When I walked in, the first thing I said was that I was grounding myself for the day.
Why? Well, my instructor has me watch his EAA Webinars as extra assignments for learning, and one of my assignments before that lesson was to watch his webinar on preflighting the PIC. It used the IM SAFE acronym, and the first letter, I, stood for Illness.
I was definitely ill.
Additionally, I had just played a golf tournament, and the combination of illness and heat brought me to the brink of falling over, so I was definitely not in any condition to fly.
He respected my decision and was glad that I was exercising the discretion that I was. So, we did a full three hours of ground instruction. We talked ahead about whiskey compass navigation, weather, radio communications, and dealing with stalls. Doing all of this ground instruction was exhausting in the awful condition that I was in, but at least I was extra prepared for the next time that I would fly.
Before I left, we closed up the hangar and took the above picture in front of the airplane with my Gleim training kit and my MyGoFlight flight bag. I’m still wearing my golf clothes and I’m looking just about as rough as I felt, but I wanted to take a picture showing off a couple of my favorite pieces of equipment that I’ve been using.
Grounding himself when not functioning 100% was completely William’s decision, and I’m proud of him for demonstrating excellent PIC judgment.