Currency: That's what it's all about

Two goals of most pilots are to keep their currency, and to keep their currency. As pilots, we have to fly enough to stay current -- there's general currency, club currency, type currency, night currency, and IFR currency to worry about on a fairly regular basis. It's not really that many flights, and if a pilot is just barely staying current, as I had been, I'd expect his personal minima to adjust accordingly, as mine have.

Staying current is a piece of cake, though, if you fly frequently, and that, of course is where the other currency comes in. The more you fly, the more you spend! We've covered this before, so there's no point in going on about it again, but over the last few days, I took significant steps toward keeping both types of currency.

Saturday was a beautiful day, and as I'd just turned 35 two days prior, I really wanted to treat myself and go flying, preferably with a beautiful and sweet woman by my side. As it turned out, I found the woman to go with, so I had no choice! I had to take her flying! After a series of frustrating and tragic events (I'd booked the plane on the wrong day, we had to wait for it to come back, while we were waiting we heard that a plane had crashed at San Carlos, the fuel truck didn't show up until we taxied to the fuel island to fill up ourselves...), we took off, had a beautiful and uneventful flight to Petaluma, landed, got a cab downtown, bought some cheese, caught a cab outside the Taco Bell, and flew home in time to host the wine and cheese party we'd planned on. What a day! We took N9849L out of Palo Alto, a 1986 172P that is about 2/3 the cost of the newer 172SPs I've been flying, and with a very nice set of avionics. So, I found a plane I like to fly that costs much less than what I've been flying. Currency saved!

Then, tonight, my friend Tim came along as my safety pilot as I did six approaches in rapid succession: SCK VOR 29R, SCK GPS 29R, SCK ILS 29R, TCY GPS-A, LVK ILS 25R, and HWD LOC DME 28L. 2.7 hours, and almost all of it under the hood. I am tired! But I am also current.

I think I'm going to go eat some currants...