This was me dancing around last Wednesday singing and praising the Lord.
Oh man. I have been away for a whole month without a post. I really suck. Part of me thought, “Oh crap, now I can’t post until I have something amazing!” Then I realized I will never have something amazing. Amusing would really be the best I could hope for. I am proud to say that this post is not amazing and probably only mildly amusing at best. So what was so all consuming that I couldn’t even
This was me all last month. Except I was pulling sleds with my mind!
make a single post in a month for meager blog? I was studying for my checkride. What is a checkride you ask? Well once a year, as a pilot, you are tested on your knowledge and skill in the airplane you fly. After much self-examination, I found myself cancer free! And without much knowledge or skill in the airplane I fly.
Mic I don’t know how may hydraulic pumps there are Mic. Cut my eye.
Now normally I wouldn’t be too concerned with my shortcomings as a pilot, because honestly most checkrides in the civilian world are fairly benign. It’s more of a training event, where they test your skills, remind you of what you have forgotten, then teach you some new things and bless you to fly unsuspecting people for another year. There is an oral examination, (the kind where someone asks you a bunch of random questions not looks at your fillings) and a practical flight test in a simulator. I never come away like Rocky in Rocky III or iV, where I am an overwhelming victor. I am more like Rocky in Rocky I: I take a beating, but am still standing at the end of it and then I don’t have to fight for another year. (So then I get really fat and forget how to fight completely and buy a dancing robot, that’s really where the analogy breaks down.) Then the following year ,a couple of days before “the fight” I realize, “Oh crap! I have to fight in three days!” That’s when I que the montage music and have to relearn all the rules and procedures that I have forgotten in the past year while I was parading around in American flag sequined boxers.
Iceman. He looks pretty hot to me! Dogtags never looked so good, am I right ladies?
This year was special though. (If I have already lost you by going a little crazy with the previous Rocky reference, I am talking about my checkride.) This year I was getting my ATP license as part of my checkride. (ATP stands for airline transport pilot, and is the highest rating you can have as a civilian pilot.) I was pretty certain that if ever I would be revealed as a total fraud of a pilot, it would be during this checkride. The other major issue was who giving me my checkride. Iceman (nickname not real name). For my company, generally all the simulator instructors that give the checkrides are just the most knowledgeable and experienced pilots at our company. They are even-tempered and fair and are not out to “fail” anybody. But Iceman, fails fellow pilots and ruins thier careers, all the time. He’s called Iceman because he kind of looks like Val Kilmer if he had aged the way you thought Val Kilmer would age (with a sun tan and a flat top, not the obese pictures on the front of Star Magazine).
Seriously. What happened to you Val?
People will actually call in sick so they don’t have to complete their checkride with “Iceman.” To be honest, part of me was actually excited. In the almost six years I have been flying with my company I had never drawn the Iceman. I wanted an Iceman story. I wanted to be able to sit my grandson on my knee someday and tell him about my checkride with the Iceman (where he would draw the obvious conclusions of, “Oh that’s why you’re not qualified to be a pilot anymore, cause of the Iceman.” Then maybe he would develop a revenge complex and go seek out the Iceman’s grandchildren for vengeance.)
Wow! How big was Ivan Drago?
So this year instead of a couple of days before my checkride, I started the studying montage almost a month before. I learned all kinds of stupid things about my airplane. Like how many antennas it has, and what they all do. What the generator load capacities are and how the hydraulic systems are cooled. Silly things that if you had asked me two months ago I would have replied, “I’m a pilot not some sort of genius wizard!” I am going to be honest. I haven’t really studied for anything so hard since college (and for those of you who are looking at a copy of my college transcript, yes, much harder than I ever studied for biochemistry, come on, that was last semester senior year!) I was going to be ready for the Iceman.
No one ever brings up this homoerotic scene in Rocky.We’ve been quiet for too long. Let’s open it up for discussion.
So two days before, I met up with my sim partner (you go through with your checkride, two at a time) out in Salt Lake City. The whole process takes three days and the big evaluation with the Iceman is on the last day. I asked him if he has ever had the Iceman before for his checkride and he looks at me like he is remembering the time he was beaten and pantsed in third grade. “Yeah. Yeah I had him. I wouldn’t worry about it okay? I mean you just have to understand that he’s a dick. I mean he’s just an unpleasant person. He’s miserable and he will make the whole experience a terrible time. Just don’t let him get in your head. You know? It won’t be so bad.” Sounds awesome, but there was no way Iceman was getting in my head. He didn’t know that I had been doing the mental equivalent of running around with a log on my back and more importantly, listening to Hearts on Fire from Rocky IV on a constant loop for a month.
Rocky was always arms up conquering. I wonder if he did this for little things like eating a whole pizza or parallel parking a pick-up truck.
The day of the sim, I showed up, counting antennas in my head and ready to draw the Iceman a picture of the different hydraulic systems. But there was a huge turn of events. Iceman switched with another sim instructor, who I will call Uncle Joe. Uncle Joe has probably never failed anybody on their checkride in his life. He’s one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. He even said, “There is a 99.99% chance that you will pass this ride,” before it even started! All of my studying and trepidation for nothing (except of course that a lot of things that I studied I actually should know as a professional pilot. Part of me felt like it was a huge reprieve and my heart skipped with joy, like on judgement day, being assured of my doom and Jesus stepping in saving me from the eternal fire, (okay a little exaggerated and dramatic; it’s just a checkride not my eternal soul. In any case it was a huge relief.) The checkride went really well. Uncle Joe gave me a lot of great compliments and made me feel like I actually knew what I was doing. I passed the checkride and was anointed with my ATP instead of being stripped of all my ratings and forced to become a baggage handler.
This was me all month long, “Please God don’t let fail my checkride. I know I am sometimes not as attentive as I should be and that I really don’t care about hydraulic pumps and eletctric generators. But this one time, let me remember stupis details about stuff like that.”
But part of me felt a huge pang of disappointment. I carried the freaking log up the hill and wore cut-off finger gloves in the snow! I wanted the Iceman! It would be like Rocky IV just ending with them giving Rocky the belt because Drago was too afraid to show up.
Deep down inside that is what I am going to tell myself, that the Iceman was actually afraid of me! That I was going to crush him with superior knowledge of airplane antennas and generator malfunctions. I actually felt like a real pilot because of all them time and preparation I put into the checkride. I was ready not to just take a beating but to hand out a beating.
Next year, I hate to say this or write it down, because I am pretty sure I am going to jinx myself, but I hope for my checkride I again draw…Uncle Joe. That guy is awesome. I would rather have him than the Iceman any day. No question. A month-long montage of studying airplanes is just silly.Two days, maybe three days max. A month of straight studying? How am I going to get rid of all that stupid knowledge to make more room or more useful information like more eighties movie references?
This is exactly what an ATP license looks like. I have to wear it everytime I fly. Well I don’t really “have” to wear it, but I like to.
