How to entertain yourself in bad weather

The weather for the last month has been mostly awful, as it was for a week in late November. Low ceilings, flurries, flurries, flurries, wind. We did entertain ourselves with some crosswind landings yesterday, which was great practice, but the real fun during the bad weather periods has been working on some of my instrument time in the simulator!

The simulator is harder to fly than the real plane, in terms of the responsiveness of the controls, but the stakes are a lot lower! At one point, I put the "plane" into a spiral dive and my instructor just clicked something on the control board and I was saved. For one lesson, we set the departure airport as Victoria, BC. For another, we flew out of LAX, although soon after take-off, we were completely in the clouds. I practiced scanning the instruments and making small corrections to keep the plane upright and flying straight. I eventually learned how to recognize and recover from unusual attitudes so my instructor didn't have to just bail me out with the computer settings. I also learned to use radio navigation instruments. It was very cool and interesting and I could see myself getting better at it. It's a helpful way to learn, a lot cheaper than the real plane, and a great option for those days when leaving the ground just isn't going to happen.