I fly a helicopter

I have definitely passed the one year mark posting on this thing. But, to be fair, I warned you when I started this thing that I would be sporadic at best. I chock part of this up to the fact that it's been a busy year at work. Deciding to finish a master's in dispute resolution has not really helped with the free time either.

But I'm posting today and that's the important thing, right?

So, adventures with Carrie. Weekend before last I was supposed to go running with my Dad (a fun Sunday tradition that usually entails a three mile jog through the park and lots of complaining). However, Dad called from Cleburne Texas to see if I wanted to fly a helicopter instead.

um, yes please.

For those of your who don't know, my sister Heidi is a helicopter pilot. She has been working at a flight school down in Cleburne TX but was about to move on to bigger and better things. Or, in other words, she's going to go fly for an oil company that's going to pay her lots of money to be an oil rig taxi. This was probably my last chance to get a real life helicopter flying lesson.

So after a half hour ground lesson on what to do if you try to make the helicopter dive and it subsequently stops working, we went up in an R22 (think golf car with a propeller) and I got to fly!!

I am very glad that Heidi is an experienced flyer and excellent teacher and that she was able to take over the controls at a moment's notice because flying a helicopter is waaaay harder than it looks. One way to think about it is trying to control a ping-pong ball on a string while being in the ping-pong ball.

Yeah, bad example, I know, but it's the closes approximation I can get to how difficult it is. But here are some more pictures because who doesn't love pictures?

And finally, a state department updates, for those keeping score, I am now around 125 out of 200 on the Con register and will expire off the list next month. I've restarted the process and am seriously thinking about learning Hindi.