almost the weekend part 2
Following my last “almost the weekend” drivel, it hasn’t seemed such a long week this time. I think I’ve lost entire days here and there with being so busy at work.
It’s tiring though, today I did a 200 mile round-trip between meetings. Started with Redditch to Mansfield, then rushed off to Stoke on Trent (grabbing a sandwich from the previous meeting to eat in the car) with a 5 minute fuel-stop on the way. I was watching the gps on this leg of the journey and trying to get my ETA down by driving as fast as possible (as safely as possible) and managed to make up the 5 minutes. Never realised how many roundabouts the A38 & A50 between Mansfield and Stoke have – you just get up to speed and you’re back on another roundabout!
The final leg of the Journey was back down south, with a minor detour via Birmingham to pick up my good lady wife. I would normally go via spaghetti junction picking up the ring road via the aston expressway. For fun I decided to follow the gps which took me though Soho. I used to drive outbound through Soho when I worked in the city centre and it wasn’t much fun then, full of crazy asians wandering around the road and vans pulling out in front of you. Things haven’t changed, I’ll be avoiding that area in future.
The big highlight of the weekend will certainly be the trial flight Debs got me for fathers’ day (well, technically Debs but officially the kids) in a cessna for an hour at an airfield near Sheffield & Worksop. I’ve always dreamed (daydreamed) of flying a plane (had a 10 minute “go” in a glider about 10 years ago but kind of felt very limited – was rushed with 10 other students, it only cost £3 so can’t complain I suppose) but never got off my arse to sort it out. I’m not quite sure how to act when I get to the actual airfield when the instructor tries to tell me what the controls do as I’ve been training on the cessna 152 on FSX for a couple of months now. I think I’ll just keep quiet about it as I will no doubt get ridicule that flying a real plane isn’t like a “game” – I’ll just happen to know the full cockpit layout and checklists. Maybe I’ll have a wry smile.
Really looking forward to it!!
