take every chance you dare
I took the afternoon off today. It’s the first time that I can remember I’ve taken part of a day off to do nothing–in every other circumstance it’s been in service of some activity or other. Of course, today there were logistical reasons behind it, but it was a weird sensation nevertheless.
The wind was strong and the air was bumpy today, all the more so since I flew in the afternoon. It’s technically Spring break for the school, so I have the week off from my regular flight blocks, but my instructor called me a few days ago with an opening this afternoon for some extra practice, and I jumped on it. The flight was uneventful except for getting bumped around a lot in the cockpit. I flew solo down to Rowan County airport, practiced some landings and flew back. I did power-on stalls on the way there, a maneuver designed to simulate a stall during a full-power situation such as takeoff. The gusts made coordination of the airplane challenging during the maneuver. Unfortunately coordination is crucial quality during the stall, and a lack of it makes for some interesting situations, namely incipient spins. As I told my instructor during the debrief, I know in the back of my mind that the Cessna 172 is a perfectly well-behaved, benign airplane in all respects and is almost impossible to spin, but when I’m in a stall and the left wing drops and the nose starts sliding very quickly below the horizon at a considerable angle, it’s a little unnerving, even if I do know what to do to recover.
I talked with an assistant philosophy professor from Wake Forest last night. The church group and I attended a gathering of young adults in the area and he and I struck up a conversation afterward. We made the usual small talk and when I heard what he taught I tried to remember everything I had learned in my intro to philosophy class at NCSU, which mainly centered on Cartesian dualism. Talking about the mind/body problem in philosophy, I asked him whether he ascribed to a trichotomy (body/soul/spirit), dichotomy (body/spirit) or monistic view and he kind of skirted around the issue. Evidently his main area of expertise is ethics and he didn’t seem particularly keen on engaging the mind/body issue (maybe it was the informal setting?) It was interesting to me because I had always been under the impression that if you know philosophy you were well-versed and had a ready opinion about the whole range of philosophical issues. But I suppose it makes sense to specialize. It would be analogous to someone coming up to me and plying me with questions about off-roading or some area of automotive interest I just don’t know that much about. They’re both remarkably broad topics.
Now I feel bad for interrupting. : ( My bad…
No no… No interruption. I was hungry and we needed to go. I could’ve kept talking with him if I wanted to–I was just giving you a hard time :) No worries.
take my heart along
Mmm… good song.
Yeah, yeah, you always like to pick! : P
Agreed. Thank you for sending it :)
Have I mentioned lately how much I want someone to sing that to me?
i know the sky is calling
Of course :)
I understand :) It is one of the most M-songs I can think of, really.
Haha, this comment was just re-e-mailed to me.
Hope you’re having a lovely Saturday, M :)