21 posts tagged with "hobbies"

Oh yeah! Another super fun visit with little improvements. I feel like this whole flying thing is starting to click!

After my last pretty decent set of flights last week, I was anxious to get back in the tunnel today. I was also nervous because I would be flying with an instructor I hadn’t met before. But as I mentioned in previous posts, it’s really awesome to get to work with a variety of instructors since each one has given me different tips and tricks to work on, or given me a different way to think about an existing skill to make it easier or less tiring for my limbs.

Since this instructor hadn’t worked with me, my first run in the tunnel was mainly so he could see where I was at skill-wise. They kept the wind speed a little lower, and he ran me through a set of the level 1 skills: neutral belly position, belly forward/backward, belly turns, belly up/down, belly fly side slide and belly fly enter/exit. Overall I felt pretty solid with everything but the tunnel entrance and belly side slide.

One thing I really appreciated this time around was that my instructor gave me some tips at the beginning of each turn (normally instructors gave me a debrief once all the turns were over and we were back in the lobby getting changed out of our flight suits). He told me to suck in my butt more during the tunnel entrance, and kind of “curl into it” by bending at the knees as I fell forward. That really helped, because my landing was a lot more smooth. However, I think I got too excited and pushed too hard off the ground, because I almost crashed into the other side of the tunnel. The next time, he gave me the goal of not pushing out quite so hard and trying to end up right in the center of the tunnel. I did it (video below)!

On the next turns, we worked a lot on side slides, which I’m still struggling with. It’s sometimes frustrating to watch the Tunnelflight videos on skills like this, because they’re always so smooth and perfect! However, I am starting to get the hang of it.

Overall though, I accomplished the goal I set for this visit: I wanted to engage my legs more to support the different movements. I definitely felt a difference during my back/forward flying, as well as my tunnel exits. Now if I can just get my legs to do what I want during side slides, I think I’ll get those nailed pretty quick too.

After my turns were over, my instructor gave me a ton of encouragement and good advice for what to work on next time. He even said he would sign off on belly forward/back flying and tunnel exits, so I shot those approvals over to him! That leaves only tunnel entrances and belly side sliding and then I’ll have conquered level 1 of flying skills!

Update #1: My instructor signed off on my new skills - check it out!

Update #2: Also, going forward I wanted to start keeping track of my total elapsed tunnel time, and update it in future posts. As of today my total tunnel time is: 60 minutes

Update #3:
Oh and I almost forgot: today they moved my wind speed up from 66% to 67%. I want to brag about this to somebody, but I'm not sure who outside of the iFly staff would think that's neat :-)

Update#4:
I learned that when you're flying and wobbling back and forth and/or side to side, it's sometimes called "potato chipping."

Oh yeah! After having a pretty sucky last set of flights, I felt I was in much better flying form today! I had a new trainer today, and I always love learning new tips, tricks, and ways to think about different skills. Each trainer brings unique experiences and background to what they do, so I try to just put myself in “sponge mode” and take it all in. However, I have a tendency to overthink everything, so I was careful to not psych myself out as I was putting on my flight suit.

One really good tip my instructor shared that I did ponder this time, though, was to try and focus on improving control in one area of my body. Last time my instructor said I was exhausting myself unnecessarily with my arm position, and that I should try more T-rex style arms by bringing them in closer to my body. That tip definitely helped during this visit, as I felt like in general, my neutral position was more stable than in the past. We also played a few games of “tap the stickers,” and I felt more in control this time around than probably any flight in the past.

Last time I was at iFly I just totally stunk at entrances - I would either have my feet kick up/out halfway into the tube (didn’t give myself a hard enough outward push) or headed up towards the sky (body wasn’t flat). On a side note only nerds would care about, this week I practiced my tube entrances at home…kinda. Every morning, once I got up and ready for work, I’d come to the side of my bed, reach my hands in the air, keep my eyes glued to the ceiling, and fall.

The practice at home definitely helped once I got to do the real deal! My “trust fall” version of the entrances went pretty well, and my exits are fairly solid too. But my “straight out” entrances are still a bit wobbly. A good tip I got was to think of the entrances as “You are flying the whole time,” rather than the way I was approaching it, which was “I’m going to push myself out on to a pocket of air and try to balance on it.” I’ll give that a go next time.

Another thing I struggled with this time was staying high up in the air. I thought my new T-rex arm position would take care of that, but I still found myself slowly crashing and burning (so to speak) several times. My instructor said next time I should really focus on powering the moves with my legs, because sometimes those were bent too much to keep me up and stable. I’ll give that a go next time too!

After taking my concealed carry course a month or so ago, I started getting a lot more interested in additional classes on shooting and self-defense. And since I’m in the neighborhood of the classroom/range six nights a week, I signed up for another one of their courses last week, called Flashlight and less lethal weapons. The (sort of) funny thing is I actually meant to sign up for a different class, and didn’t realize my oopsie until I got on site. And it was interesting to be the only dude in a room full of ladies but I was and am 100% fine with that.

Overall, I enjoyed the course quite a bit. It was a good balance of practical “here are some less lethal ways to defend/escape a dangerous confrontation” advice, as well as “how and why you should be ready to tell your side of a story to authorities.” The instructor said it is best, in a confrontational situation, for the authorities to hear from you first - because you will have first-hand perspective of the events that transpired, and because the authorities are more likely to believe the first account they hear.

We also talked a lot about why people are targets for muggings, carjackings, etc. Some reasons you could be targeted:

• You appear very “tourist-y”
• Your face is buried in your phone - you're distracted!
• You’re just standing at your vehicle, and thus vulnerable because your attention is on getting keys out of your pocket/purse
• You were in a store paying for something with a wad of cash, and someone “marked” you for further attention once you are outside of the store and alone
• You are wearing an expensive watch (expensive watch = you probably have a lot of money)

The instructor then focused on ways to not be a victim when you’re out and about:

• Keep your chin up, and shoulders back
• Do “head on a swivel” constantly - often looking to your left, right and behind you
• Get your face out of your phone! Put it in your pocket!
• Take out headphones/earbuds

Next, we covered common non-lethal weapons and why they are popular but probably not super effective:

• Handful of keys - in a confrontation it will be hard to get them out of your pocket, line them up in your fingers like brass knuckles, and use them with enough accuracy and force to do damage
• Pepper spray - many police forces don’t use them anymore because it’s so easy to miss your target and/or hit yourself in windy conditions

Then we talked about non-lethal weapons that are effective:

• Kimber Pepper Blaster 2 - it doesn’t fire with compressed air like pepper spray, but similar to how a bullet exits a gun. It has a 13-ft range (leaving the chamber at 112MPH / 163 feet per second). It holds two successive shots. You aim for the center of your attacker’s chest. Fire a second time if they keep coming at you.
• Flashlight - we talked about how a flashlight is a great way to walk yourself to your car in the dark, and how it should be used to walk the perimeter of your car before you get in to make sure nobody’s waiting to pounce

The instructor gave us some effective flashlight handling tips:

• Get a flashlight like this one which has 1000 lumens or more (very bright!)
• Walk like a victor - again, keeping your head/chin up, shoulders back, constantly scanning your environment
• Carry flashlight in non-dominant hand
• If you see someone approaching or standing nearby that looks out of the norm, do a quick flash of your flashlight in front of them on the ground (that lets them know that they see you and you have your eyes on them)
• If the person approaches, call them out in a loud voice while holding the light in their eyes
• If someone approaches in friendly conversation but the situation doesn’t feel right, keep a few steps back, keep them talking, and watch their shoulders - if one shoulder raises, the person may be reaching for a weapon

Lastly, we talked about ways to escape from arm/throat holds, and practiced the “hammer fist” in which you aim to break an assailant’s nose so you can escape a confrontation. I guess it only takes 2.5 pounds of pressure via hammer fist to break a nose. Ouchie!

Overall, a very informative class, and I’m glad I went. I would normally close a post with something optimistic, like “I can’t wait to deliver some hammer fists and pepper blasts to people!” but of course I don’t hope to ever have to use any of the skills I learned tonight. Still, better safe than sorry!

Well, I hate to use PG-13 language, but if I had to give this iFly session a nickname, I’d call it iSucked. I’m not sure what my deal was, but I just couldn’t get my act together, and I left frustrated.

After I tried the 10-pack of flights for the first time a few weeks ago, and then getting a few of my level 1 skills signed off on just last night, I was excited to come back again to keep banging away on my skills. But they banged on me. Big time.

I felt like a wobbly bathtub during most of my flights. The more I tried to steady myself into a solid belly fly position, the more I teeter-tottered back and forward, making my turns wide and sloppy.

I was also excited to do more tube entrances and exits. The exits went ok, but wow, the entrances were…rough. For at least two of the entrances, my legs kicked out from under me and I had to be helped into a neutral position. My instructor showed me another way to enter the tube by crouching with one leg in front of another, and then kind of tipping/falling forward. It looked straightforward, but I only half-entered the tube and kind of had to be pushed the rest of the way.

I was getting really pooped by the end. Because I had signed up for 10 minutes of flight time and there were only two other flyers in my group, I flew every other turn - for two minutes a piece. It might not sound like a lot, but boy were my arms jello by the last flight!

My instructor gave me some good tips for next time:

• Relax. I am realizing that I really struggle with this. It’s supposed to be fun, and I’m too concerned with doing things “right” - like it’s some sort of graded test or something. I guess I’m also pooping myself out by tensing my body so much. I need to let the air do more of the work.

• Push the hips down. Apparently some of my wobble is from sticking my butt up in the air when going in and out of turns. I need to push my hips toward the floor to establish a more balanced base.

• Look up! My instructor showed me my tube entrance videos, and I could see that although I thought I was looking to the sky during my “trust fall,” I started looking a bit forward and also bending my body a bit straight, which was working against me.

• T-rex arms might provide more endurance. One exercise I did was to take one hand at a time and slap my helmet. Then I was prompted to tuck my hands under my chin like that one scene from Wayne’s World (pic below). My instructor suggested I change my arm position to be about halfway between the pseudo-Superman arm pose I use now and the Wayne’s World pose (T-rex arms?). Apparently that will help my arms not get fatigued so quickly.

Oh, and because I was so frustrated with my work today, I didn’t bother grabbing the videos. Nobody wants to see those. Even my mom. But, like Schwarzenegger, I’ll be back.

My two sons loved their iFly journey so much, they’ve been asking if we could all come back as a group and do it again. I was thrilled they wanted to come again. My wallet? Not so much. But it's all good, as I don't think you can put a price on finding something all three of us enjoy and the boys will get along doing. Well there is a price, but....you know what I mean.

It was surprisingly quiet in the iFly building this time, which is maybe not surprising since we took the last flight available on a weeknight. We were paired with a couple who had never flown before, and then an extremely experienced flyer. It is so fun to watch both newbs like me and seasoned professionals get in that tube and rip it up! The instructors are always encouraging, and it was fun to have a spirit of support amongst our flyer group as well.

This time, my boys got to do some "ground work" where they went down on their bellies and practiced doing left and right turns, as well as moving towards and away from things. They are really starting to get the hang of it, although Atticus would like to graduate right to the part where you get to do flips in the air.

My flights went pretty well too. I have to say that after enjoying the 10-pack of longer flights during my last adventure, this time each of my flights felt like it was over in a blink of an eye. I worked on my turns, up and down floating, and forward/backward movement again. But I also got to do two entrances into the tube by myself (mostly)! I didn’t get videos this time around, but I’ll be back with another 10-pack of rides in the near future and will post some updates on my progress at that time.

However, I totally geeked out the next morning to find that my instructor had signed off on three of my level 1 skills - yusssss!!! I'm on the board, folks!

Oh my goodness. I just had the best iFly session yet!

After having a great fourth session, I bit the bullet (well, my wallet did) and bought a ten pack of flights. Essentially that gives you 10 minutes of flying time, which breaks down to five flights of two minutes each, or six flights of a minute and 40 seconds a piece. I initially had a twinge of buyer’s remorse because my newbness and imposter syndrome were raging pretty hard, but the instructors assured me it’s a great way to really dig into your skill set without that feeling of “Oh, I’m finally starting to get a skill and…what? Time to go already?” that I’ve experienced a few times already.

Similar to my last visit, we worked again on flying up/down, left/right turns, as well as flying towards and away from things. There are a variety of stickers with numbers on them that are scattered around the flight tube at various heights, so my instructor had me work a lot on giving them high fives. In my previous flights, I had kind of crashed into them at diagonal angles and almost fell out of my flight pattern and onto the ground. He reminded me again that a better strategy is to fly up or down to line up with the target, and then fly in a straight line to it.

I know I’m still a little wobbly, but I felt much more under control this time around - fewer slams into the stickers, and even some smooth touches!

I feel like my progress during this visit was absolutely boosted by the fact that I was able to do five or six flights in a row. I was in a group with another family of new flyers, so the instructor had me go first, then let two of the family’s members go, and then me again. It was just the right amount of time between flights to rest and think about what I needed to improve on next time. Speaking of rest and reflection, I didn’t realize until this visit that the big monitors in our seating area not only have a live video feed of the current flyer, but an “instant replay” of the previous flyer. Watching those playbacks really helped me zero in on moments where I thought my arms and legs were doing one thing, but were clearly doing another.

Perhaps my favorite part of my flights was a few new skills I got to try for the first time! My instructor showed me how to enter the tube solo. I described it to a friend as “Raise your arms to the sky, look to the heavens, suck in your butt and do a trust fall….with nobody there to catch you.” It is definitely a weird feeling, and I had to fight my body’s urge to tuck my legs under me to break my fall. I also got to try a tube exit, where you have to line up your flight height first, then slowly move forward to grab the exit door before lowering your legs to the ground.

On my final flight of the day, my instructor surprised me by introducing me to the belly side slide without notice. It’s a move that made me feel pretty insecure in the air since you have to take one hand and one leg slightly out of their neutral position, and then also lean to one side to fly left or right. I explained this move to my oldest son as “strafing in Fortnite” and then he knew what I was talking about. I’m excited to work more on this movie

I definitely feel like I got a significant amount of practice with my level 1 skills. So at the end of my visit, I signed up for another 10-pack of flights without hesitation. Now, will I have to take a second mortgage on my house to afford this iFly passion of mine? Yes. Will it be worth it? I hope so!

Well, after dreaming about getting my body positions down better so I could fly more independently, I signed up for another round of three flights at iFly Minneapolis. I was excited to take my boys along after they joined me on the third flight, but unfortunately most of the Johnson household has been under the weather, so I went alone. I’m fortunate to be able to make my own work schedule, so I grabbed the first time slot available on a week day. Boy is that the way to go! It’s nice to walk into an empty lobby before they’ve even fired up the tunnel for the day’s flights. It’s also a little weird to have visited the establishment enough where some of the staff recognizes me now.

My instructor wanted to continue working on the skills I started learning last time: left and right turns, forward and backwards movement, as well as some up and down motions. In this round of flights, I really felt like I got the left and right turns smooth. I was originally taught just to tilt my hands left or right, and that does work. But it feels like I get a bit more power by using some shoulder/arm movement as well, like the Tunnelflight video shows.

I’m still struggling with the back and forth flying. After watching the Tunnelflight video, I came prepared to move both my arms and legs at the same time to get my body moving. That movement felt uneven to me, so at the end of my sessions the instructor suggested I first learn the skill by moving just my arms or legs. My up and down movement is the skill I’m most excited about, but also struggling with. I learned that when I put my head down and stretch my arms out, I am also plunging them slightly down, which was working against me.

As you can see here, I'm still kind of flailing and a bit out of control:

As is typical with my iFly visits, I had a Keanu Reeves “WHOA!” moment on my final flight. I finally did get my body to raise up in a fairly controlled motion, and brought it down as well. During the last seconds of my flight, the instructor had me give high fives to various stickers hung up around the tunnel. I kind of crashed into them more than gave them a clean high five, but at least I had some success. My instructor said a good strategy was to get lined up from a height standpoint first, and then do the forward moment towards the stickers:

When the flights were over, my instructor told me a bit more about the Tunnelflight site, and how once I start getting some of my skills down they will be able to “sign off” on them so I can start advancing up the progression ladder. Dang, that would be cool!

He also talked a bit about one skill we hadn’t worked on, but that I’d need to master as a level 1 flyer: getting in and out of the tube without assistance. One way to get in is to raise your arm, keep your chin up, and kind of do a “trust fall” into the center column of air. That part I got to practice a little on my third visit. I guess another way people enter the tube is butt first - gripping the edges of the entryway and pushing their legs out behind them to catch air. Seems like that might be a more stable way to go, with less chance of faceplanting?

As part of my 2022 goal to shift my work/fun balance to weigh heavier on fun things (like flying!), I decided to sign up for a concealed carry course a few weeks ago. I’m not a big firearms enthusiast, but I’ve been hunting and shooting as long as I can remember, and figured the course would be a good excuse to get back into the swing of things. I’ll give a brief review of the course in a moment, but for some quick background:

I’ve been shooting guns my whole life - starting with BB guns as a kid, and eventually moving into rifles and shotguns as a teenager. I’ve always loved going grouse hunting, and even have an experience getting shot while doing so (I’ll save that for a future post)! When I graduated from college, my parents moved to a large property, and my dad promptly setup a shooting range. Every time my family is up to visit, we’ll break out the shotguns and do some trap shooting. My oldest son, Cameron, even joined a trap team last year and has really taken a liking to the sport. He also hunts deer with grandpa every year.

Anyway, despite growing up shooting and loving any chance I get to blast some clay targets, I’ve never made shooting an intentional hobby. Seriously, every time I drive away from my mom and dad’s house, I’ll make some sort of comment to my wife, like “Gosh, I should really try to find a way to shoot more - just for fun.” But I’ve never put my time and money where my mouth is until this year. I figured a great way to ease into shooting was to sign up for a concealed carry course from a local gun range.

I found the course itself to be really informative. It’s roughly a four-hour time investment, starting with about three hours of classroom material. The curriculum moved pretty quick and covered a variety of topics, including the cardinal rules of gun safety, where you can and can’t carry a firearm, and the Minnesota defense laws at a glance. Our instructor really drilled into us that from a legal and safety standpoint, firearms should be used as an absolute last resort in a situation where you are in imminent threat of great bodily harm or death. It was interesting to hear students chime in and ask questions about various “what if” scenarios involving firearms, many of which did not have clear cut answers.

Our class also covered some interesting related topics like the various ammunition types, as well as the pros/cons of different holsters. I really enjoyed that portion of the training, because the instructor passed around a variety of bullets and holsters for us to examine. Some holsters were kind of high tech and packed with safety features - so much so that even after wrestling with them for 30 seconds, I couldn’t get the gun free!

At the end of the classroom session, we moved over into the gun range to take six shots at a paper target. This is the part of the course that I think could be done differently in the future. We were tested two at a time, and were prompted to step up to the range, load the pistol and begin firing. This was not an issue for me as I’ve had experience with handguns in the past, but you could tell some students were kind of freaking out because it was their first experience handling a firearm. Nowhere in the course had we practiced proper loading and gripping of the gun, or how to stand while holding it. So I sympathized with the students who were being prompted to do all of that in a limited time window with little instruction. To make matters possibly more stressful, the second round of shooting was done in “double tap” style. And while I certainly enjoyed channeling my inner Woody Harleson, I could see that this exercise freaked out some new students even more. Several were closing their eyes - something you definitely don’t want to be doing in a self-defense situation.

I also realize that the range offers other courses focused heavily on proper gun handling. However, if a goal of the concealed carry course is to get the average person more comfortable with handling a gun for self-defense purposes, perhaps a gun handling and shooting class should be required first?

Based on this experience, I’ll definitely consider additional classes this range offers, and maybe even a membership as well. This club is within spitting distance of a location I’m already at several times a week, so from an ease-of-access perspective, it’s a no-brainer.

Here’s how my “double tap” round went. If I had been shooting zombies, this one would still be lumbering towards me. But still, I think I’m getting the basic idea:

At this point, I’m ready to complete the additional paperwork required to get my permit, and turn it in at the sheriff’s office. From there, the permit should be issued in about 30 days. In the meantime I’m going to do some research on handguns to figure out which one might be a good fit for my needs.

Well, my wife has created an expensive, flying monster - actually, three of them.

At the end of 2021, I went flying at iFly Minneapolis for the first time, and loved it so much again I came back for another round two days later. After seeing the pictures and videos from those experiences, my sons Cameron and Atticus expressed interest as well, so this past weekend we headed out to iFly Minneapolis for their maiden flights.

My sons have extremely different interests and hobbies, and honestly, cannot get along for more than five minutes at a time. So as a dad, I was cautiously excited that this might be something the three of us could enjoy together. On our drive to iFly, that excitement quickly turned into concern when I started doing some quick mental math on what it would cost me if they both started wanting to do this on a regular basis.

We got checked in at the front desk, then fitted for our flight gear. I have to say, we looked pretty sharp:

As we waited to be ushered into the training room, the boys were in different places emotionally. My older son, Cameron, had been 100% psyched about this experience from the minute I had told him we were going, but my youngest son Atticus had some reservations. I could tell he was nervous because he was a little bit quiet (he’s never, ever quiet) as he studied the current group of students doing their flights.

Our instructor brought us into a training room to watch the short safety video. Atticus watched with quiet intensity. When it was over, our instructor came into the room to review the hand signals we would use while in the tube. I was so proud of Atticus for shouting out correct answers to all the questions. I could tell he was taking this seriously and wanted to do his best.

We got our earplugs in and helmets on, and were escorted to the room on the side of the tube to line up for our flights. My son Cameron went first and had what my wife would call “a big dumb smile” the whole time. To see him light up like that is one of those moments that, as a parent, you forget about how much a thing costs because there isn’t a dollar value you can place on that level of joy:

I took my turn next, and got lowered to the floor of the tube to resume work on specific skills. Per the video below, I’m trying to gain better control of left and right turns, as well as moving up and down and back and forth. I’m getting the hang of it, but still feeling like I’m an airplane constantly seconds away from a crash landing. It helps having videos like these so I can see where to make small corrections towards better flight control:

Last up was my youngest, Atticus. He actually came with me during my second iFly trip and was pondering joining me for a flight, but ultimately decided to pass. However, once he saw the trainers doing front and back flips, he changed his mind again and wanted to join me, but by that time it was too late. This time, however, he was all in - and judging by his expression, all business:

When he came out of the tube, he was all smiles. He sat down next to me on the bench and gave me a hug while he continued to beam. I had to laugh because even though in the waiting room you can’t hear anything, both sons kept tapping me continuously, wanting desperately to tell me all about their awesome experience.

We lined up a “high flight” for each boy’s second ride, and I loved watching them smile even bigger and wider as they sailed up high in the tube while twirling around in circles, Superman style. As they awaited their third and final ride, Atticus started tapping me on the shoulder and flashing me a peace sign followed by two “zero” signs. I gave him a gesture indicating I was confused. I thought maybe he was asking for a two-minute ride by flashing me “2-0-0.” He leaned forward and shouted loudly with a big grin, “TWO HUNDRED MORE TIMES!”

And while I would’ve loved to be able to take us all on another 200 rides, our adventure for the night had unfortunately come to a close. Suffice to say, I think it’s safe to say that we’ll be back again soon. I was encouraged to setup a Tunnelflight profile, which will allow the iFly instructors to vouch for my progress and help me advance to the next levels of flight. I'm definitely interested in keeping the skills progression going, especially after seeing my final flight of the night below, which I think demonstrates a little improvement!

Just two days after my first iFly adventure, I went back for more! I found out that the 10-pack of rides I purchased during my first visit has to all be consumed in one future visit, so I bought a "return flyer" pack of three flights from the iFly Web site. Note to self: returning flights are cheaper than your maiden flight, but you still get the best discounts by buying flights in person.

This time I got to work on some new skills! As you'll see in the video below, the instructor brought me to the ground and worked on teaching me hand tilts to get my body to turn left and right. He also showed me how to move my body up and down, as well as side to side.

Even though it is an extra charge, I'm glad I bought this video off the iFly Web site. I can see now, after a few repeat viewings, that I wasn't fully understanding the instructor's instructions to get my body to move the right way. Watching this video, as well as the ones from tunnelflight.com, are getting me more prepared for session 3, which I've scheduled for next weekend. This time I'm bringing my two boys along as well. I'm excited for them to experience the sensation of flying, and also afraid of the inevitable dent in my wallet that will follow if either of these guys decides they want to take up flying as a hobby!