Holiday Stress

A lot of people find the holiday season stressful. Generally I do not. If you back up two steps its all about spending time together. It doesn't matter what you do as long as you are with people who matter to you. That being said, I have injected some new stress into my holidays this year.

Nothing has caused more stress for me over the course of my life than the weather. I have being flying aircraft in the VFR environment with some very restrictive crosswind limits since I was sixteen years old. Eventually it came to be how I make my living. There are a lot of flyable days in the year. There are also quite a few unacceptable days. Often it seems that when you have the people and resources lined up to go, the weather is not as nice as it should be. That's a fact of flying light aircraft in VFR conditions.

(For those of you who do not fly, VFR is Visual Flight Rules, which is flying with reference to the ground. If the clouds are too low or the visibility is too restricted, you can't fly.)

So, this year I have arranged to have a friend fly me in a Cessna 172 from Winnipeg to Brandon, so I can see my parents. This sounds like a good idea as long as the weather cooperates. The forecast has been good for the day since I could see a forecast for that day. However, the low cloud and snow was supposed to stop yesterday. It has not at the time of writing this. The good part is the bad flying weather has cleared out of Brandon. That is typical as most weather moves from west to east in this part of the world. The forecast is still good for the window we want. I'm confident that it will work out.

The difficult thing about weather is you have no control about it. Nothing you can do will exert any influence minute by minute or hour by hour. You just have to understand it, live with it, and adapt to it. When you are flying light aircraft, adapting is often not flying. This will but a wrench in my plans but it isn't then end of the world.

All this does create stress. I don't like stress on my holidays and I'm pretty good at avoiding it. Normally I just roll with the punches but this one is a bit tougher.

You have to admit. Renting a plane and flying to your parents for Christmas does have a high cool factor to it. It's like I'm a high roller except my destination is Brandon not Vegas or Dubai. If I don't fly, I will be disappointed but I'll survive. Just like we all survived the end of the Mayan Calendar.