It was a productive weekend, I guess; I paid some bills, caught up on some sleep, spent too much money on new clothes and shoes (again - clothing is one of my temptations and Fall clothing is more so), rowed a double with D to make sure we won't hate rowing together in the marathon, reviewed the Head of the Charles course with Yosemite Sam, got to socialize with Rudder and D and Dr. Bosun and a crazy (former) Russian I asked because he was there and I didn't want to be rude (should have been rude. He's a jerk) and went flying, beginning to work on partial panel and unusual attitudes. Not a particularly busy weekend.
Note to nonaviators: Partial panel is when some of the flight instruments are covered to simulate instrument failure. Unusual attitudes are when the instructor has you close your eyes, jinks around a bit to get you disoriented (no trouble with me - still got that vertigo thing going, a bit), gets the plane pointed nose up or down and banked to one said, then says, "OK, open your eyes now. Your airplane," so you can get used to recovering to straight and level flight without getting into a spin or some dumb situation like that. Surprisingly, it was a little easier than I expected - but I'm not really looking forward to doing those with a partial panel.
Rudder and I also watched Rowing Through, a movie about the legendary rower Tiff Woods, the even more legendary coach Harry Parker, and the 1984 Olympic trials. It would have been a good movie to watch with the sound off. It had some of the most beautiful cinematography I've ever seen, with rowers swinging together in sweaty races or singles going out on eligiac fall Boston afternoons with the mist rising. On the other hand it was one of those sort of vague movies that kept skipping years of time with no explanation for why anything happened (why were all those young Olympic rower men knitting at the Olympic selection camp?) and dialogue I couldn't catch half the time. It was definitely worth watching .... listening to, I'm not so sure about.
This is my last full week working here at this site. I'm kind of sad, actually.
Posted by dichroic at October 11, 2004 02:37 PM