Flying Aerobatics

I've always wondered if I have an internalized death wish, which is why I like to regularly fly upside down and spin to the ground, but I've come to the conclusion that it's more because I'm a control freak and I like to be the one that kills myself if I'm going to die. Therefore, if I die because I couldn't get out of a spin, at least I know it was my own fault and not because of some drunk on the highway.

Today I went up and did some maneuvers. After some normal loops, imelmanns, cuban 8's and rolls etc.etc., I pulled up into a hammerhead. The hammerhead is a very mechanical maneuver where you pull the plane a vertical line up, straight line up, pivot around left or right-not turning-and then vertical line down before you pull back. I've done at least 200 of these, but this time I kind of lost concentration for a little bit because I was thinking about an interview case study problem at McKinsey Consulting instead of focusing. Before you could say 'let's kick it over,' I had gotten myself into a very-bad-situation. I lost too much airspeed going up, waited too long, and the plane started a tail slide down. A tail slide is an advanced maneuver which is fine in a 300hp extra, but not manufacture recommended AT ALL for the 180hp decathlon I was in. I didn't have enough energy to pivot or it might have stalled and spun inverted FLAT, and you aviation types know a flat spin is mostly to be avoided at all costs. And of course I couldn't let it continue tail sliding, so I came up with the not-too brilliant idea of shoving the stick forward. As I did it, I realized that everything in aerobatics is almost always counterintuitive for me. So if I wanted to do it it had to be the wrong thing. Immediately, I pulled it all the way back, as if I had intended to do the tail slide in an extra, and the plane arched over into a dive. phew.

I've just dusted off the cover of my manuals, and realized that I had read this before, about how to recover from tailslides in mid-performance planes, but i hadn't really thought about it too much. In any case, it was a beautiful recovery and I'm still alive.

I guess the point of this blog is a written reminder to myself that I need to 1) pay attention to what I'm doing, 2) leave my distractions and life behind when I climb into a cockpit 3) refresh my memory on standard recoveries. Sometimes I get into the plane and I'm half asleep, tired or even hung over, and I should never do that, especially when I'm doing maneuvers that stress the human body on a good day. So I'm going to be good from now on, just watch me!!

My First Marathon!

It seemed like such a GREAT idea in February, when I signed up for the San Francisco Marathon. After all, I've done half marathons before. What's another 13.1 miles to make it a full marathon? Hmmm. My "training" consisted of sporadic fast runs which lasted maybe an hour, eating way too much just before the actual day, (supposedly called carb-loading) and talking a lot about it, as if I'd already done it. I'd signed up with a marathon training group, but shamefully dropped out because I couldn't wake up on Saturdays to do their long runs, and the two times I did I felt like I was on acid after 2 miles.

The marathon had wave starts from 5.20am in the morning up till 6.30, and I started at around 6.15am. I had woken up at around 3am to eat and drink water, and so had only 5 hours of sleep or so. Poor Amber Tea had to wake up at 5.30am to drop me off: she deserves a medal of her own!!Anyway, the run started well enough. Perfect temperature. Crossing the GG Bridge was fun though we could hardly see that we were on it with the fog. After 13 miles, I was convinced that I was superwoman: I didn't feel tired, I'd done everything right, I was taking walk breaks like I was supposed to at the drink stops etc. Nothing could stop me! I felt vaguely contemptuous of all the people who had signed up for only the half-marathon, because, HAH, I was OBVIOUSLY SUPERIOR to them.

So all these thoughts started to disappear at around mile 15 or 16, and at mile 20, when my quadriceps and legs started cramping up big time, I started coaxing them with words like "oh my baby quads, you are so hot, you will totally not cramp up." That really didn't work, and I had to start slowing down significantly. Note to self: Quads prefer stretching to dirty talk. By mile 22, at about 3.5 hours, as I ran past 16th and Florida and realized I was 4 blocks from home, the only thing that kept me going was the realization that this pain was my own stupid fault, i.e: Wei-en you are really an idiot and need to be punished even more, like with shooting pains down your shins, and more cramps. And toe blisters. I was almost walking at this point. OK I'm lying I did walk quite a bit at this point.Mile 24 was an out of body experience, because I really wasn't running anymore. I had passed out but the body didn't realize it. The body even posed for pictures and tried to look as if she hadn't been walking for the past 2 miles.I finally reached the finish line and had enough of a kick to sprint past a couple of people, again for the cameras, this is a very important moment when you get to look good. People should remember this if they do a marathon: Always walk the mile before the finish and then you can speed past the other morons who didn't at the end and look good at the finish line. I managed to make it under 5 hours, an hour more than what I had planned for, but I was just happy I didn't need an iv like some did at the end. So that was it! Three days after, I still hurt, though the quads are doing much better with the dirty talk. I'm signing up again next year, is anyone interested in running it with me? Pictures to come!!!