The night before.

I’m not a nice person when I’m anxious and stressed. RTH normally takes the brunt of this. Friday night he made the fatal mistake of coming home early, I was just off the phone with Bob, contemplating the mass of flight planning in front of me. I didn’t know where to start.

Irritatingly one of the pages from my previous flight was missing, meaning that I’d have to redo some of the landmarks and distances. Somehow this must have been RTH’s fault.

Sensing that leaving me alone was probably the best thing to do, he retreated to his den. I plugged in what numbers I could and then abandoned it until the morning.

I went to bed early, planning to be at the flight school a good few hours before my flight. Despite my best efforts I knew I wasn’t going to sleep that night.

Sure enough I woke at about 4:30 in a sweaty panic, suddenly realising that the TAF was calling for easterly winds at Peterborough. That mean an over the field, descend, turn back and join mid left downwind approach for the runway. I haven’t done that one before and I got "lost" on the simpler approach I did last time.

This doesn’t bode well.

At 6:30 I finally call it quits. Sleep isn’t coming anywhere near me. I spend some time reviewing GFAs NOTAMS and anything else with an acronym and head down to the flight school.

Why do I feel like the condemned prisoner on their final march?