Denied, Again...

Argh -- Wednesday, the fog was too thick to fly, so I didn't even drive down to Chino for that lesson. Today, things weren't lookin' so great either -- I saw a few drops of rain on my windshield on the way down -- and they turned out to be pretty bad. As soon as he saw me, C. said, "I've got some bad news for you..." Apparently, he'd had to get an IFR vector back from the practice area to the field at the end of his last lesson, so that just wasn't gonna work.

The big deal with learning to fly is that you're supposed to learn to fly by looking out the window first, rather than looking at the instruments all the time. You're supposed to be able to look at the horizon to see if you're straight and level, and having clouds all around means no horizon. Bummer.

I'm scheduled to try again tomorrow (they only had a Cessna available, but I'd kinda like to try out the high-wing aircraft anyway) and then again on Wednesday morning. Hopefully it'll work at least one of those days.

It's all kind of a bummer, 'cause I keep reading and reading and reading, but doing a little bit of flying would probably give me a bit more of a mental hook to hang all that knowledge on. Dad has reassured me that, in the Navy, they spent months doing nothing but classroom work before they were allowed to touch a plane, but I'd still like to get out there and fly.

In the meantime, I've been haunting the Internet, reading the weather reports from Chino, and looking at aeronautical charts for LA (thanks to T. for the hint about those!). My instructor seems to understand my cheap-ass nature -- he suggested I wait until December 20 to buy all new charts and airport directories, since that's when the new stuff comes out and the old stuff has to be discarded. There's no sense in spending bucks for less than a month of use...