In case you ever need to know

Floss works better than plastic knives if you need to cut some cheese and you don't have a real knife.

Firehose

I feel like I have been drinking out of one the past day and a half. Learned a lot, flew a lot, and didn't kill, maim, or severely injure anybody, so it's all good. I flew my first route with Captain Morgan (the captain was here) through Glasgow, Wolf Point (Indian reservation), Miles City, and back to Billings. We carried up to twelve people on some of our legs! Made three of the landings, but my first two were carrier landings- you know, where you hover a few feet off the deck and then slam it down so everyone knows that their seat supports work. Then after a really quick lunch in Billings I joined up with Captain Knudson to do a trip to Glasgow through Wolf Point. I made my best landing yet in Glasgow with all of two passengers. We took our required nine hours of rest and flew back in uneventfully this morning at 5:00. I get to do the same thing tonight and tomorrow, with a Sidney and back thrown in tomorrow.

Pretty soon I will have a laptop and I can start posting pictures from all of my flights!

It starts today.

I get to find out what I will be doing for the next few years by flying to Sidney, Wolf Point and Glasgow with REAL PASSENGERS!!! I bet you didn't know that our planes have the range to get to Austrillia and Scotland did you?
I flew in from Indy yesterday and picked up my wings and bars while I was at the airport. They are pretty cool, but the coolest thing out here is the weather. When I left it was running an eight day streak of blasting through 105, but when I got back it was 78! I am sooo happy about that because it will make our flight a lot smoother. I tell you how it went when I get back.

First Officer!

I finally earned my last stripe today, so now I am all set to get a uniform and start flying passengers on the line!

131YV

I got to fly tonight! :) :) :)
Didn't finish today's puzle though. I started an hour later and I still had to finish a small section of the sky. I would call home, but it's like 1:30 am there, so I'll just go get some dinner.

1 day 1 puzzle

I almos got a chance to fly tonight. But all I ended up accomplishing was finishing a 1000 piece puzzle at the library in about eight hours. I found out that the AC works better over there than in our Inn rooms. But now I am dead tired so I'm off to dream world.

Books

Well I'm probably not going to get to do my night flying until Wednesday, and I'm already out of books to read. So I thought "Why don't I write about all the ones I've read since I've started ground school?" Then I thought "Cause it would prolly be really boring." But I am kind of bored, so I might as well.
So in order:
Mark of a Man by Elizabeth Elliot
Given to me by the great Eric Filson, this book is pretty interesting. Elliot describes what she believes guys should look and act like in today's society. She comes down pretty harshly on people who try to blend the roles of guys and girls, but she also backs up her position pretty well. I liked the good down-to-earth suggestions that she provided to help guys be more manly in a good way.
In short: Good read for college+ guys.

A Treatise on Regeneration by Peter Van Mastricht
Written by a great puritan author, this is a solid read on the doctrine, implication, and application of theology on the subject of regeneration. I didn't realize how much application one could derive from a grace which man has absolutely no influence on until I read this book. It's pretty short, but give it a couple days to read if you take a little while to absorb stuff like me. Van Mastricht does a good job looking at the 'forced' application of regeneration to an unbeliever and its working with man's free will.
To sum up: Absolute must read for anyone who wants to know more about regeneration.

The Prophets Speak of Him by Anthony Selvaggio
I cannot say enough good stuff about this book. It does an amazing job of displaying how each of the minor prophets spoke of the coming of Jesus in their lives and prophesy. I read it in conjunction with my personal Bible study and it became an invaluable aid. Selvaggio's book is set up for a Bible study type deal, with discussion questions and some comparison readings at the end of each chapter. Selvaggio is a great pastor as well as author and I'm looking forward to reading more of his works.
The word: Read. Great for reference, personal study, or group study; you MUST get your hands on this book any legal way possible.

And Finally: Federal Husband by Douglas Wilson
If you have this book my recommendation would be to find a reliable shredder or a good fire for it. The trash might be acceptable, but be sure to smear some rotten fruit or green meat on it so the trash man won't be tempted to pull it out. Wilson starts out by redefining some words, so everyone can have a 'proper' understanding of what they mean. I used to do that. Then I defaulted on ATI. He does have a couple good points about fathers being responsible for their families and ..... um ..... hang on, I'm sure he had another good point in there. Oh yeah! he encouraged men to love their wives like Christ loves the Church. It's for authors like Wilson that I wish I knew Greek and Hebrew, because he spends a lot of time talking about what the original language REALLY meant. (rolls eyes) There is way too much that is wrong about this book to make it worthwhile, so fathers, love your wives and be responsible and don't read it.
Summary: Don't even think about it.

Its funny because after I wrote all this, I realized that I could turn each of these reports into a 1500 word essay for Mr. Pulliam without saying any more than what I just wrote.
I think I'll go to a baseball game tonight.

FLYING!!

I Flew the 1900 for the first time yesterday! It was pretty cool. Getting the landings down was a little rough a first, but I should be getting better at those with a little practice. (To all those potential passengers out there: its nothing dangerous, just a little hard. I would easily take my family in the airplane and do a landing myself.) My bike patch lasted all the way to church this morning, and then it decided to fail on me, so I just sat around and read all afternoon until the evening lecture on the coming of the Cannon started at 4. After the lecture (which was great) I took my tire off to see if there was anything I could do to it, but before I even got the hole cleaned up a nice lady offered to take me back to the Inn. Seeing as it was pushing 106 and I was six miles from shelter, the distressed knight gladly accepted the rescue of the fair maiden. Oh wait. That's all backwards! oh well, I guess that's what I get for not buying that motorcycle from Ross way back when. It was soo sweet to get into my air conditioned room again though. Does anybody have any suggestions for how to spend my tomorrow that takes no transportation and no money? I guess I could go to the library and read Athanasius on the Incarnation or Wheel of Time or whatever they have there.

WOW

So much has happened in the last week and a half I really don't know where to start telling about it all.

Flew out to Denver on the 3rd and went to my first MLB game ever with Alex and David. The Rockies creamed the Mets, and when it was all over we got to go down on the field to watch fireworks. Very cool! The grass was so amazing. Alex and I took off our shoes and ran all the way across the outfield. I got to bed at about one and got up at four to drive to the base of Mount Harvard with Andrew. We then proceeded to hike up the third tallest mountain in Colorado (14,420') on only three hours of sleep. Gorgeous hike. DON'T do it on three hours of sleep. Unless that is the only way you can do it.

Took a bunch of pictures of the hike and got to try out my fireworks function at the game. It works pretty well. Hopefully I can post some of my better pictures when I get to a computer that is owned by someone I know.

I caught up on my sleep on the fifth and started flying the sim on the sixth. The sim was fun. A LOT of work to get a good feel for, but still fun. We (Jared and I) were in it for about four hours every day till yesterday. We had our checkride yesterday and we both passed very nicely. Then we ran to his car and took off for the airport. We missed a 2:55 flight to Billings by 20 minutes, and the 5:15 flight was full, but we sat around and finally caught the 9:45 in and got to our Inn at about 11:45 last night. We should start flight training in the real plane today sometime!

Got all my email read, but haven't had time to respond to any of it yet, so if you are waiting for something it might take me a few more days to get all caught up.