104 Weeks – Every Week

My apologies ahead of time if this one just feels like the ramblings of an old man…

“What should I write about this month?” I asked my wife. I was trying to come up with a topic that people might find interesting and struggling.

Her immediate reply was, “You have to write about your 104 weeks of flying.”

Maybe that should have been obvious to me, but for some reason it hadn’t dawned on me, even though that milestone was just a few weeks prior. Some of you might remember my article a year ago when I wrote about 52 consecutive weeks of flying. At the time I figured I would keep the streak alive for a bit, but didn’t realize it was going to stretch past two years. Yet here we are…

A refresher on the challenge, my wife suggested when I turned 52 that I should try to fly once a week for 52 weeks. The rules I put in place were that the week ran Sunday through Saturday and a flight had to happen somewhere in that stretch. Technically that meant a flight could take place on a Sunday and not again until two Saturdays later, with a stretch of 12 days in between. That would become important during annual inspection and a couple other stretches.

For annual inspection I flew on a Sunday afternoon, then spent evenings after work taking everything apart and working through the lubrication items before meeting my mechanic for the day on Friday. Saturday was spent going through his punch list (it was small) and putting everything back together, finishing up evenings after work the following week. By the end of the week I was ready for a post-maintenance flight.

There was another week I thought might break the streak. I went down after work just to make a short hop around the pattern. I began my startup checklist and when I turned on the electric fuel pump instead of the normal humming there was a grinding sound. “That’s not good” I said out loud to nobody. I pulled out my phone, hit the voice record, and flipped the switch again and then sent the file via text to my mechanic. I already knew the answer before he responded with “No fly” but wanted to let him know I needed to replace it.

I was able to get a replacement from Aircraft Spruce the next day, it’s nice living so close to the one in Corona, and by the end of the week I was taking it up for another post-maintenance flight. This time when I turned the pump on it made the normal pleasant humming sound.

I’ve been trying to think of a “memorable flight” during this second year of flying. We made our usual flights to Colorado. We visited family in Arizona, Utah, and Idaho. Once we went to Colorado, skied for a day, then flew to Idaho and skied for a day. That never would have happened without the Mooney. Another time we flew from CA to St. George, UT to pick up my youngest son on our way to Phoenix to visit my dad. That also never would have happened without the Mooney.

I suppose the biggest surprise in flying the past two years is that there were only a few times when I went down and just flew the pattern to check the box on the calendar. A friend of mine asked me this past weekend, “I know you’re still flying every week, is it getting old yet?” He went on to mention how sometimes hobbies become boring to us after a while.

I responded that I still love it every time I push the throttle in, go rolling down the runway, and lift off into the sky. I did tell him that I had to talk myself into flying after work a couple weeks prior when it was almost 100°F outside. Granted it was on a Friday evening and I could have gone the next morning, but I had other things I wanted to get done on Saturday.

After some debate back and forth with myself and then my wife telling me on the phone to “just go fly” I ended up at the airport instead of home and took a trip around the patch. Yes it was hot and sweaty, and yes it put a smile on my face when the wheels left the ground.

What are the numbers after 104 weeks of flying?

• Hours Flown: 286.7
• Airports Visited: 37
• Cross Country Hours: 261.7
• Total Flights: 178
• Solo Time: 71.0
• Landings: 186

The calendar shows the 104 weeks, with every highlighted day representing at least one flight that day.