Progressing outside of my comfort zone

Life seems to be coming at me at a million miles an hour these days. I have gone from spending my afternoons at the gym or helping my grandparents and being bored with myself and life to flying helicopters and studying and being busy as hell in just a short couple of months. How crazy is that??

At first, just learning how to not kill myself in the helicopter was WAY outside of my comfort zone. Now I'm more comfortable and have been plugging away at the maneuvers that I will eventually need to master. But, it seems every time I find my comfort zone something else gets thrown at me...the biggest just this week. It seems that Roar thinks I'm about ready to solo. Wow...I don't really feel like I'm ready to solo. Not to mention that, but in order to solo I have to be checked out by another instructor. This really sucks and is freaking me out because a) I don't really like new people, b) I don't like being put on the spot and having to perform, c) I'm totally shy and completely lack self confidence and d) did I mention that I don't do well with new people, oh and e) I'm a complete klutz and will most certainly do something stupid and make an asshole out of myself. I'm starting to hyperventilate just thinking about it all. Maybe I'm not cut out to be a pilot? Seriously...I do stupid shit all the time.

Next thing, It appears that I'm ready to do my dual cross country as well. This isn't as bad as soloing because Roar will be in the heli with me and will be able to point the way when I start veering off towards Cuba or something. My navigational skills aren't the best...especially in a helicopter. Whenever I take focus away from flying, say to look for a check point, my flying skills go out the window. I either start to gain altitude, lose altitude or slow down to near 0 airspeed...none of which is safe. I wonder if other people deal with the same things?

Well, I guess if it wasn't challenging me I'd be bored and would have quit by now (actually, I think I've quit and started again about 20 times now).

Random thoughs

Sitting here between flights I was just thinking that my blogs need more visual aides. So here's one...me kickin' it old school.

Funny...(funny ha ha)

I have a rather large pool of pilots in my immediate circles. I figured that would be beneficial to me when learning all my ground school crap, but as I've come to realize...not so much. On several occasions now I have asked several of them to help me with different issue (nothing that I thought was too difficult like aerodynamics, weather, etc...basically standard navigation and understanding of airport information) and would you believe that they've all struggled with the answers. I'm expected to retain all this (obviously) meaningless stuff simply for a test.

Oh well. I'm going to try to get my written out of the way next week so I can purge all of the useless information from my brain so I have more room for important stuff like 80s song lyrics, margarita recipes, directions to every good sushi restaurant in town and happy hour times at the local bars!

Tired, so very tired

I don't know how I did it. When I was in college there were some semesters when I got up at 5am to be at school in downtown ATL by 8am. I would be in school all day then go to work the night shift at a medical supply company. I would get out of work at mid-night. Sometime in between all of that I found time to do homework and study (oh, and skydive and have a boy friend).

Now, I get up at 6:30...work half a day...drive to Orlando, make a flight or two...drive home...study some...and go to bed by 10 or so (well, I was up till 11:30 studying the other night) and am totally wiped out! I am so tired. I can't concentrate, there's no way I'm retaining what I am studying and I keep having retard moments when I'm in the helicopter. I think maybe I should get back on the caffeine. Or, maybe I should just quit my job and move closer to the airport. Or better yet, I could be a heli school bum...I could buy a RV and park it in the schools parking lot. I could sweep the parking lot for extra $$.

Whacked

I never thought I was a hypochondriac (but I guess most people who are, don't). For years now I've had "symptoms" that I've pretty much attributed to getting older and hormonal changes. Over the years I've had several blood tests that have all come back negative so I just kinda blew it all off.

Over the past several months all the ideas of possible issues have been surfacing again. My acupuncturist said that she thought I had a thyroid issue and said that most of the test are inaccurate. At a party I was talking to several other women who've been diagnosed with thyroid issues and their symptoms seemed very similar to mine so I started to research hypothyroidism on the internet. I know that's kind of dumb because if you look hard enough you can probably match your "symptoms" to any disease or illness out there. But, I did it anyway and found out that I'm the poster child for hypothyroidism! I gathered all my notes and list of symptoms and made my way to my Primary Care Physician. She ordered a plethora of blood and urine tests and told me to come back in a week. The lab people told me that my doctor would have the labs the next day so I made my appointment to go back to my doctor just short of a week.

When I arrived, the office had not yet received my labs so they had to get online and download them from the lab. The nice PA sat down with me and went over them and basically said that everything was not only in the normal range, but almost perfect. I just couldn't believe it and went home thinking I was whacked in the head. I guess all my "symptoms" were related to old age, lack of taking proper care of myself, etc and not my thyroid or even hormonal. :o(

A couple days later I received a phone call from the nurse at the office. She regretted to inform me (if only she knew) that when I was in earlier that week that all my labs had not been accounted for and that they just received some more results that showed elevation of something in my thyroid!! Not that I'm happy about being "sick"...but YAY!!! Now I know why I've been porking up and dealing with the other long list of symptoms associated with hypothyroidism!! I've got an appointment with the endocrinologist in a couple of weeks.

It's a really good feeling to find out that you actually have an issue and are not insane or a hypochondriac!

Trials and tribulations

Well, training is coming along. I've got around 11 hours or so now. With every hurdled cleared there is another waiting in the wings. My current frustration is throttle control. Some helicopters (I think most actually, but don't quote me) have a governor that adjusts the throttle as needed. The helicopter that I'm learning on does not. With every turn, with every altitude adjustment, with just about everything move the throttle must be adjusted. There's a low RPM horn that signals you if the RPM has dropped below the optimum level. Right now this horn is pretty much going off the entire time I'm flying. My brain understands what adjustments are needed and when...it's just getting my body to follow. To add insult to injury, there are so many things that you are doing at once that when I lose my focus because of the throttle..everything else seems to go to shit. gggrrrrrrr. At the beginning of my training I thought that the cyclic was the most challenging control to master...I think I'm going to have to take that back and say that it's throttle control. Serious FRUSTRATION!

Other than that, I fly a helicopter much like I drive a car. I'm a bit of a swerver and I can't park to save my life. I also had a bit of taxi way phobia, but seem to have gotten a little better with that one on my last flight. If it wasn't for throttle control I think I would have conquered the taxi way! My take offs have been pretty decent, but landings and set down have been a challenge. Saturday I'm going to get the "short bus" lesson on landing, which basically means we are going to do everything in slow motion so I can get the pictures (that's one thing I like about helicopters...the versatility! I bet I couldn't get the slow version of landing in a plane unless we were practicing engine out landings).

The book work is coming along, albeit boring. I totally couldn't get through the chapter on weather last night...kept catching myself going in and out of consciousness (damn ADD!). I'm sure that all of this will come with time. Just trying to keep you all updated of my progress.