Success!

We made it, Finally!

We got up this morning, later than we intended, probably since we were up past 1:30 a.m. last night. I didn't have enough time to get ready for breakfast, so Steve and Kaylee ran out to the pancake breakfast at Dawn & Charlie's house, while I finished packing all the bags, watering the plants, turning off everything electrical, changing the cat little box thing, refilling their food and water, shutting doors, etc. etc. Then I called and got the weather for a trip from Kokomo to Cape Girardeau and on to Iowa, filed IFR flight plans, and threw my shoes on in time for Steve and Kaylee to get back from breakfast. Decided I'd best have breakfast since I didn't know the next time I'd be eating (good planning by the way!). We headed out to Kokomo, filled up the Seneca both with bags and fuel, and headed off to Cape. It was about a 2-hour flight. We took off and tried to do the flight VFR because of Kaylee's ear. We wanted to stay as low as possible, and because of the clouds we'd have needed to go up to 6000' to stay out of icing, etc. Ceilings were supposed to be 1500' to 2000' AGL, which isn't great, but not that bad either. We took off, I got up to about 1100' and realized this wasn't going to work. At 1800' I just turned back towards Kokomo and called Grissom to pick up the IFR clearance. It was too scuddy. I climbed up super slowly so as to protect Kaylee's ear as best I could. We picked up some icing from 4000-4600', but not enough to be exciting. Cycled the boots and they still worked. :) When we were about 50 miles out, I called up center and asked if we could have a long, slow descent due to a passenger with ear issues. They gave me the slow descent then asked me if I wanted to declare an emergency or just have priority handling. I wanted to say "LORD no, it's just a five-year-old girl with an ear infection!" I said "negative on the emergency, thanks for the descent." and we descended at 200 feet per minute for the next 50 miles. Long and slow, but it seemed to help. Kaylee's 'bad' ear popped, but her good ear didn't, and now her good ear is plugged! But at least she doesn't seem to be in any pain.

As soon as we landed, we got the bags out, filled up with fuel again, I grabbed some snacks from the vending machine, and headed back out in the Seneca to DNS, or Denisen, IA. I flew right over Creston and thought of my friend Angie. :) Unfortunately it took me almost 3 hours to get there, the headwinds were SO strong. My groundspeed in the Seneca was a whopping 143 knots. It was ridiculous!!

Finally I arrived, and immediately went up with the new owner of the Seneca and his instructor/maintenance man. I told the MEI that I thought he was a brave man to be willing to get in the back of an unfamiliar plane with an unfamiliar instructor up front and a student pilot not multi rated in the left seat. I'm not sure I would have done it! We flew around for about 20 minutes. We came back in and landed, and immediately hopped into our new Saratoga. I sat right seat while the previous owner flew us back into his grass strip. The sun had set and it was getting dark and he doesn't have lights on his 2000' grass strip, so we were in a bit of a rush. In other words, my checkout in the airplane consisted of "here's how you change frequencies, here's how you set a transponder code, and here's how you go direct on the GPS." Good 'nuff. We were coming in to land, and he looked over at me and asked if I would be comfortable flying out of his grass strip without lights, and I said yes. He said I must have a lot of experience, and asked how many hours I had. I said I had almost 5,000 hours, and he did a double-take and stared at me for a second before saying "How did someone in their mid-twenties end up with almost 5,000 hours?" I laughed and said I'd started flying at 19, but that I was almost 35 now. He responded with a surprised "Wow, I'd have sworn you were in your mid-twenties!" Thank you, thank you very much. ;)

Anyway, he landed on his runway, taxiied to the end, hopped out, I crawled into the left seat, turned the plane around, and on the getting-pretty-dark-no-lights-2000'-grass strip did my first takeoff in it. The runway is upsloped so that you can't see very far down it to start with, and at the end of the runway is a bunch of dirt/mud that you would not want to get into unless you plan on flipping over. No obstacles of any note though. Picked up my IFR back to Cape, and cruised home on a beautiful clear evening at 9000' with a groundspeed of 183 knots. Not. Bad. Once I figured out the basics on the GPS units, I put it on autopilot and finished reading my Dean Koontz book (Brother Odd), then popped in my iPod and enjoyed tunes the rest of the way home. St. Louis looked beautiful lit up at night, and it was a smooth, beautiful evening. Did my first landing in it back into Cape. It's a good plane. It flies well, it's well-equipped, everything seems to be working very well on it, it looks good, nice interior. I think it'll make a nice addition to the Glenndale/Kokomo Fleet. :)

So, after about 7 hours of flight time, I made it back to Cape, was picked up by Steve and Ernie, and made it back to mom & Ernie's in time for ham and mac & cheese and Diet Mt. Dew. I was wired, but now I'm getting pooped. Kaylee's been playing hard of course, and she's crashed too!

Not quite how I planned to spend my Saturday, but it works. The Seneca is gone. The Saratoga is here. Mission Accomplished...Success! Now, on to Christmas!