From Cattle to Classroom

The Early Morning Sun Spashing Across the Avionics Switches

It seems like only yesterday that I was running through the fresh snow trying to avoid the large lumps of brown stuff that weren't yet frozen. Waving the remains of an old hockey stick and hooten' and whistling at the slow to move cows. Pushing them into progressively smaller corrals until they're single file down a shoot waiting to get their hides pricked by a big fat needle.

Wait, that was just yesterday! Wow, how quickly your environment changes. The classroom I'm sitting in isn't really one at all. It's a small office that is already near it's maximum pay load just holding a book shelf, a large desk and an even larger flight simulator. Two other pilots are sitting with me on three chairs that are in a semi circle around the front of the instructors desk. The Instructor is sitting forward in his chair trying to see the front of his computer monitor that he has turned towards us, flipping through the pages of his King Air 100's power point.

My mind is working nearly as hard as my body the previous day. My long Christmas holidays have softened my mental powers, not to mention my physical not-so-powers. I've been through this class a few times already, but still my mind is grinding over things forgotten and other things freshly learnt. It's me yearly ground school, soon to be followed by flight training, that I'm hacking away at. It's been a year since I've started flying for a living. Hard to think that after many years of toiling on the ground, I've just completed my first year in the air. The 800 hours that are penned into my log book would have been an amazing feat just two years ago. Now though, sitting next to a ten thousander I feel inexperienced and young. Lot's of more growing to do. That's good though, I'm still flying upwards.