Duxford Girl

I had a terrible flight the other day and it's entirely my fault. I recently landed a couple of weeks of day shift at work (0700-1500) and thought that this would be peachy, having a schedule just like the real world, imagine! Not so. I found that I was trying so hard to catch up on having a life that every evening was booked with some kind of event. The gym was way busier in the evening so I hesitated to go, electing for walks instead. Traffic and the packed train nearly drove me mad and I think the sad truth is I'm just used to living my life on a much different schedule.

My most recent flight was booked at 1600 after I finished my shift. It had been an exhausting five days of work that had included fires, deaths and several other moments of weirdness that can only be produced by the railway. Add to that, it wasn't my Friday either. I still had two days to go. I hadn't eaten in hours and the only thing remotely close to water in my system was the large coffee I had started my day with. By the end of the day, flying seemed like about as much fun as a dental appointment.

That should have been my first clue to call up my instructor and scrap the flight but I prefer not to cancel on such short notice. Flight instructors get paid badly enough as it is, I doubt they get much of the cancellation fees when one of their students books it.

By the time I was going through my start-up check list I knew there was no way I wanted to fly. If it would have been a flight on my own, there's no way I would have gone. Instead I went and wasted my time and money. The chop was heavy, the airport busy and with my head so totally out of the game I think I have to record this as one of my worst flights ever. Tired and hungry becomes exhausted and starving at altitude and while we orbited around city centre waiting for tower to slot us in for landing all I could think about was getting the plane down so I could go eat.

No more flights after work, even a relatively good shift can leave me feeling drained and a bad shift usually turns me into the walking dead. I should never mix no food and no rest. The combination makes me stupider and meaner than even the worst of drunks. Lesson learned, however, I'll never do that to myself again.