Day 36 - Campbell's Soup on Vinyl Siding

"Lloyd, you're a strange man." Ryan stood in the doorway, speaking through giggles, as he watched me fling water onto the side of the mansion from a 20-ounce bottle. I had made a pot of Campbell's Chunky Soup for supper, and decided that it wasn't quite as good as I remembered. Thus, when all the "chunks" were appropriately consumed, I opened the front door (which we do not use) and gave the pot's contents a toss, aiming for the yard. Somehow I managed to miss the ground altogether, and hit the wall. And the porch. And the hand rail. And the window. And the screen. Apparently, the meager few ounces of soup juice left in the pot had encountered relative wind in their short flight out of the pot, expanded, and formed gallons of orange-ish brown, pot roast-flavored splatter that now decorated the side of our aviator's paradise. Ryan stood and chuckled as I attempted to irrigate the goo from the vinyl siding, and said the only thing one could appropriately say at that point. "Let's go to the mall."

It was an appropriately humorous end to the day. I laughed a lot today, more than I have in a while. As is illustrated by the previous post I was very down on myself this morning. I'm still not near 100%, but fortunately today was better. After concluding this morning's blog post, I walked "downstairs" to the pilot's lounge and poured my traditional morning coffee. I swirled it around in my favorite mug, the blue Erlanger LifeForce one, and just sorta stared into it. I looked at the wings printed on the side of the mug, and then back into the black liquid. I had "zoned out." I stood completely focused on the coffee, but more so, the battle going on in my mind. I asked myself over and over again, one single question. What in the... am I going to do?

And then the door opened.

The skies parted. The light shone down, and the angels sang. It was the big dog. The Boss. The Captain. The man. Joey. He strolled in the lounge/office/atrium/whatever and smiled at me. "Mornin' Joe!"
"Good morning, sir," came my dry, reserved response.
"How'd it go yesterday?"
"Well, sir, sparing any commentary, I'll just say that I passed." It was the best I could come up with.
"That's great! That's really great. Congratulations."
"Thank you, sir." I took a sip from my coffee cup and watched him walk away to his office. He is THE man. I really look up to him, and he is my constant reminder of what I want to be. His mere presence, and the admiration that I feel within said presence, had just answered my question. Whether or not I can actually do it is still up in the air, but I do at least know what the answer is. Ok, moron. If you want to be like him, you are going to have to man up.

(FAST FORWARD: 5,500 feet over Northern Alabama)

My eyes scanned back and forth between the instruments in front of me. I had a view limiting device strapped to my forehead, which restricted my vision to just the control panel. I couldn't see out of the windows or windshield at all, and was flying solely on reference to the instruments. Right now they showed a standard rate, left turn to the north.
"Lloyd, you can fly the airplane. I've seen you do it. Look, you're doing beautifully right now. Your problem is right here." I felt his finger tap on the right ear-cup of my headset. "Your brain. You expect too much of yourself. You beat yourself up for no reason. Or you get so frustrated that you fly worse because your expectations are too high. It's good that you want to improve, but you have to be realistic."
He was right. The problem is not the airplane, it's me. I'm not a genius, or an extraordinarily talented pilot, but there are people that are dumber and worse than me doing this. It can be done, it's done everyday. So theoretically I can do it too. Theoretically. The key is overcoming my own demons. Today helped. It was my first instrument-only training flight, and despite the awful, treacherous wind and turbulence, I was having a little fun again. I felt, for the first time in a long time, that I was making progress and somewhat flying the airplane.
I watched the notches on the HSI pass underneath the needle as I approached my heading of 015, and smoothly rolled out level. 5,500 feet, heading 015.
"Beautiful, Lloyd. Beautiful."

At risk of being overly dramatic, it's a struggle each and every day here. I have my up days and my down days. Unfortunately, the downs are WAAAAY down, so I'm trying to deal with that. The environment is great; I couldn't ask for anything better. My struggle is mainly internal/emotional; my own battle with a specific lack of self-confidence. I have no idea when I developed this issue. Clay has a very plausible theory, but we'll not go into that. I also forget that the people I want most to be like have been doing this for anywhere from 100-200% the length of my entire life, and I can't expect to be that good at this stage. Like I said, it's all in my head. It's a constant rollercoaster, and tommorow may be another down. It's extremely difficult, but I'm fighting.





I'm trying, Ringo. I'm trying real hard... to be the shepherd.





Joey