- FINALLY -

Today, for the first day in a week, I was able to fly. I woke up to a beautiful, clear morning. We had just arrived at the airport for work, when the instructor showed up. So, I was up in the air from the get-go. We spent about an hour working on landings, which I nailed. I felt a whole lot more comfortable with the plane this time around.

I basically needed that one hour to fulfill the insurance requirements. Having accomplished that, we came back in. No sooner had we landed and taxied back to the hanger, Nate comes out an tells me that we have a job to fly over in Hagerman (about 80 miles east).

We had a really rough time starting the engine because we had just come in and everything was still hot. Big hot engine + cold fuel = vapor lock. After about 45 minutes we got the thing started (that's after we'd drained the battery once trying to get it started). And we were off.

It was great having Nate along to walk me through everything on my first photo flight. By the time we were over the site, clouds had popped up. But, thankfully, it was only three photos. We made two runs just to be safe and then came back.

We won't have the film back until the first of next week, but I'm pretty confident I got the shots (assuming no clouds or shadows). So thank you, all who have been praying for clear weather, however short lived it may be. Apparently tonight and tomorrow there's a winter weather advisory out here. We're supposed to get some serious snow. We'll see.

- Sunshine, on my shoulder...makes me happy...