FAA Certified Flight Instructor Checkride

Today marked a new day as a pilot. I finally completed a long journey and became a flight instructor. After ten years of flying I finally decided it was time to step up and become more active in aviation. What better way then to teach people the joy of flight and get paid at the same time? It hasn’t been an easy journey though. As many of you know I’ve been staying home at nights, reading, making lesson plans, and planning flights for the next week. I’ve spent the past week on vacation from my job at Intel just to prepare for this thing.

The day was definitely an adventurous one. I got to the airport at 7:30 am to find the aircraft covered in frost. To make matters worse the entire northwest was covered in freezing fog. I spent the next few hours scraping off frost from the aircraft and waiting for the sun to shine. When the sun did shine I flew from Hillsboro to Aurora for my check ride.

My examiner was one hell of a cool guy. His name was Forest Lanning. I’d previously met with him on Christmas Eve to do my oral section of the CFI test. We talked for nearly 6 hours on stuff ranging from flight instructor responsibilities to crazy emergencies you would think could never happen. Forest is one experienced pilot and he had many interesting stories to tell to say the least.

The flight portion of the test went fairly smoothly and I passed without to many problems. While in the air with Forest I had to show him a range of maneuvers including chandelles, eights on pylons, turns around a point, power on stalls, accelerated stalls, steep turns, and a few others I can’t remember.

After receiving my new certificate I flew back to Hillsboro and then celebrated that night downtown with Shin at Henry’s Tavern.

World Salsa Championships - Las Vegas, NV

What do you get when you mix the best salsa dancers in the world and the gambling and show capitol of the world? One heck of a show, namely the 2nd annual World Salsa Championships.

The only problem with this event was getting there. Apparently a huge wind storm had blown its way into Portland Thursday night, bringing 60+ mph winds with it. When Shin and I got to the airport it was actually closed. No planes were being allowed to take off or land. Well a little luck came our way and we were the only Southwest flight to take off that night. Lets just say that there is no way I would of taken off given the wind conditions. Shortly after lift off a gust of wind caught the 727, jerking the nose upward. Fortunately the pilot recovered quickly and we climbed like there was no tomorrow.



Our time in Vegas was spent either at the World Salsa Championships, at the all you can eat buffet, or sleeping in our hotel. What more can you ask for on vacation? With all that good social dancing, one must recharge by eating large quantities of food and sleeping a lot. Also, the fact that neither Shin or I am into gambling makes Vegas a bit on the boring side.


Time for the buffet reviews. In my opinion the best buffet goes to the Bellagio. The Bellagio had so much good seafood and the deserts were to die for. Hands down, the Bellagio takes the cake. Other buffets we visited were the Stratosphere and Aladdin. The Aladdin was highly ranked, but in our opinion wasn’t worth the hype. The Stratosphere was rather depressing.



Now for the salsa championships. We went to the shows on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night. The performances were really good, but they seemed to go on and on. Each night the show didn’t even stop till midnight or 1 am. Our favorites, Oliver Pineda and Luda Kroitor won the On2 division for the second straight year. They are from Australia and have a wonderful style. After they performed the whole crowd was on their feet.



The social dancing each night was really good. I met a lot of really cool people from around the globe. Some of the people are such phenomenal dancers that I felt ashamed to be on the dance floor. I got to dance with some really amazing women who could do some crazy styling. Whether it was On1 dancing or On2 dancing, it was going to be good. I danced with some Columbian chic (Columbians have their own unique style, with lots of footwork), and she just went to town. Our styles didn’t mesh to well, she just moved to fast for me. It was quite an experience though. I danced with some girl from Italy who is probably the best spinner I’ve ever seen. Its going to be tough to go back to Portland.