Flying lots before the mailman cometh - July 2

I am going to get in lots of flying this month, before the VISA bill comes and my wife finds out exactly what the cash burn rate is. She has a general idea of the costs, but it's when the bills all total up that one goes gulp.

Anyhow, July second was another day and another flight. We had a real stiff crosswind, which I am not ready to handle, but when the weather goddess gives you wind you use it for other lessons.

It was a day to learn to "wear" the airplane. We did slips, turns and some basic manoevers, and then it was time for illusions caused by wind, aka overcoming drift. We cruised at 1000 AGL, got the speed down (so the wind had more effect on us), and flew squares and circles.

Juliette is a good instructor - with her coaching, sometime during this hour+ of meandering along above the trees and roads and silos something internalized, and I stopped flying the plane according to inputs and directions and thinking and cause/effect, and got it working so that I stopped thinking about what I needed to do to get a particular result, and just did it and it happened.

It's like the difference between a comic (imagine Robin Williams) doing a dialog on a drunk trying to will his feet to walk - OK, first we transfer our weight to the left leg, whoa, don't overbalance, now pick the right foot off ground aaack lean forward a bit, OK, good we're going forward, wow, get that right foot out there and under me, get it on the ground, good, yes, stiffen the muscles, ready for the weight, OK, weight is coming over, whoops, I'm stuck halfway... push with the left toes, good, .... you get the idea. That's what it was like when I was trying to do ground tracks at the start. Too much thinking.

At the end, it was like wearing the airplane. The wind flattened me out into an oval sometimes, but towards the end there was little of the conscious processing.

Back to CYRP, and with all the crosswind I had the instructor demonstrate using the slips on the landing. What the heck, if I'm paying the gas, we'll use every minute of flight time for some useful purpose.

After landing I didn't do anything on the Post-Landing checklist - totally forgot. There are only 5 things on it, time to memorize it - and the others.