Thursday, June 15th
Tonight, we celebrate. We are done with the tedious and stale rules and regulations concerning South African airspace. With any luck I can brain dump them tonight with some fine amber colored, bubbly, and alcoholic beverage and never worry about them again. Confidence inspiring coming from a pilot, eh? Don’t worry Mom, I’ll at least bring a clean pair of underwear when I fly.
We were scheduled to start the test this morning at 8am, sharp. We did not. The directions given to us were, umm, how do I say this, Shit. By following the directions to the ‘t’, we ended up driving, in 25 minutes time, a perfect circle around the northern suburbs of Johannesburg, ending up precisely across the street from our originating point. Good times. Tension levels were high in the underpowered clown-car that bottomed out over every bump we hit.
We made it finally and I did quite well on the test. One of us, however, and unfortunately, did not, so he was executed promptly. Rough place, poor guy. No, actually he just needs to retest next week. Then if he doesn’t pass they’ll execute him. In his defense the wording of the questions was confusing, the laws ambiguous enough already, and many questions we had never been briefed on before. See example below;
The following must be read in a South African accent, much like a British accent, but a bit goofier.
Example: It being a Tuesday, and whilst flying a flight level higher than FL110, but lower than FL140, and not not FL120, therefore possibly and most likely ruling out for all intensive purposes FL130, what direction of flight would you most likely not be flying if you were not flying another, whilst wearing black shoes? P.S., not withstanding any previous notions or emotions, chap, your favorite color is mauve, if and only if, the flight visibility is greater than 1nm.
In the meantime, beer is very much overdue…wow, Steamworks sounds so good right now.
From here we move on to more operationally pertinent things…matters that when compared to what we have been studying seem almost exciting. Yeah, that wont last long. On Monday we have only ½ a day of class, and the rest I believe is going to be spent wrestling lion cubs, honest. There is a park not too far down the road that they actually allow you to play with lion cubs. Bryce and I have already begun the search for catnip in local businesses, so that we may fill up Ed’s pockets before the trip, therefore making things a bit more amusing, for he and I at least. Should make for some good pictures. Sunday may be spent at Pilansburg National Park as well, not too far from the Botswana border, where most of the famous big African animals can be seen from the back of a Landrover. I will take lots of shots, I promise.
Oh, random thought, but some South African terminology for you all:
Braai ( like brian minus the ‘an’) ----grill. Note: can get confusing if you have a friend named Brian that you would like to invite over for grilling, therefore get rid of all friends named Brian. Sorry Patterson.
Robot ---- traffic light…kinda excited me the first time I was told to drive thru 2 robots before turning, kept expecting to see robo-cop standing in the road
Boot---trunk of car
Bonnet---hood of car
Bakkie---pickup truck
Studmuffin---I think you know who!
So, as you can see, things are progressing well and in no time I’ll ship off to the middle of nowhere, Tchad, where the real fun will begin. In the meantime I will try to not write so much about nothing. Goodnight, Jesse