A recap of my past month
I just noticed I have not updated my site since the last Toads gathering! Well, what can I say except that I have been busy and traveling. In the last month I have made two trips to Mexico. Unfortunately, I either had bad weather that kept me from scuba diving or there was a threat of bad weather and I did not take my gear with me and made other plans (as luck would have it, the weather turned out to be perfect for scuba diving on this last trip).
[About the picture: This was the view from my room in Cancun. According to the weathermen, it was supposed to be storming. We never saw a drop of rain on this weekend. I should have listened to the locals that said the weather would be nice!]
Despite my travels and schedule, I made sure to make time for our monthly Toad gathering at the Richmond Arms. Because of the weather, the turnout was not as big as last month but we still had a good turnout. I was even surprised to see familiar faces from the Houston BMW Car Club. Even more interesting was that all the faces were of women – it was girls’ night out.
Speaking of BMWs, my 02 is back from the shop – again. I was going to drive it to Toads but I did not get a chance to swing by my place to pick it up. Plus, after I got the car back from the shop I found the A/C compressor had locked up (I guess almost 18 months of no use may do that to an old car). I was not crazy about driving all over town without A/C in our intense heat. That and I had just gotten it detailed and I did not want the first drive to be in the rain!
The other thing I made sure to make time for was flying! This time I decided to go up with my favorite instructor. He’s been flying almost as long as I have been alive and I love to fly with him – he’s a great pilot and I always learn something. This time we were doing commercial maneuvers: in one instance he had me bank the plane 55 degrees and start a spiral decent. The trick here was to maintain 55 degrees and a defined speed (it was easy to over bank and to pick up too much speed) while maintaining the plane over a landmark. WOW! What fun. I was flying a Piper Arrow that I had not flown in a while (a lot more levers to pull and push) and that really added to my workload but it was so much fun. After I landed, I still wanted to fly some so I drove across town (from Hobby to West Houston) and jumped in a Cessna 172S and practiced landings. I did not go running on this morning but I still felt like I got a workout (especially considering the heat).
