this is shocking, but in a week my little "vacation" will be over and I'm expected to return to WORK. here I was worried that I'd be miserable without the office for a month, but as luck and road trips would have it, the time has really flown by. So in the next few days I have to get to all those resolutions I made at the beginning of shutdown:

• Clean the apartment
  
• Re-configure guinea pig cage
  
• Go work habitat another day... or at least another morning
  
• Unpack from Atlanta trip
  
• Catch up on sewing projects. So much fabric, so little time.
  
• Lay by a pool. Not today though, egads, high of 104? What's wrong with this place?
  
• Misc. updates to third party applications on spacefem.com - especially mediawiki, I really let that one go.
  
• Transfer files off my laptop and onto the linux box, because the laptop is suffering and needs to be cleaned off and re-operating-systemed (I can verb that, yeah)
  

we're camping later in the week which I'm totally stoked about, so obviously I have to get ready for that. And I have two nasty sweaty flying lessons scheduled. exciting week!

Okay you know that scene in trainspotting, "The worst toilet in scotland"? I think we might have found the worst in Atlanta... it's hard to tell, but if there was a contest this might be my submission.

Let me take you to MJQ, an underground club downtown.

There are two restrooms, presumably men's and women's, but the doors aren't marked so you just kinda watch which gender seems to be going in where and guess.

The one with more women going into it has two stalls. Both stalls have doors that go to the ceiling, and the doors have a hole where a doorknob maybe once existed. But there are no latches or locks or anything.

The stall on the right has a toilet that does not flush.

The stall on the left has no light. It's pitch black since the door goes to the ceiling. You can kinda use your cell phone to illuminate the basic situation and get an idea of what you're getting into.

Since the doors aren't marked, not everyone agrees that this is the ladies' room. I walked in there once to find a guy peeing in the left stall... which means, of course, that this (dark) one is now subject to the normal horrible things men do to public bathrooms.

At that same time, the right stall was occupied. I know, because I opened the door and found a girl sitting on the toilet blowing a dude. I guess people might as well use that stall for non-bathroom things since the toilet doesn't flush, right?

We were only at this place for a few hours but in that time I saw it get progressively worse. Women were apologizing to one another as they entered, like, "I'm sorry for what you're about to endure, I had to do it too. Good luck hovering. Hope you've got strong thighs."

Other than that I had fun at the club! The DJs were good, the lighting was cool, the bar drinks were reasonably priced and the wall art was neat. I got some cool fashion ideas and got to dance some. I just tried to drink a little less so I wouldn't have to pee, that's all.

I deleted my myspace account.

I just never got that site working the way I liked. I got an account a few years ago when some coworkers I party with suggested it. I'd never connected online to "real" people, so I asked if this was the sort of place where I should use my real name, or an online identity. They all use real names. So I did too.

But quickly I hated lots of things about that. I like my time online to somehow promote spacefem.com, which I couldn't do using my real name. Yes I know vanity is a deadly sin, we all get to pick one. Anyway I didn't see the thrill in talking to people I talk to at work. I felt nervous meeting people online, and HATED accidentally clicking some annoying profile and having "my humps" start up through my computer speakers.

By the time I realized that myspace could be fun if I could be spacefem, make myself into a mini-celeb, the name "spacefem" was taken! I think that was the nail in the coffin for me. who would take spacefem? it's random, and it's mine.

Facebook took off differently. When I joined myspace, friends wrote stupid comments on my profile page that didn't add much. When I joined Facebook, I got invited to parties. The calendar/schedule stuff was helpful. I also liked being tagged in photos, and I liked that it was private. Maybe you can do events and photos in myspace too but it was too everywhere.

I will miss being tied in with my favorite music groups. Jill Sobule has a good myspace. My HUSBAND uses it all the time for his DJ gigs... even made me his top friend, which was a big deal since I never logged into the site. I also feel bad leaving myspace because I feel like it's looked down on, like the ghetto of the internet now, and the fact that I never got it makes me feel classist. Let's face it... Facebook may not blast "my humps" when you visit a profile page but you have to suffer through your friends posting stupid privacy-stealing applications in the form of "what sex and the city character are you?" or similar offending quizzes. It's ghetto there too. Don't act like we're all so much smarter for having moved on.

Last week when I was in KC with Mom we got to talking about state capitols. We were at the Nelson and they have Thomas Hart Benton paintings, which just made me think of Missouri. When I was in grade school we went to Jefferson City and toured the capitol building and the one big thing I remember is the murals showing plane old everyday life. Missouri was a setting off point for the west, the gateway if you will, and so its cities were a mix of crazy bustling and cultures mixing together. The capitol murals ended up being more shocking than the commissioners had planned... rugged frontier people in all shapes, sizes and activities, a baby getting its diaper changed, livestock, that sort of thing. All over the walls of the house lounge. But they went with it and it's wonderful and says something about Missouri, how it the people were searching for something real, how everyone was leaving cities to find the raw frontier and there was a great sense of adventure.

The Kansas state capitol isn't as much about rugged individualism, when I think about it I think of a struggling society trying to find its place. First, there's this giant mural of John Brown fighting for Bleeding Kansas - if a crazy man holding a gun and a bible in the state capitol building doesn't say something about us, what does. Kansas was a state where groups of people, not individuals, saw an opportunity to have the place they wanted. The top of the capitol dome features a statue of an indian shooting an arrow skyward, related to our optimistic state motto "To the stars through difficulty". But there's a deep story there... when a determined group of people want something wonderful, conflicts can happen. And that's why we have a convicted felon painted on the wall.

I have also been to the Texas capitol, which is huge and crazy and makes me think of people playing cowboy and trampling muddy boots in to exchange money back in the day. And I've been to the California capitol in Sacramento, which makes me think of pride in natural resources combined with the modern hippyism of governor Jerry Brown's portrait. According to my parents I've been to the Illinois state capitol but I don't remember it very well, Dad says it's one of his favorites though, and that it has wonderful artifacts pertaining to Abraham Lincoln and strongly honors the intellectual aspects of politics and debates.

Two nights ago in my post-bar Atlanta funk I noticed the Georgia state building and said I wanted to go. We trekked downtown, which was a scary traffic experience but we survived, paid $5 to park and walked a few blocks to the capitol. The Georgia capitol has a bright gold dome. It's surrounded by trees and plants with huge waxy leaves that only grow in southern climates. There are statues of confederate war heroes. It sort of gives a "Look what we got for reconstruction!" vibe... things are matched and well-coordinated, because it was suddenly just all built after the civil war destroyed Atlanta. The top floor features a museum to let people know about the history of Georgia. There's a clock frozen in a display case that a governor tried to set back, nearly killing himself in the process, to prolong a debate about redrawing voting lines that prevented blacks from having a voice at the polls. In fact there are lots of references to racial segregation and the resulting conflicts. Georgia is a humble state, honoring its heritage and contributions to the civil war, quietly acknowleging the peanut farmers. You get the feeling that they weren't violently opposed to change, just didn't see why they had to bother with it. It came to them and they were forced to confront. It happened that way with civil rights. It happened that way with the civil war... trying to succeed from the union to avoid having to change. But they were unable to run, shaken down to nothing, and then what?

In the end, there's Jimmy Carter... his statue outside the capital with palms up to offer service and encourage generosity, telling Georgia that they can honor past and future at the same time, do good things and you will find your pride. The Texas capitol seems to really live in the here and now, Georgia's seems a little unsure of where it set its next foot. But it will set it among lovely magnolia trees.

So here I get to mark another notch on my list of capitol buildings... Illinois, Kansas, Missouri, California, Texas, Georgia. It was a nice day and the guys with me agreed it was interesting, and we were all happy that our afternoon activities only cost us a few dollars to park.

here we are in atlanta! It's a party let me tell you. We drove. Yes, flights here are cheap because it's a hub but driving is still cheaper, plus we were able to take our friend's truck that runs on recycled vegetable oil so driving has been FREE so far.

We set out from wichita at 6am and drove. through KC, St. Louis, Nashville, all day and into the night, and arrived at our friends' house in Atlanta a little after midnight with the time change. We didn't have to stop for gas so that was awesome, but were a little slowed down sometimes for construction. We ate lunch at a KFC and ate dinner at a little mexican place outside chatanooga. I slept a lot and didn't drive at all. I offered to drive but the guys were just switching off and it's a huge truck we took, that apparently doesn't drive like the focus, so our friend who owns it wanted to be the one driving in all urban traffic.

Despite my long hard day of sleeping, I crashed out when we got to a soft bed and slept like a rock. This morning we woke up and marc did some work while I puttered around on the internet, and then we headed out to Six Flags Over Georgia! It was very fun. We pretty much did the roller coasters. I had none fun on the Ninja and the line for the Superman ride was way too long for what we got out of it, but others were great... we rode Goliath twice, MindBender had no line and was incredible so we rode it twice, the batman ride was excellent.

I did really well on all the roller coasters today. I've had problems with some in the past because of an overwhelming fear of heights but today I didn't notice. Someone asked me how I could be afraid of heights while learning to fly airplanes and it's weird, I'd have to say that the heights thing has never bothered me in the least bit while I'm in an airplane. There have been other times in my life where the fear has been paralyzing... once on a powerplant tour, we took an elevator up 11 stories and stepped out onto a grated floor I could see through and I FROZE. They finally coaxed me out by telling me to hang onto a guy in front of me. And on roller coasters in the past, the slow clicking climb upward has been scary enough that I either chickened out or had to close my eyes the whole time and wish it'd end. But airplanes? No problem. Even when I'm flying the airplane... which is irrational, because if I'm going to die by falling the odds of crashing an airplane are much higher than the odds of a roller coaster letting me go. Maybe flying a lot has helped me with the height thing? Or maybe my early fearful lessons were the last few kicks I needed to get over it? Either way we went on some high up roller coasters today and I was fine... looking out, looking down, enjoying the ride. I'm cured.

I realize I haven't done a flying update in a while... mostly because things have slowed down. Not my hours, mind you, those have increased. I'm at 23 or so. I fly at least twice a week. But the knowledge is, well, slow. We do pattern work. No lesson plans, no new checkboxes, just flying in circles around an airport touching runways. I go through the pattern in my head every night as I'm falling asleep. Seriously abbreviated version: full power, takeoff, climb, 90 degree turn, another 90 degree turn, fly along the runway, do the landing checklist, start descent, turn base, turn final, land... repeat. The version in my head has five times that many steps. But I've got it down.

My landings are messy but they're happening, almost. they're hard and unpretty and uncomfortable and I'm always really happy to be on the ground, then we go again. I still get occasional assistance from the guy in the right seat, whoever that is... not instructor S, he's been on vacation, I haven't seen him in weeks. But he'll be back and find that I'm like a soap opera: miss days and days, nothing's really changed.

People ask about solo but I don't see what the big deal is. I mean, such a small percentage of your hours have to be solo flight... why not just knock those out at the end? What's the advantage of saying you flew by yourself after so many hours? One thing I've encountered with the general public is that they feel like once you solo, you're pretty much done. Not so. There's a lot more instructor time that has to happen. So even though the competitive side of me is disappointed that I won't be flying solo any time soon, the logical side of me realizes that your "hours to solo" is just a number. No reason to get to it first. It'd be like saying you finished the mashed potatoes for thanksgiving dinner by 11am... that's a great checkmark, but the whole meal is what matters, the fact that you focused on potatoes first doesn't say much.

We did practice emergency procedures today so at least i got to leave the pattern for something. We just went through the motions of what to do if the engine quits or there's a fire. He said I did a good job picking out a field to land in and aiming for it... we don't actually land in the field of course, but I can prove that I can line up with engine power as low as possible. I like brown fields. I think green ones might be corn and that sounds messy.

The nice thing about Kansas is that there are LOTS of fields... no shortages of places for emergency landings, that's for sure. And the fields make other things easier too. It's like learning to fly on a giant sheet of quad rule paper. You want to turn east, just turn that direction and when you're lined up with the roads you're golden. You can see what a mile is, and a half mile.

I talked to a girl who learned to fly elsewhere and she was frustrated with Kansas because there are no landmarks to aim towards... just land. I guess it depends where you come from.

My first week off, I was chillin' out reading my twitter pages and noticed someone in Wichita searching for a home for some guinea pigs. I sent the pictures to Marc, who I thought would surely say "no bad idea we already have two" but he called me instead and said, "I'm looking at a picture of two ADORABLE piggies!!!" and it was all downhill from there. Short story: we now have four guinea pigs, which officially makes us herders. They're all male... the family was looking for a home for a female also but we said no way. The last thing I need is to risk auto-multiplying guinea pigs when, just living our normal lives, we go from zero to four in a matter of months.

Introducing males has been exciting. The new piggies came with their own cage, which spent a week in another room. Then we moved the cages together, and started letting them have floor time all in a group so they could "get to know" each other... this involves a lot of butt sniffing and face humping. You know, guy stuff. But these days they're getting along nicely. Yesterday's floor time was basically uneventful... playful chasing mixed with lounging and sharing food. I'm happy. So we'll be keeping these guys for sure. Next week they'll be moved into the big cage with Pinky and The Brain.

They came to us as Whiskers and Cuddles but I'm afraid we have to rename them. Nothing against the names, it's just that I had a parakeet named Cupcake once who came to a very unfortunate end at the hands of another parakeet, so I'm for tough names. One of the piggies, the lighter brown one, is a BIG PIGGY. You can't see it in photos but when you pick him up, you're like, "damn." So we're naming him Jabba the Hut. The lighter brown one we're calling Billy Dee, after Billy Dee Williams who played Lando Calrissian in star wars. Yes, the original owners are probably head-shaking right now, they'll always be whiskers and cuddles to them, and that's okay.

Anyway, mom and dad haven't seen pictures of the new grandpigs yet so I've got pictures!

From the left we have Billy Dee's butt, then Jabba, Brain, and Pinky:


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I came to a conclusion this week when we were walking around the country club plaza in KC. I needed to use the restroom, so I popped into the starbucks on the corner and used theirs. There's also a panera bread that surely would have been okay with that, and the Halls department store, and other places.

I decided that I like cities that are big enough to have cool stuff to walk around and see, but when they get so big that they discourage you from going to the bathroom... there's my limit. It just means things have gotten too big. It means the citizens don't appreciate tourists which is crap, because we're there putting money into their economy. It means that a restroom open to the public would be so overused and nasty that they've decided not to bother with it. It means that, as a city, they no longer care about taking care about people's basic physical needs.

In Wichita stores are happy to let you come in and use the restroom, hey, you're IN THE STORE, you get love for that. In Kansas City store clerks will at least point you around the corner to the closest eating establishment. In Austin I had to buy a coffee at a place to use one, once I did I knew the code for that place but I think it's on the line. Las Vegas loves tourists so of course there are gobs of restrooms. Washington DC doesn't have the cleanest, but they're there. Lawrence, KS you just have to pretend like you know where you're going and they tend to not bother you. New York City is useless. I think they expect you to squat behind a bush in Central park, even the restaurants have big nasty NO PUBLIC BATHROOM signs.

There's a line between a cool city with enough stuff to keep your attention, and someplace that's just gotten too big for it's own good. I think the line is somewhere between 600,000-700,000 people, based on my new test, but obviously it takes some personal investigation.

I have lots to update from last weekend, so let's start with Friday. Marc and I were trekking up to Kansas City to join our friends for a camping trip. A few days before we left, a good friend of mine on facebook who works with a small dog rescue in KC asked if we could take an extra passenger. To put it simply, a dog in Wichita was homeless, living with a foster family, and a human in Kansas City wanted a dog, and they were a match. The rescue and been trying to find a way to get the dog up to KC for several weeks and apparently we were just the ride they needed.

I like dogs, and given the fact that we've adopted FOUR guinea pigs this year obviously we support adoption, and so we said no problem.

And so, enter Mikki: a fluffy chihuahua with very little practical use. Mikki will not be catching Frisbees in mid-air, rescuing you from the mountains, or scaring away criminals any time soon. But the owner in KC loved chihuahuas and if she wants something that will look silly at her, she's found her match. There's something for everybody. This is NOT the type of dog Marc and I will call our own, but we enjoyed the three hours with the little guy.

Here's the "I heard someone would adopt me" shot:

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I would like to thank LL Dog Rescue in Kansas City for giving me something cute to blog about. I was surprised to learn that all these small dogs need homes... I thought they were very much in demand. But my friend who volunteers says that the demand is exactly what does it. Breeders think they should crank out chihuahuas, pugs, and king charles spaniels like it's nobody's business. Lots of people want them, because they're cute. But the reality is that not everyone can take care of an animal once they buy it, and some don't even get bought at all.

So adopt adopt adopt, and definitely have your pets spayed and neutered. Mikki found a home thanks to coordination, volunteers, and a happy future human in Kansas City who was willing to adopt. Every dog deserves this kind of story.

Is it wrong to spend too much time reading people's one-line shots at a vulnerable man? Probably. But I can't help it, and there are just too many good ones to re-tweet, I have to start a collection of the gold. Mark Sanford messed up, is in a bad spot, all that... but it wouldn't be so bad if he wasn't so pro "family values" that he felt the need to define marriage for the rest of the world. When we let these guys define marriage, it goes downhill... as we've seen today! So what can we do? Make fun of him. Here are my favorites:

@PeaceNerd Do Republicans oppose gay marriage because of the gay part, or the monogamy part?

@JeffParsonsDC Don't cry for me Appalachia, the truth is... I never hiked you.

@JasenComstock Sanford showed Miss Argentina his Resurgent Republican Pole.

@amansbach oh, mark sanford, what will you possibly do next to help improve south carolina's image as the best state ever?

@DougBenson Anybody up for some naked hiking in Argentina?

@sluggahjells Sanford didn't want stimulus, ran away from stimulus, to go to Argentina, to GET STIMULUS???

@Keithj Thanks a lot Gov Sanford. Now there is no way my wife will ever let me hike the AT.

@apetite Gov. Sanford from South Carolina: "marriage should only be between a man, a woman, and another woman from Argentina."

@martybeckerman D.C. Metro employees are relieved -- Gov. Sanford had the worst train wreck of the week

@TimotheosOK i wonder how many repubs were just happy that Sanford cheated with a woman...

@thinkhammer Sanford scandal is just one more example of a South Carolina job going to a foreigner.

yesterday I worked at the habitat for humanity site. it was exciting, I learned how to mud and sand and mud and sand some more. my hands hurt today. my feet and legs and hips hurt too. I think construction is a more rewarding workout than jogging... I might take it up instead. one of my fb friends said she might join me thursday morning which could be nice. I think we'll be moving on to exterior painting, so I'll have to sunscreen up like a crazy person, but it'll work out.

In the evening I went out a tour of the new downtown arena with SWE. a few years ago we had this big election to raise sales tax and buy an arena... I voted no. Which reminds me... I have a personal rule now on elections where I'm not totally sure which way to vote, and that's to vote for the side that looks like it has less funding. the arena was one of those... it was big commerce and organizations taking out billboards and radio ads vs. homemade signs saying we needed to spend money on other important things. but it passed, so we mowed down some neat old buildings south of douglas to build the Intrust Bank Arena.

Construction-wise it's impressive and I liked the tour. They didn't allow photos (photos do exist... here), but we got to walk all around places we'll never see again. Dressing rooms hot pink walls, huge locker rooms for sports events, the kitchen with gigantic freezers. The entryway has giant concrete columns and the limestone is from nearby Kansas towns. There's a bar & grill area at one end on the second level where you're suddenly in a world of brick archways, it feels cozy. We went into the private club-level rooms, and up onto the catwalk to go across the top of the arena. Yes, I'm hyper afraid of heights but it was a solid floor, not the grid kind you can see through, so that makes a world of difference. While we were there, the sounds of seats being bolted in was constant. Hundreds of rows. Seats are about 60% in I'd say, and guys are just working their way around. I bet it feels endless.

It's hard to tell if these construction guys are sick of giving tours or not. They said they give quite a few. I sure got jumped on when I started asking questions about the no photo policy... I was just curious if they were trying to keep stuff about the arena secret, or if photos slow down a tour. It seems we'll never know. I've been a tour guide at my work before. It's interesting... when you're showing off places that you don't personally go every day, it's fun. When you get streams of people coming in interrupting you... it varies. I'm always proud of what I do but sometimes it's hard to make people understand. The worst is bored high school kids, you want to get them really interested in engineering and tell them your job is cool but they're so jaded and hard to get through to. The big thing I was usually asked to show people was test benches, because we have setups for our avionics that replicate the cockpit setup and anybody can stand there and push buttons and have fun... high school kids are not as impressed as they should be.

Don't ask me why I'm awake before 6, by the way. It just happened. I'm trying to go back to sleep. I threw the guinea pigs an empty toilet paper roll, watched them chew on it, and now I'm looking at two very zonked-out piggies. I should be like that right now. My schedule is never quite right.

due to the economic state of things, my entire company has decided to take a bit of a vacation for a few weeks, so I won't be working. I was a little freaked out about it; I like work, I like going to work, the paychecks come in handy, those details. But I think I'll survive. I've made lots of little goals and resolutions to take care of during this time, and I get to reflect and relax a bit. Still taking flying lessons... in fact with more time to study, I should be able to get pretty far here.

Yesterday I woke up and laid in bed a while unsure of what to get up for, then felt guilty about laying in bed. I ate half a granola bar and a glass of water and went for a jog. This was around 9:30 and it was HOT... into the 90s already. I went three miles but didn't run it all by any stretch of the imagination. I ran maybe the first 3/4 mile, then had to alternate blocks walking and jogging and sometimes sitting down and stretching. But at least I did something.

I did a load of laundry and watched trash VH1 reality shows on TV... when marc's around he's totally against all that stuff.

I sent marc a picture of some guinea pigs up for adoption on twitter, thinking for sure he'd tell me that we don't need any more guinea pigs. but he was all about it. more on that later.

I went to the flying club to try some flight simulator work. I don't think it helped. It's really hard to fly a pattern on the simulator... we've got x-plane installed, and I had trouble getting the views set up right. In an airplane it's just so easy to turn your head and see that you're 45° in front of the touchdown point flying downwind... seems impossible in x-plane, I'd just have to pause, switch to outside view, pan around, that mess. I'll ask someone about it later maybe. Anyway I can't land the airplane in real life OR the simulator, so at least they match.

Grocery shopping, got stuff to make tuna casserole, which we didn't end up making because when marc got home he really wanted to go look at guinea pigs. so we did. and we brought them home. yes, we have four adopted male guinea pigs now, i'm not sure if this is a good idea or not but we'll see. they're cute little boys who don't mind being picked up and cuddled so that's nice. we've got room for them. I'm just worried about doubling the food, which in turn means doubling the poop. plus, as the "cats for engineers" guys say, when you've got two you've got pets. more than that, you're that crazy person with all the animals. we officially have a "herd" which people in the guinea pig community here says is darn entertaining.

Anyway it'll be a week or two before we can introduce these guys to pinky & the brain, at which time we'll have a better idea of whether we can keep them. so no photos yet. remember when we adopted the first time, we called them "gp1" and "gp2" for a few weeks... it's like that.

That was all a big deal, so it was getting late to cook. we went out for sushi.

So! One day down. Have not caught up on volunteer website goals, have adopted animals. well, goals change. stay tuned.

On Thursday's flight we landed on a runway that I hadn't used much... the one further away from general aviation parking at the Wichita airport, 19R. No huge deal, it was just the one we were cleared to land at. Unfortunately when we taxied off I had no freaking clue how to get back home. You get ground clearance when you taxi off... I had clearance for taxiways charlie, bravo and alpha and was on charlie but who's to say what combination of those would be the right ones to take, and where. Anyway I somehow got to bravo but stopped, admitting I had no idea where to turn. I froze.

instructor s Okay now what's something we can do if we're not sure what way to go?

I fumbled around on the displays to bring up a chart of the airport, which looked like this:


inst What's something else we could do?

I zoomed in further on the display.

inst Besides using the map... what could we do?

I stared at him. Then suddenly over my headset I hear ground control, "seven tango kilo you're going to need to turn left on bravo, then left on alpha to your hangar." Hey, magic! I turned left and went along our way.

And of course I looked at instructor s and said, "See, I got it! You just stop and look lost until ground control notices and feels sorry for you."

Apparently you can also request a "progressive taxi" which means they give you more detailed instructions about how to get around, but I'd never heard of this in my life. or maybe I did, it was just lost in the craziness of everything. Sigh. a little education at every step.

I ranted a while back about how annoying facebook is and behold, I was lead to something that makes it slightly less annoying. No, it won't keep your friends from replacing their profile pics with cats and babies. But it does do something quite useful: block all quizzes and applications from your news feed. It's the latest rage: facebook purity.

http://steeev.freehostia.com/wp/2009/03/19/facebook_purity_cleans_up_the_facebook_homepage/

It needs mozilla with some plug-ins to work, but once installed it's perfection. I've been running with it for several days and it's blocked dozens of things... I know, because there's a bit of text in the upper-right corner that says "X applications blocked (show)" and I can click to turn it off. But I don't. Yay.

this entry will have the exciting answer to yesterday's trivia question about airplanes flying backwards.

Is it possible for an airplane to fly backwards? By that I mean, let's say you're standing outside your house, look up at the sky, and there's an airplane that looks like it's passing over you tail first.
Yes, quite possible... mostly because the airplane is moving through the air, but you are standing on the ground. But let's continue...

If it's even possible, what does it mean?
It means the plane is going against one hell of a headwind. There's so much drag it's being pushed backwards, but wind over the wings also means you've still got plenty of lift. The magic word here is groundspeed... you have a gage that tells you what your airspeed is, and it's always going to be at least 60 knots or so in a little airplane. Your groundspeed is that, plus whatever the wind is doing. So if the wind is 60 knots against you (negative), you're just going to hover like a helicopter. 70 knots, and you're going backwards... relative to the ground. Relative to the wind you're pushing right through it like always.

What types of airplanes could do this?
In theory, any airplane could do this, but it's more likely in a small plane or glider with a low stall speed (meaning that they're capable of staying up even while flying slower). A little single engine can fly quite nicely at 55 knots or so... and it's not uncommon for winds at altitude to get to that. A Boeing that stalls at twice that speed is probably less likely to find winds fast enough. Winds do get faster at higher altitudes, but that almost cancels out my question because it's tough to notice what things are doing 39,000 feet above your house.

How long could an airplane sustain this configuration?
Cookie goes to metawidget for "4) as long as the wind, their fuel and their patience last". Since there's just as much air going over the wings, the airplane is just as stable as it always is. When you think about it, the plane really has no way of knowing the difference between lift from weather-related wind and lift from "we're moving through the air" wind.

What do you think's going through the pilot's mind?
crisco747 guessed that I was thinking "oh, shit..." but since I'm always thinking that it's not really a fair answer, I'm not giving him a cookie. Instead I'll give it to rynhollis who cheated and ran off experience, but yeah, we basically think it's a cool fun trick. Until we try to get somewhere, that is... then we're thinking, "I wish I had a more powerful airplane."

Technically an airplane can't fly backwards because you can't reverse the direction of the propeller. A propeller, just so you know, is like 2 or more little wings... all airfoils, and when the prop spins air moves across each blade and each blade gets lift, but since they're tilted forward instead of upward like a wing, you're pulled forward. If you could reverse the propeller I think the whole thing would just fall out of the sky because the airplane body just isn't designed to go that way... for one thing, the body itself would be blocking air to the propeller. But I'm open to other interpretations of this.

Anyway to make a short story long (and take up two lj entries) I got to do this the other day practicing slow flight in a 55 knot headwind. The "you can go this many miles on your remaining fuel" display sort of went nuts, because it wasy saying we couldn't go ANYWHERE which was true. Other than that, everything was normal, the plane flew just fine, my mental state wasn't any more heightened than it normally is. My instructor was more excited about it than I was because frankly everything right now is a big deal to me, so he has to be very specific about which things are also cool to non-new pilots.

If I were to give out cookies to everyone who answered some or all my questions correctly just about everyone would get one. There are of course other types of airplanes that are meant to fly backwards, this is just the only experience I've had. So... points.

And now for a bit of physics trivia related to my last flight...

Is it possible for an airplane to fly backwards? By that I mean, let's say you're standing outside your house, look up at the sky, and there's an airplane that looks like it's passing over you tail first.

If it's even possible, what does it mean?

What types of airplanes could do this?

How long could an airplane sustain this configuration?

What do you think's going through the pilot's mind?

Winner gets a virtual high-five, and possibly a cookie. If you are an actual pilot you must wait 12 hours before answering.

Airplane update: I'm at 16 hours and have yet to do an unassisted landing. I'm close though. It's funny to talk about it with non-pilots, because they're usually like, "Yeah, I bet landings are a tough part of flying." Really they're not a tough part of flying... they are flying. Saying that landings are tough hurdle in flight training is like saying that choosing what ingredients to put in a soup is a tough part of making soup, or that sewing fabric together is a tough part of making clothes.

When you're in the air you're in a lot of air, so we go up there and practice things that will make me able to land. Everything I've done so far applies... we practice handling the airplane in slow flight because on landing, it's slow. We practice finding airspeeds and altitudes because that's what has to be balanced. You land an airplane by getting it into a state where the wings aren't lifting it up anymore... but if it's 10 feet above the ground when this happens, things will be uncomfortable. Same for if it's at the wrong angle or a the wrong place in the runway. So everything is timing and tradeoffs and adjustments and feeling.

There's not much to takeoffs because the airplane is going from a flat controlled place to the air, where there's lots of room. It's like jumping off a cliff... the jump is no big deal. You can jump off any cliff in the world. There's always going to be air there, and you'll always find your place in it. Maybe the Wright brothers had trouble taking off, but ever since then we've been pretty good at making shapes that fly, so it takes a student 2-3 takeoffs to feel okay about it. I was taking off by myself at lesson 3... it didn't look straight and pretty but we were airborne.

In head-case news, I've been feeling pretty good and relaxed lately but last night was funny, because when we got the airplane back to its home there was a crowd of people pushing planes inside the hangar because of the storm coming in, and this guy looks at me walking up and says, "ARE YOU OKAY?" Guess I'm not as chill as I thought! Well, we'd been landing and taking off for an hour and a half, it was tense, requires a lot of focused, maybe I just looked focused still? Nah, probably look freaked out. Good thing I still have like a million hours to go until I get done and can take passengers, I don't think people like when their pilot looks scared.

This weekend we finally pulled all the pieces of the guinea pig dwelling together. We stopped using just the petstore cage a while ago... just a word of advice, if you ever get guinea pigs, don't buy a cage from the petstore. They're both expensive and useless. All you need is some grid shelving, plastic, and old towels (or, if you're fancy like us, fleece). It's $20 worth of stuff and your piggies will have lots of room to run around and be happy and adorable. Here's our setup:



We use the bottom of our old petstore cage for food and bedding, because they'll tend to use it like a litter box which makes cleanup nice. We shake the hair and poop out of the fleece every few days, and change the bedding once a week or so, it's easy.

And just for fun, because I haven't posted pigtures here in a while, here's some adorableness for you:
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I've ranted before about facebook, because it's sort of a depository of uninteresting people, right? I still think that. On lj here, you have to have something to say otherwise no one wants to be your friend. On twitter, you have to have cool connections and nifty links. On facebook, you need to be able to say you attended high school. Lofty.

I've done a pretty good job sticking with my policy... if I don't have personal real-life outside-of-work interactions with someone during a given 12-month cycle, I won't accept his/her friend request. People I haven't talked to since high school do not make the cut. Friends of friends of friends do not make the cut. And I feel good about this, because every time I've made an exception it's totally backfired, I end up with someone on the list who bores me out of their mind or rapid-fires status updates all day so I can't read anything. And yes I know I can mute people and group people now, but why? When unfriending is so much easier?

Oh, I also made a vow that I will NEVER be one of those people who trades out the profile picture of me on facebook for a picture of a baby. Any baby. I don't care if (down the road) it's my baby that I gave birth to on a highway, saved from a burning building, coached to be the smartest baby in the universe and proved to be the most attractive baby ever. I might sound like a crazy parent hater but it's annoying when a high school friend requests to link up, and I can't tell who the hell they are because there's an infant where they should have a profile pic. And when people I'm already friends with do it, it makes me think of The Wives... you remember, the wives of coworkers I used to rant about because they stopped using the pronoun "I" when they got married? "How are you?" "Oh, we've been okay, but Brad had the flu so the kids had to go to grandma's..." I think self is important, even if you're a spouse/parent. Hell, especially if you're a spouse/parent.

I know it's not JUST me feeling this way, there's an entire blog at http://stfuparents.tumblr.com/ dedicated to making fun of parents who go crazy with their facebook status updates and annoy everybody. Posting 50 pictures of one sonogram, talking about your kid's poop, complaining that there's a bird chirping while your baby is trying to sleep, that sort of thing.

I think if anything has made facebook tolerable for me lately, it's Twitter. I used Twitter to meet cool people in the community who aren't boring, we party together and tweetup because that's what we do, then we're facebook friends, then my friend newsfeed is amusing and diverse. Trust me, there are plenty of parents on twitter! They're just smarter sounding.

We're doing landings these days, which is fun and challenging and of course a mess, I don't think I've done one unassisted yet but tonight was our first night of a full lesson of solid landings so I'll deal.

Runways are named after their direction (0-360 degrees, with 0 being north, 90 east, etc) and if there are two in the same direction, they're just called left and right. Wichita has two runways at 10 degrees (so barely east of north). Runways are always put at tens... you'll never find one at 117°, so we always say tens... if it's going straight west (270), you'd say 27 (two seven). And 10 is just one.

So tonight we were doing all our landings at my happy hometown airport on "runway one right".

Which means I'm cursed because I can't say "runway one right" quickly and elegantly on the radios every time I fly the pattern, request a landing or repeat back a clearance, it's impossible to say once, it comes out sounding like "won way won white" or just a blathering of nondescript syllables. so yeah... that's my hometown airport.

Of course I have other goals for landings... I miss the centerline consistently, can't hold airspeeds, still have that same altitude problem. but if they just would have made the runway at 20° right, you know? throw me a bone?