My PPC renewal is due in a few months, but others in the company are due earlier and the chief pilot wants train everyone up at once and then all go together to somewhere we can book an examiner and do the ride. ("Ride" is short for checkride, a flight test to allow me to maintain my qualifications). There aren't that many pilot examiners in Canada, and I've been in the industry a while, so it happens that I know this guy. So do you. He was the one beside me for my worst ride ever.
He's been haunting me for a while. I was supposed to go back to him for a line check a few weeks after the initial ride, but I was bumped from my flight to the testing location, so I was given a different examiner. I was supposed to fly with him two years ago, but the airplane broke down and I again flew with a different examiner. Each time I have to face this showdown it gets easier, so I don't think I'm stressed more than for a usual ride this time.
Why should I be freaked out? He flew with me once five years ago: even if he hated me as much as it seemed, he's probably not even going to remember me. In the intervening time, I've gained more experience while the test hasn't gotten any harder. I haven't stopped being a girl: rumour is that the he thinks women should be in the kitchen not the cockpit. I could bring cookies to prove I still knew how to operate a kitchen. Maybe I can pass for a male. (I'm trying to remember if my sex is on my pilot licence). Or maybe I should just shut up and fly the airplane.
I think it will go fine.
That's not for a month or so while yet, and I don't know what airport it will be at, but I can review my notes from that ride and make sure I don't make the same mistakes again.
Happy Thinking Day, to those who know what that is.
10 comments:
Happy Birthday to Robert and Olave
To him, the Ride's just a couple of hours of his boring job, before he can go home and do [insert recreational activity here], which is what he's probably really thinking about during the Ride.
If you do start to feel intimidated, maybe you can try a variant of imagining the audience naked (nobody wants to actually imagine a naked examiner 3 inches away in a crowded plane) and make up different recreational activities for him.
What's he thinking about doing when he gets home? Playing a Wii game? Geocaching? Baking novelty cupcakes? Playing spoons in a Newfie fiddle jamboree? Snuggling up with his poodle to watch a rom com? Dressing up as an elf for a Tolkein Society mock battle? C'mon, you know you can do even better than I have ...
Hooray for Thinking Day! I was a Girl Scout too!
"Spectre of a Nemesis"
Ba Ba Duummmm! (Dramatic intro music ...)
I love it. A touch of the Graphic Novel genre as a dark shadow returns from Aviatrix's past to haunt her ... But our Super Heroine 'Trixie will once more vanquish evil and establish justice for PPC candidates everywhere as she takes on The Examiner and his Empire of Evil which is threatening to take over Transport Canada and infiltrate the security of the Olympics! Yes! That's it - it's suddenly up to Aviatrix to uncover this nefarious plot and save the Olympics!!
I can hardly wait for the next installment...
Nemesis was Goddess of Retribution, so merely passing the test is not enough. The Evil Examiner must be shown up for a foolish cowardly fantasist whose sexual tastes would make a gatepost fall over laughing.
"operate" a kitchen. Great. Funny things come to mind... Let's assume you cook with somebody:
Cook-in-command: Front left stove: seven.
Cook cooking: Front left set to seven.
Cook-in-command: Advise when water is boiling.
Cook-in-command: Gotcha.
Cook-in-command: Request the really hot chili peppers today.
Cook cooking: Really hot chili peppers are in the process of being cut.
Cook-in-command: Adjust noodles 340 Grams, prepare for water once boiling.
Cook cooking: Spaghetti 340, prepared.
Cook-in-command: Water boiling. Reduce stove setting three point five, add spaghetti.
Cook cooking: Got the stove at three five, spaghetti in water. Could you read me the Al-Dente-Checklist?
Nice, zb.
Every time I am asked to make sure the coffee maker is on, I think to myself "Coffee maker selected on and indicating."
Do you still look like Linda Hamilton (Sarah Conner) of Terminator fame? How could anyone think she belongs in the kitchen?
Anoynmous: Yes! So many people don't realize the difference between selected, indicating and actually, truly on.
Captain Dave: I bet Sarah Connor can make a mean reduction sauce with one hand while wielding an AK47 in the other.
David: Do they have Wii curling? I can see him doing that. And I'd whip his butt at Wii boxing.
On the down side, sorry about the Nemesis but on the plus side, I spent great deal of my youth WANTING a Nemesis, since this was not only a really cool word but also the sign that you are somehow in Golden Age detective fiction.
I am always amazed at the males who think women should be....(insert stereotype) and say things out loud since it is just so...surreal, like watching a film with an odd villan. What is odder when running into the 'gatekeepers' - the older women who have these feelings because 'they had to do it'. I wonder if there are female examiners who are muttering looking the males up and down, about "great another wilted flower, have you ever thought about being a lumberjack, trucker or oil derrick worker....you know jobs MEN are supposed to have?" Probably not.
Hope it goes well and here it to the DMV examiner who scared me to death and yet passed me after I did 60 miles per hour through a school zone (don't do that!).
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