Now THAT was fun!

I'm home, and I'm TIRED, but I'm still up too late. Of course. :)

Well, Saturday night, Kaylee came into our room at about 2:30 a.m., which was only about 30 minutes after we'd gone to bed, and I hadn't gotten to sleep yet. She was coughing, snuffling, and having troubles with allergies. So I got her medicine, and I waited until 3 something a.m., and she still was kicking moving around, climbing on me, not able to sleep, etc., so rather than fighting her to go to her own bed, *I* went to her bed! Unfortunately I was up too long, and I couldn't get to sleep. I don't know exactly what time I finally passed out, but it was very early in the morning. I was still sleeping when Steve came in and told me Nathan had called twice. So I called him back from Kaylee's room, and he said he was ready to give it a shot to get into Gatlinburg Airport, wheels-up in about an hour. I hadn't packed yet, but I boogied and got up, showered, packed a small duffel bag (the Mustang doesn't exactly have a huge storage area), and away I went. Luckily he was delayed a bit by having to go get a jacket, so I got there first. I got the tug started and got it hooked up to the tow bar, the first time I'd done that, but then he arrived so I had him pull it out of the hangar.

I hopped in the back to perform my duties of GIB (Girl In Back), hooked up the GPS, the parachute, the seat harness, etc. and away we went. The weather was beautiful here for once, but the weather in Tennessee was NOT looking the best. Sure enough, we got FIFTEEN MINUTES out from Gatlinburg and had to turn around and stop in London, KY. There was just a wall of white, no visibility over the mountains there. We waited in London for awhile, where a "Murphy's Law" thing happened. Nathan was trying to get gas at a "serve yourself" pump. It takes 5 minutes to enter all the info it wants, so he hooks up the grounding cable, does all that, gets the pump over to the wing...and nothing happens. So he has to go re-enter all that info. On his way over to re-enter the info, the grounding cable snaps off and zips back up onto the spool. About 10 minutes later he Finally could get the pump working. He was beginning to be not so amused. :) After about 90 minutes-2 hours there, I went to look at radar, and it was actually worse. The showers and storms were growing again instead of diminishing like they had been. We decided (after staring at that for 20 minutes) that we simply were not going to make it. So about 20 minutes out, we had to decide to go all the way back home. He called Mint and the guys down there and told them he wasn't going to make it in. We took off, and looked around, and gee, it looked kind of clear, actually. So he asked if I wanted to go "take a look", and I said "sure". It was totally clear behind us with nothing coming in there, so we had a definite "out". The clouds moved in, but the rain stayed away--but I could see a big cell right on top of Gatlinburg, which I told him. I thought there was no way. There shouldn't have been a way. We kept going, and got within THIRTY SECONDS of the airport--within 2-3 miles. We could SEE the runway. But there was this scud layer right over it. And rain should have been on top of us but wasn't. So we circled repeatedly, and every go around we could see the runway even better, because of a hole in the clouds that was moving. Finally we had our opening, a full shot at the runway, and we took it. We came on down, and on base I heard on the radio "1451D, are you with me?" and Nate came back and said "Yes I am". Later I found out the response to that was something along the lines of "Holy...!" Nobody thought we were coming, didn't think we'd get in. When we landed, everybody stood outside clapping, which was fun. We barely got out of the plane when down came the rain. The Mustang got soaked, but we were just glad to have been able to safely arrive and not have to head home! There was a pilot briefing that covered what time things would start the next day, what positions planes were going to be in, what film shots they wanted to capture, safety rules, etc. which was pretty interesting. That night we wiped down the plane, put it up in the hangar, and eventually headed back to the cabin on the mountain at Gatlinburg. A beautiful cabin like the one we stayed at with the Wild family, same area even. We had a fish dinner that was fresh-caught by the cook, and it was really good. Later I took a soak in the Jacuzzi bath tub in one of the suites. Now THAT was nice. :) Afterwards I laid in bed and listened to mellow tunes (James Taylor, Billy Joel, etc.) on my iPod until I got tired enough to go to sleep. It was only 10:30 when I shut everything off. And before anybody passes out at the early bedtime (especially since it's 1:30 a.m. now), we had to get up at O-Dark-Thirty.

I set the alarm which someone thought would be funny to put clear across the room for 6:00 a.m. And from about 4 a.m. on, I woke up every 15-30 minutes trying to make sure I woke up before my alarm went off. I just knew it would be loud and scare me to death, so I kept waking up most of the night. Finally I got up and shut it off at 5:53 a.m., and got ready for the day. We left the cabin at 6:30 a.m., before the sun was up, and headed to the Gatlinburg airport.

When we got there, the Gunny and his "Mail Call" crew were just arriving, introductions were made, and then the crew got to work installing a "Lipstick Cam" in the back seat of Nathan's Mustang so they could capture footage of Gunny in flight. There was another pilot briefing to fine-tune the details, and then after some minor repair to the sound system in the Mustang, they flights began. I stayed on the ground and watched, took photos, hung out, chatted a bit, enjoyed the fresh air, LOVED the sound of those engines.

Nathan took the Gunny up twice, once before and once after lunch. After lunch they went up and did some Fighter Pilot moves (some aerobatics) and Gunny came back with a smile. I doubt they'll air it out of respect for other stuff, but I heard him say that was the best plane/plane ride he'd ever had. :) They got some excellent photos and film footage too, I saw some of the photos. Nathan gave Gunny a P-51 jacket just for him, and then the crew did interviews with the pilots and Gunny one at a time. They also did an interview with Frank Luckman, an actual WW II fighter pilot who used to "drive" the P-47's. He is one sharp man, too, and very kind. It was an honor to meet him.

After Nate took up a couple of the Producers of the Mail Call show, he gassed up and it was time for us to head on home back to Kokomo. I got to be the 'autopilot' for the trip home, which was much fun, of course. :) It flies very...smoothly. I don't know how to put it. It's very responsive, and it feels so different...like you are going slowly, until you look at your GPS and realize your ground speed is 249 knots. Something else! And I will grin at the roar of that engine as long as I can hear it!

On our way into Kokomo we did a pass at Glenndale to say hello, caught every bug in the county on the plane in the process. Got back to the hangar, unloaded the plane, put it away, and cleaned it up...got a drink and dragged ourselves to our respective homes. And Nathan gave me a Mail Call token that's pretty neat too, I'll have to take a photo of it...

Oh, the show will air as the last show of the 8th season, this spring! It's the 100th show. They'll be giving us a dvd of the show probably in December (which I can't believe!) and also a dvd of a lot of the raw footage they took of the ground, interviews, flight stuff, etc. I stayed out of the way for most of it, but they did film the Mustang taking off with me in the back at the end, so maybe it'll leak into the raw footage if I'm lucky. :)

The pictures I have are uploading at www.laurastants.com under "Fun Flying Photos". Four new pages, with just a few more to come. Some are "just" flying shots for those not interested in that. There are also people shots, etc.

All in all, that was a rather exciting 24 hours! Now I need to hit the bed so I can pretend to get up okay tomorrow, early, for Kaylee's school. *Yawn*