Spring has sprung

The dog days of winter are over, replaced by the spring flying frenzy and soon to be replaced by the more traditional dog days of summer.

After four solid months of truly awful weather it has stopped snowing, the slow moving low pressure systems that hung over Minnesota for what seemed like weeks on end bringing with them days of rain, snow, low clouds and general malaise have, for the most part, been replaced by a string of steady highs and fine flying weather.

It never ceases to amaze me how long winter lingers in Minnesota and how quickly spring comes. It seems that over the course of only a few days the state goes from brown and dead to green and lush.

The flying energy that has built up over the long winter has been released in synchronization with the plants that have shot back to life.

This is all reflected on my flying schedule, which has been packed. Last week saw 26 hours added to my woefully out of date logbook. This week will bring less flying but still enough that 12-hour duty days are typical.

The accelerated pace will keep up until July, when vacations draw people away from airplanes and flight instructors. July and August are slow times. The pilots looking to brush off the rust of a winter with little flying have done so by midsummer, students working on ratings pack their bags and families into the car and head for parts unknown.

Perversely, I'm looking forward to the summer slowdown, even though it comes with a slowdown in my income as well.

Leading up to the Memorial Day weekend I'd flown 19-days in a row and was pretty much a walking bag of goo.

On Wednesday I left the house at 7:30 in the morning and didn't pull back into the driveway until after midnight. I wish I could say I flew the entire time, but the reality is an absurd amount of my day is spent waiting around between lessons, driving to different airports or repositioning airplanes. Then there is ground with students before and after lessons, paperwork and, if I'm lucky, a break to eat.

It might sound too good to be true, flying every day is a dream for most folks and I am admittedly fortunate. But with it comes an aching back, ears that ring after a long day in the cockpit, dinners sourced from vending machines and an overall hourly wage that can best be described as laughable.

And behind it all looms the reality that my career, not to mention my life, could be over given a moment's inattention at the wrong time.

On Tuesday, I set the altimeter incorrectly and flew a customer who had dropped his airplane off for maintenance back to his home airport with the altimeter reading nearly 1,000 feet low.

Luckily, I was also reading the altimeter incorrectly so I flew along 1,000 feet lower than I thought I was. All of which turned out to be a good thing, as another 1,000 feet of altitude would have placed me squarely in the middle of Minneapolis' Class B airspace and led to an almost certain violation.

Stupid things happen when you fly exhausted.