first day

I didn’t sleep well last night. A combination of thin mats on a hard wooden bunk and the crazy hours of sunshine kept me from getting a good night’s sleep. Nevertheless, I roused and headed for breakfast with Sydney. As we were walking up to the hangar, we spotted 2 moose, a mother and her calf. They walked right across the runway, no big deal. Craziness!! I guess the guys were a few minutes later, so all they saw were the tracks left by the beasts.

Breakfast was awesome. The food was good, but the company was amazing. It felt sort of like a family reunion. First there is John, one of the flight instructors. He will talk about anything airplanes, and was excited to hear about my multi experience. Even though he has years of experience, he has never done anything multi. Then there is John. He is from Vancouver. We talked a little bit of home, favorite college teams, that sort of stuff. I heard there is another John, but I didn’t meet him.

The clouds were still low in the sky. We knew there were mountains lurking out there, but their majesty was effectively cloaked by the heavy layer of clouds. We spent the morning wandering around the ranch, looking for stuff to do. We finally settled into the classroom, deciding to sit through 3 hours of torment. I was alternately not paying too much attention and trying not to fall asleep.

The afternoon brought sunshine. As the sun burned off the clouds, we were able to see some of the mountains peeking out. We eagerly started plotting which ones we will climb first. We found a little work to do in the hangar, usually interrupted when an airplane came in to land, or one of David’s helicopters.

Me, being the structures lab assistant, was assigned to the sheet metal project, with the help of Erik. That was a frustrating project… I wont completely bore you with all the details, but I will tell you what we did. We had to remove a small bulkhead out of a tail section of a crashed 152. We were putting it on another 152. Fun times… it proved to be more difficult than it looks. We are putting it on a different 152 that is being re-skinned.

That was about it for the day… the mountains were fully displaying their power as we walked by, in awe of their wonderful power.