!) then I borrowed the Nova and drove to Bench - it's a perfect "airport" car. Mom and Dad were still up and doing good. Dad had seen me fly over and called Don's to make sure I landed ok.
My office window is right next to the freeway and so after sitting there all week, to be plunged into absolute quiet and darkness except for the Milky Way was really pleasurable. I slept well and then spent most of the day working on yard, trimming up bushes, raking branches and old apples and then mowing the lawn - great thearapy. There has been some good rain up there and everything was still very green for September. Visited with Mom and Dad for a couple of hours and then went to Lava with Mark and Karen Andreason to eat Thai food. Great to catch up with them.
This morning, I awoke at 7:05. At 7:50, I was on the road to Soda. Warmed up the plane and then took off and flew south. Kent and I had talked about rolling a strip from my place to Keith's shop so coming back, I sort of looked at it from the air with an eye to see how landing would be. Looked dang short coming in from the north! Especially with my barn wall sitting right there at the end!
I did a slow climb and this time flew just west of the east mountains in Cache Valley. I could see Ben's front yard and gave him a call but he didn't answer. Then on south and right over the Wolf Creek resort and just east of Morgan airport. Over Park City and Deer Valley and then dropped down to 8500 feet to go down Provo Canyon. One of the challenges I have is getting down low and slow enough to land. The tower gave me a straight in final for runway 13 and I got down to pattern altitude but when I pulled the nose up to slow down enough to drop the gear and flaps, I shot back up 500 feet. So I still ended up slipping the plane (putting the rudder and ailerons in opposing positions) to get low enough to land. Landing was good but need to work on how to lose altitude gracefully.
Anyway, parked the plane, got in the car and was at my house by 10:10. Two and a half hours from door to door. Was a little late for conference but heard most of sister Beck's talk, all of Elder Holland's and all of Elder Packers. Elder Packer is aging some but I really enjoyed his talk. It was less structured than most of his talks and the main points I got were that we are responsible for our own destiny and we need to be guided by the spirit and that learning how to do that is hard, tricky and can take an entire life time.
Home for nap, then to a bishopric meeting, stopped by to visit the Hunters and now here I am. Interesting to talk to Michael as he is putting together a consensus document on what every person in his family thinks of what should be done to their family property in Wallsburg. I think it's a good exercise and he's finding that even though everyone thinks they have the same idea, their ideas are all very different. Michael is making progress in getting their solar home shipped form Colorado to here and we're anxious to see it!
Hope you all have a good week!
Peter
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