Arg, Weather!
Posted Thursday, June 2, 2022
Well, that was a crappy Thursday.
As I was preparing to end my workday, and ready myself for the flight to Florida, my instructor (who's in Florida) texted to say, basically, that the incoming tropical storm put the weekend in serious jeopardy.
The issue is that if we can't get into the air this weekend, he turns into a pumpkin until some unknown future date, and I get no training in the plane. Without training in the plane, I am not in compliance with the terms of my insurance. No one will check on it, but if anything ever goes wrong and I need to file a claim, not having those training hours logged would nullify the coverage, and open me up to an insurance fraud charge. No bueno.
So when the instructor says, "Maybe not this weekend," I pay attention.
The issue? I have what feels like a zillion dependencies all hanging off this date. I have an airline flight bought, an Airbnb stay paid for, a rental car reservation pending. I have an instructor, and the former owner (who holds the keys to the hangar, and all the stuff necessary to hand off the ownership when I get there), and the kind mechanic who offered to pick me up at the airport and lend me a car (negating the rental car complication somewhat). I have the dozen or so people I'd communicated with, who I planned to visit.
The timeline was thus: around 2:30 PM, I started getting texts asking if I was still coming, and warning of the weather, from different people. Traded texts back and forth with several different people at once, feeling the stress steadily increase as it became clear the instructor was basically saying, "Your choice, but I wouldn't plan on coming this weekend, in your position." This is compounded by the knowledge that if I push anything back, I will have to coordinate so much stuff. So I don't want to change my plans.
Around 3, started seriously looking into weather forecasts, and basically couldn't get a clear read on whether the weather on Sunday would be any good or not. Instructor texted back saying he wouldn't take me up if the winds were above 10 knots (winds, at that moment in time, were predicted to be 5-10 knots on Sunday, or maybe more, or maybe less, depending on which site I was looking at). I have no knowledge of how tropical storms act, or what comes after them. I have plenty of experience with Seattle forecasts being quite inaccurate more than about a day out, so I don't trust any of the Sunday forecasts, but question myself, because Seattle has an unusual set of mountains that make our weather hard to predict, and maybe Florida doesn't suffer from that complication, but maybe the storm makes it less accurate, but... Which is about the time I feel like my head's going to explode.
So, I check into whether I can shift my plane reservation: I can. Can I shift the lodging? No, at least not with that place. Oh, but the new plane ticket will be over $400 more than the old one? Fuck. But if I get to Florida and have to wait for (as I now know) a week until the instructor is free again, I probably blow at least double that cost in lodging alone, plus I'm sitting wasting vacation time and twiddling my thumbs in 95 degree weather and humidity to make an armpit seem rather arid by comparison. I can go sit in the plane and make vroom vroom noises, but can't fly it, because no training.
So, around 4, having contacted the vital people and confirmed they were all available, I hit the button and rescheduled the flight and the lodging, and let everyone know I was shifting the date. Called the two taxi companies I'd contacted to try to arrange a ride (still not being a Lyft/Uber user). Sent out an email to the people I'd been arranging to meet. Felt like lying down and melting into the bed from a sudden wave of disappointment and stress crashing down around me.
I can safely say I've never made such a large decision with so little information in such a short period of time. Weirdly, I'm happy with how it's turned out. This seems to be part of a new era of me being able to make big decisions without just worrying away at them for too long. I didn't enjoy the process, but the outcome seems good.
Interestingly, this is the one weather contingency I didn't anticipate. I was ready for the weather to keep me from leaving Florida, or to delay me anywhere along the route, but it never even occurred to me I might have to cancel or shift the big-money stuff like this. (Not that this is actually the big-money stuff: I'll be flying something like 3000 miles at ~12 MPG, at about $7.50/gallon, but at least that comes 25 gallons at a time.) The idea that the training wouldn't proceed as planned simply didn't enter my mind.
But, the die is cast. I just hope it doesn't come up natural 1s for the new date.
Copyright © 2022 by Ian Johnston.