First REAL Lesson

I meet my new instructor at the airport Saturday at 8:00a.m. A large man with a very friendly attitude named Lance. I get to be lucky enough to fly a Cessna 172N. OK, minor refresher course over P-factor, and engine torque, and how they effect turning tendencies of the aircraft in flight at high angles of attack. Preflight, let's go. I'm still not running the radios as this is a freaky kind of dialect I just haven't learned about yet. We head out to the South East practice area. Mind you ,I haven't yet learned that aircraft will not fall out of the sky if you chop the throttle. Lance looks at me and says, "Gimmie 25 degrees of flaps and fly at 60 knots." OK second notch of flaps, and 60 knots. My controls are getting mushy and I'm really having to use a lot of rudder input. "Now, gimme full flaps and 50 knots." Hell, He's a CFI, he knows a lot more about this than I do. Full flaps, 50 knots. "Turn to this heading, turn to that heading." OK so far, so good. "Now, I want you to pull the throttle to idle, and maintain your altitude". Excuse me? Did he just say idle? "We are going to do a power off stall." I just met this guy and he hates me so much, he's trying to kill me on our first lesson? "Wait for the break, Wait for the break. Full Throttle! Flaps 25" I just did my first stall! It turns out to be rather anti-climatic. OK, so we work on a little more slow flight and call it a day. While flying back to the airport, we talk a little about the lesson and how I had seen first hand about the aerodynamic factors that keep an airplane in the air. I got to fly the pattern all the way to final, learning my power settings and flap extensions. on final, Lance tells me to draw an imaginary cross on the windscreen and aim it for the numbers on the runway. Lance takes over to land about two hundred feet out. Good gosh, this guy can land smooth. We had a quick debrief. Next lesson would be starting maneuvers. Whoo Hoo! Steep turns, this is how I'm gonna make a living!