Lizzy McFly

Great weekend!  Mike and I wandered downtown yesterday and hit Timmies then the St. Catharines Market (although didn’t buy anything).  Weather wasn’t the best so when we got back, we just worked on a puzzle and watched some shows and a movie.  Weather was great today so we hit the airport and went up for a flight.  When I walked into the hangar, I was thrilled to see Vyctor was wearing his pants again.  My aviation mechanic removed them just before the first snowfall of the year – the covers over the wheels can pick up snow which can interfere with the brakes:

While we were starting up, we saw a Club plane park on the apron and the instructor hopped out.  I waved him over and asked if the guy still in the plane was doing his first solo.  Yup!  We both felt his pain!  The first solo is so insane….you look over and there’s no longer an instructor in the right seat.  It’s very scary but so freeing.  We followed behind him to the runway and waited for him to take off:

Good luck dude!  We followed him in the circuit and watched his great flight.  I congratulated him after he landed.  The awesome tower dude Yousef said “Thanks for taking my job, Liz”, since they always congratulate the solo students.  I told him he was a slacker.  He got me back when I was leaving St. Catharines air space and he called me to tell me I was leaving the airspace before I called him.  He called me a slacker too….tee hee.

It was a nice flight.  I felt a little incomplete for not doing any aerobatics.  We headed south almost to Lake Erie, then north and a little east to the Niagara Falls scenic circuit.  Just as we entered, an awesome helicopter pilot I know said hello to me.  We tried to grab some shots of him flying below us”

A little hard to get a good pic as we were bouncing around, zipping along in opposite directions.  He let me know that he noticed traffic behind me at 4000′.  I was at 3600′ (planes must be at least 3500′ in the scenic circuit).  We were just a tad shocked when the traffic he pointed out passed over us:

They were from the Niagara Falls Airport in the States, which is just slightly east of the scenic circuit border.

Mike grabbed some nice shots of the Falls.  I was surprised to see Maid of the Mist was already operating:

After our flight, we drove over to the new Chef restaurant for brekkie.  Copilot Donkay came along and Mike was thrilled:

We got home, finished a puzzle avec the help of some chats:

Let them play with Zim:

Made a gourmet meal (tuna casserole) with some high end, hand crafted napkins (I kinda somehow missed cutting out one of the arms):

Worked great though:

(I think Mike’s was doing the Macarena).

Then we topped off the evening playing with Peanut using the laser pointer….please welcome Peanut the Red-nosed Gecko:

Today’s symptoms:  Felt quite good the last two days!  Always nice when it happens on a weekend!  Weary now after all the excitement and awesome flight…totally worth it though.  Life is good!