1/7/04 My Story of Airline Travel - The return trip from Amsterdam to Green Bay wasn't as nice as the trip there. The Boeing 767 was missing some flight attendants, so service was slow. Not only that, but the flight attendants didn't necessarily do their jobs... opening soda cans should be a job duty, but they left that to me, and of course with my luck, about a quarter can of ginger ale exploded onto my tray table and then onto my pants. Nothing like sitting there cold, wet, and sticky for half an hour waiting for my pants to dry enough that I can walk past people without them thinking I wet my pants!

Then I went through the gee-golly-gosh-darn-fun process of going through customs in Chicago, standing in a line and answering strange questions. The worst part was that my airline had a bad setup for re-checking luggage. "Just throw your bag on the floor! Put it right there!" Yeah, throw my two suitcases in the middle of your walkway where someone can walk off with them, sure! Great! Hope they get onto the next plane!

Now yippee, I get to ride this jam-packed train between terminals, where smelly sweaty people are hogging all the handholds and I practically fall over when we stop and go. I'm guarding my backpack like a hawk because I'm paranoid of people stealing something despite my two locks.

I get off the train, go downstairs and now my connecting flight is not showing up on the TV screens. What gate do I need to go to? Oh, I guess my ticket doesn't say, so I get the privilege of *standing* here for half an hour waiting to figure out my gate. And of course, it ends up being what feels like miles away.

Then I get to go through yet another security checkpoint, take off my shoes, and look at my laptop's neat internal workings on the X-ray machine. Welcome to America, land of the free.

Finally, at the gate, I wait barely awake, sitting on the floor since there are no chairs available. The cold air from the doors rushes in across the floor all the time. Three hours later, just when I think I can board, the plane isn't even here yet. It's delayed an hour, and so is nearly every other flight, it seems. It's too loud around me and there are too many stupid conversations at too high a volume! It's the first time I have heard so much English in three weeks and it is actually bothering me. Everyone is pigging out on McDonald's and I don't want to smell it.

And now that my eyelids won't stay open, and I'm hungry, and very mad, they tell me my flight is cancelled. I need to go to the customer service center to talk to the less-than-intelligent workers behind the counter. I get a new ticket. I finally give in to the high prices and buy two magazines... FLYING was one of them, to remind myself that not all aviation is this bad. I try to call my mom on the payphone five times and she finally answers. She and my dad are already on their way to Green Bay to pick me up, so now they'll need to find something to do. I wait two more hours for a different flight.

The boarding agent tries to put us on the wrong plane and we turn around and get off. One week later I find an article saying O'Hare is the worst on-time airport in the country.

Finally, after being stuck in the hell called O'Hare for six hours, I am homeward bound, off to Green Bay in a Canadair again. I am desperate for a cup of coffee to wake up a little. Then the flight attendant says something like, "I'm sorry, but our hot water system is currently out of order and hot beverages won't be available on this flight." Go figure.

1/12/04 Back in the Saddle- Today was my first day back at school after winter break and my trip to Europe. I couldn't wait to take the controls of an airplane again, which I hadn't done since I flew the 150 home a month ago. I figured the best thing to do would just be to get familiar with a plane again before trying to tackle any lessons. I flew for 1.1 hours in the school's Cessna 152. I went to Platteville for three takeoffs and landings, then returned to Dubuque.

1/16/04 Changing Instructors, Changing Weather- Due to scheduling conflicts this semester, my school assigned me to a different instructor, Kyle. (I'll miss you Ryan!) He showed me how to do steep spirals and eights-on-pylons in the 152 today. I had a lot of trouble with both. Meanwhile, the weather was rapidly deteriorating; it was hazy and the clouds were dropping, so we cut the lesson short at 0.8 hours.

1/29/04 Suddenly, Eights-on-Pylons Click- After my poor performance during my introduction to eights-on-pylons a couple weeks ago, I was frustrated and wondering what was going wrong. I had read about this maneuver but it was easier said than done. I decided to go up with a different instructor on my non-block day (getting a plane first-come, first-served) to see if he could give me a different perspective. Nope, after an hour of dual in the 172 my airplane was still everywhere but where it was supposed to be. I practiced steep spirals and those went fine. I returned to the airport intending to quit for the day, but instead dropped my instructor off at the ramp and went out solo for one more try. I really felt like I had to do it right this time. I found a good pair of "pylons," turned my frustration into determination, and voila- perfect! I did the maneuver several times just to prove to myself that it wasn't luck! I couldn't believe it. I tend to catch on to things more quickly when I learn alone. It's good that our commercial syllabus requires several hours of solo practice.

1/30/04 Fifth Trinidad Lesson- I got back in the Trinidad after nearly a four-month hiatus. (I have been jumping around in the syllabus due to instructor switches, credit for flight experience outside school, and because I transferred from an old to a new syllabus in the middle of it.) Kyle and I did slow flight, power-off and power-on stalls, and two takeoffs and landings. I logged 1.1.

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