Air Show Away

Tuesday morning dawned very early, and I do mean VERY early. It was not only still dark when I got up, it was still dark when we took off, wheels-up just after 7 a.m. Let me add that up for you. It's a 20-minute drive to the airport. Once you get there you need about 15-20 minutes to pack up the plane, pull it out of the hangar, preflight it, get everybody in it, get your clearance and get off the ground. And let's not forget the getting all the bags, two adults, two cats and a child all ready and/or out the door at home. Yep! I woke up on my own (internal alarm) at 4:41 a.m. and Steve was already up. I laid there for awhile longer drifting in and out before I finally got up for good myself. Amazingly enough, once I was up, I was actually awake.

It was a beautiful flight down; we watched the sun rise over the clouds. The kids had a terrific set-up; they have no idea how lucky they are! Steve set them up with their own intercom system in the back of the plane, so they could talk to each other over headsets without being able to hear us, and without us being able to hear them. That way they didn't have to worry about being quiet when we were trying to listen to controllers, and, well, we didn't have to listen to them either. ;) They had a nest set up in the very back of the Baron, which has a lot more room than you might think. They had blankets and pillows back there, a dvd player, and they both brought their Nintendo DS games and they'd wirelessly play the same game at the same time on them. They could move freely about back there and be comfortable and entertained for hours. (By the way-there is a big door back there, the baggage door, and yes, I locked it every time, lest anybody get any crazy ideas and try to open that door in flight.) Basically we would take off with everybody buckled into their seats, and then once we got to cruising altitude the "seat belt" sign would go off and they'd go back there and talk and play. It worked well for us all!

We stopped at Knoxville on our way down to fuel up and grab a snack, and I took the next leg into Stuart, FL. It was over three hours, and the traffic was getting pretty busy thanks to the air show, but it was really uneventful. In fact, I was trying to stay awake a little bit at this point. :) We did hear one controller say that people had to avoid a certain area because there was an airplane who had declared an emergency for fire. I still wonder what happened and hope they got down safely. I'll have to go hunt that up, but hopefully I won't find a thing because that means they did indeed get down okay. There's a circumstance that will get every pilot's immediate attention.

I landed at Stuart and Nathan got a courtesy car and drove us to his Mom's house, where we picked her up and took her out to lunch. When we got back to her house, we just relaxed on her porch and watched the water and relaxed for awhile before our next leg into Bartow, FL. We went VFR into Bartow because to go in IFR is a bigger hassle-you have to have a time slot ahead of time, etc. So we just scooted over on our own. There was a ton of traffic, and we played "spot that traffic" for awhile. Nathan saw two first, I saw two first, and several went by that neither of us actually saw. (We know it's there because the airplane has a traffic alert system on it). We also had scattered rain showers around. Nothing exciting, but I took a couple of pictures because I know some of you might be interested in seeing what rain looks like from the air. :)

We arrived at Bartow at 6 pm, got our rental car, got checked into our hotel, rested for a little while, and then went to dinner at a little place in downtown Lakeland called "Harry's". We were all ready for some real sea food. Kaylee and I split a 2 pound order of King Crab Legs, Jamie had crab cakes, Steve had the crab legs as well, we had crab spring rolls, it was just a crab kind of evening. The service was a little slow that night but the food was quite good, and we all agree it's a place to go to again next year.

By the time we got back to the hotel, it was late, we'd all been up for a very long time, and we'd traveled all day. Steve and Kaylee watched tv for a little while, but I just put on jammies and I was GONE. Out. I think it was like 10:30 or so...one of the earliest bedtimes I'd had for a very long time. I slept like a rock, too. Waking up at 4:41 will do that to me. :)