Pug’s Place

After seeing increasing numbers of these ugly-beyond-belief trucks on the road, I’ve come to the conjecture that the Honda Ridgeline is a subtle weapon built by Nippon for use against the Yankees.

Okay, so here’s how I posit this supposition: The Ridgeline is a two-pronged attack.

1. The Honda Ridgeline distracts drivers so with its visage that they are more likely to become involved in automobile accidents; in fact, a fight-or-flight response may in some individuals be triggered, causing increased kinetic energy at time of impact.
2. Subtler still, I expect nightmares of its front grille to prompt suicides by the most influential members of our Arts communities, causing a decline in American culture.

Comments welcome.

Another Monday, another work week…

The last two weeks have been lovely; my parents came into town and spent about a week and a half here visiting Chris and I. While much of what we did involved work on the house, we also got out some, too. For example, we returned to the Desert Botanical Gardens (I was there in November after interviewing with General Dynamics). Also, I took my Dad flying.

Quick flight story: My last post was about a failed cross-country flight to Ryan Airpark outside of Tuscon, AZ. Well, my Dad and I went up (with my instructor) to try it again… and failed again! A thunderstorm turned the wrong way compared to its forecast: it headed north and got between us and Tuscon. I wasn’t even that thrilled with flying south (since it looked pretty nasty), but my instructor had me go as far as Casa Grande before diverting to Coolidge. It wasn’t a pretty flight, but it was air time, I had a textbook landing and never got very close to the nasty clouds. Also, my dead reckoning skills checked out for the four checkpoints on my flight plan we passed (e.g., we arrived within 60 seconds of the time I predicted)…. But still, I need to get that cross country done!

Otherwise, life continues. Next things on my agenda are: try to put together a Dungeons and Dragons group, put together a LAN party, bike more and Visit Katie in three weeks.

To make this seem like a slightly more substantial post, here are some links for your entertainment:

• Not only is the title fun, the content is so ludicrous as to nearly bring me to tears. It’s satirical, of course, but it’s worth “Looking Inside” via Amazon: Destined for Destiny: The Unauthorized Autobiography of George W. Bush
  by Scott Dikkers. Also amusing to me is that while 96% of “customers ultimately buy” this book, 4% of those who read this book’s description go on to pre-order Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Hehe. (Speaking of, I haven’t decided if I want to Amazon-order that, or just go to a bookstore on July 21st…)
• Here is an interview with an old-time Lisp guy, Richard Gabriel, who notably is driving several universities to offer Master of Fine Arts degrees in Software Design. Okay, it was a neat and entertaining link for me…

Okay, that’s all for now.

I woke up early this morning, did some preparation and left the house to do some bird hunting, and — yes — I got one. Too bad I was intending to fly to Tuscon!

I did wake up early this morning; I was up at 5:20 and shortly thereafter downstairs getting a weather briefing, writing a navigation log and flight plan in preparation for my second cross country flight, this time to Ryan (KRYN) airport on the western side of Tuscon. On my first cross country flight I didn’t do the whole glut of prep; it was somewhat of a last minute decision to fly to Pinal (KMZJ) right north of Tuscon. Because of that, and because the last trip proved my skill at radio navigation via VORs, I was going to be flying today with nothing but a compass, a clock and my eyes: dead reckoning and pilotage. So I had a very detailed flight plan, a bunch of waypoints and landmarks picked out, all of my wind correction angles calculated and so forth.

I got to the airport at 7:30, ready to depart. My plane didn’t return from its earlier patron until 8:00 so that delayed things a bit, but after preflighting the plane and arranging my maps in the cockpit my instructor and I did our engine test (run-up) and started our takeoff roll.

I kept the plane on the center-line, correcting for the wind across the runway. Engine instruments looked good. I was waiting for the airspeed indicator to reach the plane’s takeoff speed (55 knots) and at the same time watching a pair of birds about to fly across the runway in front of me. The birds were green-colored, flying right-to-left at about head height. I was thinking, “Turn, birds, turn! Climb, birds, climb!” but I must not have been thinking it loudly enough - they hadn’t noticed the danger. I couldn’t swerve the plane around them - planes don’t work like that on the ground. I had used up half the runway already, I probably couldn’t stop the plane before running out of runway and hitting the fence. I was committed to taking off. The plane reached 55 knots right at the time the birds realized the danger and began to climb. Just as the nose-wheel lost contact with the runway, the lower bird went through the full throttle prop.

There wasn’t any noticeable noise in the cockpit, but the windscreen got dirty. I was about 30 feet off the ground, correcting our course to hold us along the runway’s heading when Jason asked the question I didn’t want to hear: “Did we just hit that bird?” I pointed to a mass of tissue and red-yellow fluid in one spot of the windscreen and asked, “Turn around?” Jason replied, “We just had a bird strike, James. Yeah, we want to check that out.” I keyed the radio and said, “Stellar Traffic, Cessna 20519 is turning left crosswind, returning to runway 17. Stellar.”

Immediately a call came back over the radio from the guy behind us in line for takeoff, “Did you guys just hit a bird?” Jason replied, “Affirmative, struck our prop. 519-er is returning home.” They responded, “That’s what we thought - we saw the birds and then we saw this big poof! It looked like it exploded.” Jason: “Yeah, it exploded - all over our windscreen.”

I did a normal landing despite the reduced visibility out the front windscreen due to what-formerly-was-a-bird. We taxied back to the parking area and when I stopped the engine and the propeller stopped spinning we could see yellow nastiness coating the cockpit-facing edge on both blades. On top of that, the windscreen was gooey and the passenger-side wing strut was also slicked with nasty. After the plane was tied town I thought about taking a picture of the mess with my phone but decided that I really didn’t want to look at it again.

The plane looked fine, though, just dirty. Propellers are pretty tough, but bird chunks could have damaged other parts of the plane, so it’s best that we landed it as soon as possible to have maintenance look it over. The bird, however… I think it’s safe to say I ruined its day.

So I didn’t fly to Tuscon today, but I might try that again next weekend while my parents are here. Then, after that I will have pretty much learned the curriculum and the bulk of my remaining hours are going to be flying solo, perfecting my skills in preparation for my check-ride.

So, if I went bird hunting this morning (and scored a kill), does that make this Pug a bird dog?