4 Weeks and Eric flies a plane

Eric here. Felt I should say that up front since I'm not the usual person posting on this blog. Not sure why it's even called Eric and Nancy's ramblings. It should be Nancy's Ramblings With Occasional Appearances by Eric.

Anyway, we decided trying to do our own ceremony flowers was going to be too much to try to do so we started looking around. Thankfully not a single person I emailed told me it was too short notice, something I was a bit afraid of. Thursday we visited Walter Knoll Florist and Distinctive Designs. Then on Saturday we visited the florist next to Hunan Kitchen called Green Dream Florist. Still need to make a decision, but it doesn't seem like it's any problem as long as we don't take too horribly long to do it (we're shooting for Monday).

Today, Sunday the 3rd, my best man Dave Elder and his brother Jason took me up in a Cessna Skyhawk II as part of my bachelor party! Jason earned his pilots license a year or so ago, and it was awesome to learn a little bit during the hour we were up there. He did most of the flying, but did turn control over to me both in the air and while taxiing on the runway. It's amazing how similar flying a real plane is to flying in a simulator such as X-Plane from the stand point of how everything works and the sense of speed. Biggest thing missing was the actual feeling of the plane starting to tip it's nose down when going into a left turn (or a right, kind of a blur).


The front end and prop of the plane, with Jason in the middle of doing the pre-flight checks.


Me actually flying! Had fun learning how to look at the gauges to determine less obvious things like how much rudder is needed to be applied to avoid "slip." Not sure what that even means, but I know how to avoid it!


We were all surprised by how much flooding there was. I just like the boat moored to the side of the house in this shot. I'm not sure why anyone would actually choose to live this close to a river.


Final approach on our last landing. I was certainly not driving here. The only "successful" landing I have had in X-Plane was successful in that there wasn't anything blown up. I simply broke off all landing gear and skidded to a stop 50 feet past the end of the runway.

It was a blast and I'd love to do that again, maybe even trying to get a pilot's license. Maybe when I'm rich someday.