Tuesday, October 30, 2007

5.6

We were out celebrating Joahnna's brother's birthday at TGI Friday's when the earthquake hit. The quake itself was somewhat anticlimatic -- the building started to shudder, and just about the time people were wondering what was going on, we got one big shake. Everyone stopped and looked around for ten seconds or so, and then when it was evident the action was over, people just started going about their business again.

When I got to my car I had a text message from Jon saying "You still OK?" I thought back to my last conversation with Jon (lunch this monday), where I wasn't feeling all that well, and texted back "Not sick yet."

I didn't even think about the earthquake. It's California after all, and quakes are a part of life. But when I stopped at the grocery store on the way home, everyone was buzzing about how scary it was, and lots of products had been knocked off the shelves; about then I figured out that Jon was probably asking about quake effects and not my general health.

According to the USGS the epicenter was just a few miles east of my house, but I didn't see any effects when I returned home other than the garage looking slightly more disheveled than usual.

Monday, October 29, 2007

Flying in a Circle

Joahnna and I tried to fly to Paso Robles yesterday, but it turned out to be yet another aborted attempt. Our first try was a few weeks ago, when we fired up a Piper Archer and started taxiing to run-up, but aborted the flight because the HSI wasn't working properly. There weren't any other planes available, so we aborted the flight.

Yesterday I saw one of the planes was open from 8am to noon (tough to get a plane for a whole day on short/medium notice), so I figured I'd try it again. It was somewhat iffy, as the weather was forecast to be fog at 9am, clearing up by 10am. I figured if we arrived at around 9:30 we'd have a reasonable chance at landing.

Weather out of Reid-Hillview was clear, but as we got to King city, the ground was covered by a very pretty (but un-landable) blanket of clouds. Paso Robles was still reporting fog, so I knew it didn't get any better, so we tried diverting over to Harris Ranch. When we got there, we found the edge of another cloud deck just over Harris, so I turned back north and headed back to the airport.

I wasn't terribly disappointed -- the whole idea was to get out of the house, not really to get somewhere in particular. But it would be nice if I wasn't staring at the clock for the flight to make sure I got the plane back in time.