Waiting in a Winter Wonderland

I’ve got a problem.  I haven’t flown in two weeks. 

I am currently only able to fly on the weekends.  The reasoning is pretty simple enough; I work and we are in the middle of a New England winter.  By the time 5pm rolls around I’ve got about 20 minutes of daylight left which isn’t enough time for me to takeoff and get out to my practice area. 

Two weeks ago I was all set and ready to head to the field.  As I was walking to the plane my boss was pulling it into the hangar announcing that the manifold pressure gauge stopped working and the plane was grounded.  As frustrated as I was, as bad as I wanted to say “who cares?!?!  It never works right anyway!” he was right.  Saying “it’ll probably be ok” is never good enough with flying.  The plane was grounded for the rest of the weekend and through most of the week until a phone call to American Champion helped our mechanic solve the problem easily and affordably. 

This past weekend was full of 30 knot winds and a cloud ceiling hanging down around 2,000 feet.  Obviously I was not keen to be flying in those conditions.  It would have been a waste of time and a waste of money. 

And that is my rationalization.  I have a budget that I set up to give me so many flight hours per month.  This is not exactly a HUGE budget but enough to give me a handful of hours per month.  Since I have this limited budget I want to make the most out of the money that I have.  Going up on a day like we had this weekend would have been horrible.  I am not waiting around for perfect days but I need at least 3000 foot ceilings to do anything. 

In a few weeks time I’ll have an hour worth of daylight after work to get my flights in.  Waiting for the weekend to roll around is brutal.  I am in constant conversation with myself asking myself if I can be doing more; whether or not I am just making excuses for myself, and whether or not my rationalizations are valid.  There is no substitute for experience and every day that I don’t fly I feel like I am wasting an opportunity.    

I do not have the time or the resources to do everything that I want to do.  If I could not work and have a plane and afford to fly the plane and go to contests and pay my car bill and my student loan bill then I would, as I’m sure you would too.  Truth is I can’t and you probably can’t either (if you can though please send a check payable to Chris Porter.  Thanks).  What I do know is that I have a clear path to getting to exactly where I want to be.  Unfortunately I have always been an incredibly impatient person and am being forced to be patient.  I have to mix working hard with working smart.