Friday, September 23, 2016

Things, Things, and More Things

I know I've been out of town a lot lately, but I have been doing things other than traveling! The next post or two might be a little disjointed and random, but it's been a very disjointed and random couple of months.

In early August, Mark and I spent an afternoon at Monticello. He had been there before but I hadn't, so it was nice to finally go! That is one cool thing about Virginia...there are a lot of presidents' houses around here.   :)

Jefferson had a pretty sweet view, even if the clouds were a bit low. We started with a tour inside, then spent some time wandering around the gardens and grounds.

I couldn't take any pictures inside, but one of my favorite things was his library. It was three rooms and even had a bed! I wouldn't mind a library like that, After wrapping up the tour, we stopped at a nearby winery for a tasting, then went to Charlottesville's Downtown Mall for some shopping, dinner, and drinks. It was a really nice afternoon!

I also said goodbye to my student, Abby, in early August. She was heading to Virginia Tech for their ROTC program, but we were at least able to end the summer with a very pretty flight over the mountains. It was sad to see her go, but I know she'll do really well down there.

The day after I said goodbye to Abby, I had a very large box delivered to my hangar. Let the homebuilding adventure begin!

Our fig tree has had a ton of figs on it for a while, but they were all little and green. The figs finally started to ripen, so Mark and I had some fancy snacks and wine to use some of them up. The tree's been going crazy lately and we've gone from no figs to too many figs, but there are certainly worse problems to have. (And it's a good excuse to put my dehydrator to good use! They're really good cut in half and dehydrated.)

After we got back from Maine, I set aside some time to do inventory on my kit. Mark helped me crack open the crate, then ran away before I put him to work (kidding!).

It took a while to make sure all the pieces were there, but the good thing is that instead of feeling intimidated, I'm actually really excited to get started. I still have some work to do to get my shop all set up, but I'm making progress and having fun.   :)

A couple weeks ago, I got to give a flight review in this beauty! This RV-8 was a former Bronze Lindy Winner at Oshkosh, and was a lot of fun to fly.

We started with some airwork, then went to Culpeper (CJR) for some landings.

This was the great visibility I had on final: my buddy Bob's head. Ah, taildraggers. The runway's out there somewhere!

If I didn't want four seats so much I'd be tempted to build one of these instead; it's aerobatic and really fun.

One of the best parts of doing Bob's flight review was getting to know him a bit better. This is his friend's RV-8 but Bob is building his own, and aside from being an FAA FSDO guy, he's also a mechanic! Turns out he lives five minutes from me and has a full shop set up in his basement. He invited me over after the flight, and we spent a couple hours playing around with power tools and sheet metal in his basement. He offered to mentor me if I needed it as I build my plane, and he's already been a huge help in getting me off on the right foot with my project. I'm really glad I randomly bumped into him in the FBO a couple months ago!   :)

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