So, my first flight student is ready to solo. I basically told him this after our last flight. "Wear an old ratty shirt next time," I told him. Also that I'd be willing to play hookey from work if the weather was good on Friday.
So this morning, I'm up at 6:00. I check the weather forecast, and it looks like it's going to be pretty good until the late afternoon, when it gets dark anyway. I text my student (who I figure is probably not up yet), hey, weather looks like it might be decent, what are your plans today? (Holy crap, this may be The Day!)
Well, if we're going to fly, I'd better "plug in" the plane this morning so it has a few hours to warm up. So as soon as I'm breakfasted and coffeed, I hop in the car and head towards the airport. I get about 1/4 mile. As I stop at an intersection, the car starts shaking.
"Huh, this feels like a bad mag," I think to myself, "Wait, but cars don't have those. Do they?" Then...
The shaking gets worse. "Now it feels like a really seriously-imbalanced propeller," I think to myself, "But cars definitely don't have those!"
Whatever it is, I figure something catastrophic has gone wrong with my car's engine, it feels like it's going to tear itself (and the car) apart, the shaking is so bad. Not knowing what's going on, I shut down the engine.
But the shaking keeps going!!
I see a flash of light in the sky. A transformer blowing out or a line going down or something.
"Earthquake!" I finally figured it out.
Streetlights were bouncing. All the other cars were slowing and stopping.
It finally stops after what seemed like a very long time.
I drove back to the house. The power was out. Some stuff has fallen from shelves, but nothing too drastic. A bookshelf broke, but thankfully remained upright. Kitchen cabinets had opened and some contents flung out. Lots of miscellany on the floor. Lots of liquor bottles (stored about 6 feet up) were on the floor, but amazingly only one broke. I lost a bottle of raspberry-infused vodka. But the enormous Costco regular vodka was intact, so no reason to panic. No gas smell, just a faint odor of raspberries.
A tsunami warning was issued, but was cancelled a little while later. Phone calls were impossible, but texts were getting through, so I spent a few hours texting while my cell phone battery slowly died. Fortunately, power came back a few hours later. Aftershocks came and went throughout the morning.
My student lives about 45 miles away, the only highway into town was closed, blocked by a rockslide. I checked Merrill ATIS and it said they'd evacuated the Tower and pilots should use tower frequency as CTAF.
So all is well with me, and my student has the best "thwarted first solo" story ever.
