PreMDpilot

So there has been a lot of hullabaloo about the leaking of the story about how the Bush Administration has been secretly tracking terrorist funds through a large international financial clearinghouse. There seems to be a concerted strategy by the administration to blame the newspapers who leaked the story and call them traitors. This argument is very scary to me because it displays an ignorance of the principles this country was founded on. Bush is very good at displays of ignorance, but this is above and beyond.

The First Amendment guarantees the right of free press and the right to peacably assemble and protest. These may just be words, but the principle that they are built upon is a mistrust of the government. Our entire system of governance is designed around no one person or group of people gaining too much power over the people of this country. We have checks and balances to ensure that the president doesn't become the dictator, or the congress doesn't become the Communist Assembly. We begrudgingly grant our politicians power because we realize that we need certain services like national defense, police, social programs, and law. We place them in positions of power and task the press to watch them for us, because power corrupts and ultimate power corrupts absolutely (just look at the current Republican Party). Until the truth of this fundamental axiom is somehow disproven the press watch our politicians and make sure they don't abuse their power like Nixon did. Or that they don't pass secretive laws without our being aware of them.

This administration is attacking the press not because they are really upset about this particular case, they are launching a pre-emptive strike in the hopes that the press will be a little more timid the next time they find something like this. But the press won't, and they will find more skeletons like this. I shudder to think about all the shadowy secrets this administration is hiding behind their thin veneer of Conservatism. I am confident that as more and more programs are discovered, this administration will placed on par or maybe even surpass the Nixon administration in terms of corruption, incompetence and disgrace. I was right about the Iraq war and I'm confident that I'm right about this as well.

Going on hour nine of my ten hour graveyard shift. My eyes are a little blurry and my coworkers are starting to fall asleep next to me. I'm struggling to stay awake so I can watch her fall off her chair. I am going to be working the night shift for the next month and it should be very interesting. It will also give me a good idea about what a residency will actually be like. So far, it's not too bad. But, I could sure use some sleep.

So instead of working on my med school application, or just getting some sleep, I decided to go out and play campus golf with my roomates. Now for those of you who are not familiar with the venerable sport of campus golf, it's a surprisingly simple game where you take a golf club and a tennis ball and whack it at objects around campus. So, after losing a couple tennis balls, hitting a Jaguar, almost falling into some disgusting sewage water, a particularly nasty ice fight and a lot of swear words, we returned to the house thoroughly amused. We're gonna get some glow in the dark balls next time.

My best friend from high school and I decided to go up and do some touch and goes last night to get out landings a little better and get me used to the airspace that I'm going to be flying into. My friend is a very accomplished pilot who is doing some temporary instructing while he looks to get on with a regional carrier. He has about 1000 hours now and is very good on the controls. It was a beautiful night with clear skiers and unlimited visibility and after a lightless preflight, we strapped in to practice the touch and goes.

It is very interesting being in a Cessna and taxiing around a large airport. You are absolutely engulfed by the runways and taxiways and everything seems to take forever because the distances are so large. We are cleared to taxi to the active runway and as we taxi we are monitoring the ground and tower frequencies. We hear some weird calls from vehicles on the surface using the codename "crash." As in, "Crash 1, holding short of the active." We thought maybe they were maintenance guys that were just kinda hanging out. There was also a large airliner MD-80 out in the distance coming in for landing as we were staring our runup. We finish our runup and then the MD-80 switches to the tower frequency. They airliner had declared an emergency stating that there was smoke in the cockpit. The "crash" cars were actually emergency vehicles that were preparing to help the ailing aircraft. We watched from the end of the runway as the MD-80 landed smoothly, streaming a trail of ash and smoke. The firetrucks quickly encircled the aircraft and made sure everything was ok, and the the airplane taxied off the runway. We were cleared for takeoff, and off we went to practice the touch and goes. It was a very surreal experience actually.

The landings went well. My friend's were much better than mine, but that's to be expected. Mine will get better with more practice. Another cool thing that happened last night was the flight of three Chinook helicopters that landed at the runway as we were circling in pattern. The behemoths flew in in formation and landed precisely. Those machines are absolutely amazing to me. It was pretty cool to watch.

On the premedical front. My application is coming together and all this recent flying has actually made my desire to go to medical school stronger. I love to fly, but it's the same love I have for my other hobbies, but it's not the thing I'm meant to make a career out of. So I need to get my app together and then it's off to the races.

I had a very interesting moment the other night. I decided at about 9:30pm that I wanted to go for a run up a mountain that is near my house. I normally really enjoy night trail running as I can enter my own little world as I listen to music and concentrate on each step. So I was in the zone most of the way up the mountain and when I reached the top, I was completely out of breath and also completely alone. I guess people don't really climb mountains on Wednesday nights at about 10pm. The view from the top is really nice. The city that I live in was laid out below me and I could see for hundreds of miles. I sat down and regained my breath and then put on my favorite song, "Walking in Memphis." I don't know why I love this song, or what possesed me in that moment, but as I sat up there on the mountain I decided to start singing. I belted out the lyrics and felt really free and independent. I bet no one has ever sang that particular song, at night, from the top of that mountain. It's nice to be alone sometimes.

So we were flying into our local airport that is co-located with a glider operation. The strip is great for small airplanes, just long enough to be safe, but not too long that you feel swamped by the runway. There is a small glider strip that is parallel to the runway that towplanes and gliders use frequently. It's a great little setup...until you try to have simultaneous parallel runway operations.

We were on downwind, abeam the numbers, when I hear a call from the local tow-pilot that she is going to overflying the field to land on the glider strip. Now, since they are flying this all the time, they don't generally do a full pattern with downwind, base, and final. They just kinda overfly the field and do a tight 60 degree, descending turn and level out on final to land. This is great if it works for them, and I have no problem whatsoever unless it interferes with operations on the real runway. The pilot of the towplane announced that she was going to try and "sneak" in ahead of us to land. We were just turning base and answered her with the base call and would let her figure it out. I was concentrating on making the final turn and when we rolled out on runway heading, she was doing her descending spiral turn to try and get down to the parallel runway. This was a ridiculous situation as she was basically trying to commence parallel operations on runways that are separated by 20 feet, she wasn't even flying a proper pattern and she was basically cutting me off on final. If an FAA check airman had been in my airplane, he first would've applauded my judgement at going around and avoiding the potentially deadly situation, and second would've marched across the field when we were on the ground, yanked the tow-pilot from the cockpit and yelled at her for being so damned stupid.

We received an apology from the pilot over the radio, but I think she felt bad that we had to go around more than she realized she had made a serious error in judgement by attempting that approach. This was confirmed when I called her and talked to her and her boss about the situation. They were both of the opinion that since they do these approaches all the time, that they are completely safe. The pilot was unwilling to admit that she made a mistake which is even scarier to me because it means that she is going to do it again. It was also frusterating because she was very patronizing to me by saying things like "Well, I didn't realize that was a training airplane," and, "I'll give you a little more room next time." She should be even more cautious within sight of training airplanes because of the possibility of an FAA inspector mentioned above. The moral of this story is to take criticism when it is due, accept responsibilty for your mistakes, and realize that just because a practice is common does not mean that it is safe and that sometimes you have to deviate from normal operations in order to maintain safety.

So I am back being a premed and a pilot again. Applications for medical school are coming due this summer and since I have decided to apply this year, I have been procrastinating on my application as much as possible. It's actually a fairly difficult process that involves a lot of time and thought. The more exciting part of my life is that I am also a pilot again. I originally obtained my private pilot's license when I was seventeen. I went off to college with the goal of having a great college experience, getting a good degree and then going and persuing my airline career. My flying fell off a little as I got into the swing of college, but I got right back into it and worked on my instrument rating while taking classes like organic chemistry and molecular biology. I obtained my instrument rating and my flying fell off again as I debated whether or not to persue my commercial. It has been almost two and a half years since I've been behind the controls of a small plane, and this last weekend was awesome.

I decided to get my private current again because I want to fly down to a nearby city to teach MCAT classes. So I went into the local FBO, met the 21 year old flight instructor, threw down my credit card and went flying. We went up and did slow flight, stalls, steep turns and some dutch rolls to wake my feet up again. Even though my flying was atrocious, It was a blast. It's dissapointing to see how far my skills have deteriorated in two years though. I remember when I was just done with my instrument training, I could hold a heading within 2 degrees and altitude within 50 ft no matter what happened to the airplane. I could think 10 minutes ahead and get all my procedures done with plenty of time and never have to think about radio calls and other assorted tasks. Now, I'm slow. All my procedures are still there, but my situational awareness is a little lacking and my decision making is slow. The BFR (Bi-annual Flight Review) is on Monday and I need to study my ass off, but I think I'll be able to handle it. The next question becomes, do I want to persue my commercial and then my flight instructor after this?