Pug’s Place

The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated. I just haven’t had much about which I want to post.

Today two things happened: I landed at Casa Grande airport for the first time and I had to turn on my car’s air conditioner for the first time in 2008.

Casa Grande is a city of about 35,000 located roughly halfway between Phoenix and Tuscon. It has a busy municipal airport, owing to its proximity to a radionavigation beacon and that it has instrument approaches, allowing pilots holding or seeking an instrument rating to perform practice “precision” landings. It’s also just a short 12 nautical miles away from Phoenix Regional Airport, the airport at which I made my first solo flight and a large portion of my landings. The proximity of Casa Grande Airport to my ’stomping grounds’ south of Phoenix should have made it one of my most common destinations while airborne, but for various reasons until today I had never touched my wheels to the asphalt there. It wasn’t for lack of trying, rather it seemed for a while that higher forces were at work to keep me away: a sudden dust storm, a skydiver mis-jumping and the frantic call to clear the airspace around the airport, etc. However, I tried again today, and despite the heavy instrument student traffic I did do several landings and a leisurely taxi-back across the airport, allowing me time to enjoy the view.

Since February I’ve been regularly driving with all of my windows down and my sunroof open. It’s just that pretty. Today, however, it was a little too warm for that to be comfortable, at least while wearing long pants. So I flipped on my A/C in the Pugmobile. That’s all there is to that story.