Whew! Kind of enjoyed totally solo Tuesday....

Here in the land of Commercial Rating training, it is all VFR! Urgh. I am SUCH an IFR gal, especially in SoCal airspace.
But, gotta get good again at the visual stuff and the solo stuff for this rating, so for a start on the latter I took off Tuesday aft. and flew myself by myself up to CMA for a bit of shopping at Heidi's Place! Went well! Did the miniroute both north and south, smoother south, northbound I was almost in TOA airspace before I got to LAX from HHR's tower, probably I should've CIRCLED around the Fwy Interchange instead of kept going.
Awesome landing at CMA, decent at HHR.
It WAS fun to look outside the cockpit, cuz it was a beautiful day! More to come!

Blonde Pilots go to HWD! Woohee!

Robin is working on the commercial rating, too! Fun to be doing it together.
So we planned, and did, a LONG trip up to Hayward Executive, a friendly, lovely-FBOed (Atlantic Aviation) airport just south of Oakland the second weekend of July, leaving on Friday, staying over at San Leandro Marina Inn, and flying back Saturday since Kiran and Moe's wedding was Sunday.
Unfortunately the WX was not cooperative enough, so we did IFR most of the time, sigh.
She did VFR from HHR to SBA up, and I from SBA to HHR home, but that was all.
At least we have the route planned and can try again VFR, because we need to do VFR solo (it just fits for the long cross country req).

But enough seriousness! Here was the way coolest thing (after the total coolest thing of us being fine pilots!): we went SHOPPING! A LOT!.
Here is our dialogue while Robin is on the FINAL approach to HWD:
Robin aloud to self: "Getting on the center line, airspeed where I want it...."
Me to Robin: "I see JC Penny's, Sears, ROBIN! THERE IS A MALL just to the North!!!"
Robin: "I'm not sure what you're saying honey, but tell me after we land!"
Me: "Okay, but there is A MALL ROBIN!!!"

So, after we dealt with the friendly FBO and BEFORE we went to our Inn, we WENT TO THE MALL (Southland)!!! And got awesome deals at Penny's, Macy's and Victoria's Secret.
Then, we WENT BACK Saturday morn before flying home, and got MORE of the awesome sale tops, and got MANI/PEDIs for the wedding!

Here is a shot of San Luis Reservoir - QUITE far north of SBP airport - from the trip up.

It was not at all all bad being IFR because at least ATC could've helped us if we went done over the mountains - I was a bit twitchy flying over peaks SO much, and being so far west of the I5 and farmland. Hopefully we could've glided that way, we were at 9-11K both ways (got higher both times cuz of turbulence over the mtns).

Got Signed Off in the Cardinal June 7th!

Rick signed me off on the Cardinal Cessna 177RG on June 7th!
Unfortunately I've not flown it a lot since, then, but did get night current in it in July, with Rick's help.
August, here we come!