An Unexpected Delay -- Damit!

9:15 PM - Thursday, Oct. 27, 2005
An Unexpected Delay -- Damit!

I'm frustrated as hell. As you read in the last post, Steve and I flew well enough last night to get signed off to take our checkride. We were prepared to take it tonight or tomorrow at the latest. So imagine our surprise and frustration when we awoke to learn that our ride has been scheduled for 5 days from our last sim session!

I immediately got on the phone and tried to get the matter rectified, but each time I got a dead end. So I called the manager of the training department and left him a message with a plea to get our checkride moved up. The problem is that they don’t have enough examiners to go around, and the one guy (Tom) who could do it and was willing to do it whenever they had an open sim, is the only guy who can’t give us our checkride, since he was the instructor pilot who signed us off. Arrgh!

But I wasn’t going to give up – I knew that another crew from our class, Roger and Eric, were slated to take their ride in the morning. And I knew that one of them was having troubles in the sim still, so I called them hoping we could take their place. No luck, they’re feeling ready to go. Good for them, but this Checkride Vulture had hoped for a different scenario!

As it stands now, there is a small chance that some other crew might forego their scheduled ride in favor or more practice this weekend, leaving a spot for us to get it done. But that’s unlikely due to the fact that someone has to coordinate all of that, and those people only work Monday through Friday.

So, Steve and I’ll hang out, trying to “mind fly” and “chair fly” in order to stave off the rust. I’ll endeavor to mix in a bit of relaxation over the next few days with the massive amounts of studying. The good news about all of this is that it’s another chance to reiterate to my impatient self that things happen the way they do for a reason. Like it or not, and right now I’m very much not liking it. As Dad always reminds me, now is the time to “Smile and breathe, smile and breathe….”

Carlos tells me that any airline pilot's ultimate goal should be to get to her retirement day and have the chief pilot have no idea who she is. Yeah, right.... this is me we're talking about!