lisa's blog

Sunday was the planned date for my first helicopter solo "cross country." For those of you who don't know aviation very well, "cross country" only means "not local" and, in helicopters, that means more than 25 nm. Here's the route I flew.

Yesterday I took a glider flight with Matt, one of the other members of my glider club. It was an awesome day. We departed Hollister (KCVH) at a little before noon (we released from the tow plane right about at noon at 5500' MSL) and we traveled south past Avenal turning around over Soda Lake (about 6 miles west of McKittrick, CA) returning to Hollister at about 7 PM.

1st Helicopter solo on 4/3/2011

After 2 runs around the pattern, John asked me to lower the engine to idle. When I did, he said, "okay, do three patterns and a clearing turn before each touchdown. Each time I will give you a 'thumbs up' if I want you to do another." He then took his headset and handheld, latched the door and waved.

I was trying to update drupal and had a major site crash forcing me to revert to the site as it was about a year ago. I thought I had done a backup, but I had copied the wrong database!

Most of my helicopter updates are gone, but more will be added soon.

This past Friday, the day after Christmas 2008, I took my first charter out of Sausalito, CA. I chose Zara, a Beneteau 311, for a few reasons -- I had sailed other Beneteaus before and I assumed this would be similar and it was a boat that Cheryl, on of my crew for the day, had never been on. Cheryl has sailed out of Sausalito many times and this allowed her to make comparisons to other boats for me as well as for herself.

Just one week after BareBoat certification, I took it another step. I knew three of the people in the catamaran class (including the instructor who was my instructor for BBC) and so, given how much more fun it is to take classes with people you already know, I decided to take it.

Two more days on the north bay, including quite a wet one on Sunday, and I am now "Cruising Catamaran" certified. This, I believe, now qualifies me for catamaran charter for up to 50 feet.

Well, last weekend I got by Bare Boat Chartering certification which allows me to rent boats up to 50 ft in length.

Lots of people have been making Ron Paul videos and some of them have been quite good. You can see a lot of them here. But, to me, one stands out above the rest. (it was on this page but, unfortunately, it's been removed from YouTube).

Obviously I am not keeping this blog up very often. Of course, it was set up mainly for me to fiddle with how to set up a blog and not because I thought I had much news on a frequent basis that anyone would be interested in.

Ah well...

My daughter and I are off to LA for the weekend to visit my brother and his wife. We haven't seen them since we "crossed paths" in New Jersey at my parents' summer home a few years ago.

My daughter had a wonderful time the last time that she got to hang out with my sister-in-law (a schoolteacher, by the way) and I know she is looking forward to doing so again.