The importance of planning

I took 610SP out of SQL today, and it started out fine -- I decided I'd go out to Tracy, land, and come home. So I got my left crosswind departure, went out over Sunol, and then I realized: I had no plan at all. The GPS would tell me which direction to go, but..where am I? What altitude should I be at? What's the weather like in Tracy? What's my descent pattern? Basically, I got within about 10 miles of Tracy, realized I had no plan, saw how hazy it was, heard at least 4 other planes in the pattern, and decided to turn around and head back.

So I stopped and did a landing at Livermore, which was fine except that I couldn't understand one of the tower's instructions for the life of me (it ended up being "traffic on the runway" which was fairly obvious). Then I came back to San Carlos, landed, and waited 12 minutes behind a dozen other planes to take off again. So, only one more loop around the pattern. The landings were not nearly as good as yesterday, but still decent.

I'll go again tomorrow; either just stay in the pattern or go up with a plan.