of mice and men do often go awry.

Today was my instrument checkride. It has been a long road to get here. I started this a year and a half ago. Took the written in January 2022. Got all my hours by April 2022. Then I had a bad experience with an instructor. And I stopped. Grinding, screeching halt. I decided I would just fly when it was nice out. The sun and clear skies were my friends. Until the trip to Texas.

On the way to Texas, there was a stretch where a pop-up IFR clearance to go VFR on top sure would have been handy. And I decided at that point to get back to it. All I had left was my cross country. I scheduled with a wonderful instructor who helped to relight the fire.

I immediately scheduled a checkride so I would have a deadline. The former journalist in me does well with deadlines. The tired lawyer in me finds it too easy to make excuses without one. August 28. The day has been marked on the calendar for two months.

We started at 7 a.m. this morning. I have been up since 4:50 a.m. The oral exam was remarkably interesting and really pretty fun. After every single worst-case scenario known to pilot-kind, I passed the oral. For those of you who have done checkrides, you know what a huge relief this is. For those of you who have not, it’s the part most people dread the most. For a few hours, an examiner grills you about anything and everything. They try to get you to go down rabbit holes in an effort to make sure you understand what is happening in the plane. It’s a fascinating process that the FAA has come up with. If you convince them that you have the requisite knowledge, then you get to go fly.

We got in the plane for the fun part. We taxied over to the run-up area and were going through the regular checks of the instruments and the engine. And that is when the left magneto decided to do exactly what a left magneto is not supposed to do. After trying a few fixes (probably not the best word in this scenario, but with IFR on my mind, fixes has played a pretty big part!), nothing resolved the issue. (For those of you wondering, 60 RPM drop on right mag check. 650 RPM drop on left.) So back to the hangar we went.

The man who runs the shop next to my hangar came over and took a look. He pulled the spark plug. Nothing wrong there. It is, of course, a bigger problem. So now I wait while not flying in clouds or the blue skies.

So here I sit with my Letter of Discontinuance instead of my shiny new rating. That has to wait for another week. The clouds will just have to wait.