It is funny that, during flight school, the academics were easy. The hard part was "wiggling the sticks." I found last night that the mechanics of flying have come back to me much more quickly than the book work. I had a nice four hour flight entirely under night vision goggles. Moreover, I flew from the left seat. This is not the usual seat from which I fly. Despite the NVG flying from the left seat, I flew well. I felt like I could not, however, remember a single thing I learned in my classwork at Rucker. I answered question after question with a wild guess, a confident (but wrong) answer, or silence. When the flight ended and we were sitting in the pilot office, the IP nicely urged me to "stay in the books". "This should be easy" he added, "you were a lawyer." Without skipping a beat another pilot chimed in: "He must not have been a very good one - look where he is now." I know he was kidding but ouch.

Despite my aeronautical amnesia flying was the best part of my birthday evening. The bad part came after we landed. It turned out that I had been assigned as the "Staff Duty Officer" for the night. That meant that I had to sit from 0300 to 0900 on June 10th at the headquarters building, behind a desk, just in case an emergency occured. This was after arriving at work at 1600 on June 9th to prepare for my flight.

When 0900 arrived I was dragging my tail rotor. I could not go to sleep, however. I sold my motorcycle last week on ebay and purchased a lighter one for trail riding. The buyer was scheduled to arrive the morning of the 10th to pick it up. He arrived as scheduled and I said goodbye to the KLX650, my very first motorcycle. I am already planning a ride on my Suzuki DR Z400S for this weekend. Hopefully I will have some photos to share.

Speaking of photos, I am attaching another picture of the "Lancer" logo on the nose of the Hawk I flew last night. Several of you commented that you liked the last photo but that it was not clear enough. Ask and you shall receive.