Truth is Stranger than Fiction...or Is It?

Also known as "I couldn't make this stuff up." You'll see.

The day started with us all getting up extra early for Kaylee's field trip at school today. Her class went to the Indianapolis Children's Museum, and they were leaving about 30-40 minutes early. On my way home from dropping her off, as the car I was behind passed an intersection, a black car I couldn't see turned right into me. He apparently hadn't seen me either, and he just was going for it to cross the intersection. I slammed on the brakes and drove off into the grass, and he missed me by...very little. Fortunately nobody was behind me and I had somewhere to go to get out of his way. And at least my reflexes are still good. More interesting to me, I actually screamed. I just don't generally do that unless a close encounter with a spider is happening, and that's usually more a high-pitched strangled sound. ;) Since I didn't yell when the Oldsmobile was hit (also by someone pulling in front of me at an intersection by the way), I figured it was more the trauma of the idea of somebody hitting my Chrysler. ;) In all seriousness, I was glad Kaylee wasn't with me, because it took her most of a year to recover from being in the Oldsmobile when it was hit, and it wasn't even hit that hard. For months every time I applied the brakes just a little harder than normal or made a turn just a little more sharp than normal, she got scared, and we had conversations about fires and cars and accidents forEver.

After I dropped her off, I came back home. I was planning on waiting for Steve to finish up and then get ready myself. What actually happened was I fell fast asleep. I've certainly been more tired than normal lately. Better get back to taking my vitamins I guess. :)

I ran errands, then went out to Glenndale so Chuck could fly me to Kokomo so I could bring the Decathlon back into Glenndale. Convoluted, but that's how many of our airplane swaps go. :) We got that done, then went to Applebees for lunch with the two Steves, Nathan, his brother and friend, and Chuck.

After lunch was my "encounter" of the different kind. I flew three people from an organization around to a few places in Tipton and Howard counties, and they photographed various fields and areas. They were from "Mufon", which stands for "Mutual UFO Network". You heard me. They are investigating the "boom" that happened last Wednesday night, and they do not believe the official version that it was an F-16 sonic boom. Sonic booms are double booms and this was one boom, and they investigated the local air bases and found that all military aircraft were down and parked prior to the boom happening, though one of the air bases claims it was their F-16. They did a satellite search of the area's fields, and found a few things they thought looked odd, went to several of them in person, and then wanted to fly over them and get some aerial photos. So that is what I did. One of them is a student pilot with about 100 hours of flight time and an aerial photographer, the second is retired Air Force, and the third was his wife. We were full of fuel and had four of us, so I said I was not going to be going as slowly, steeply, or low as I otherwise might, and everyone agreed that was a good plan. I flew over the pre-determined areas, and then when they found what they were looking for (areas with black burn marks, circles, a hole in the field, etc.), I would do a fairly tight right-hand circle in a slip/skid over the area so they could get the photos they needed.

When we met, the gentlemen introduced themselves with their credentials, and had a laptop where we went over the mission on the ground ahead of time. The one asked if I'd ever flown for aerial photography before, I said yes, and then decided since they had given credentials, I'd let them know they weren't going up with a student pilot or something, and I told them mine, too. I'm well aware that I don't "Look" like a pilot, and in fact have gotten some great reactions over the years from customers who didn't know ahead of time who their pilot was going to be. Remind me to share some of those sometime. ;) Anyway, these guys were fine, and after we briefed, we headed on out and did our thing.

The two in the back didn't have headsets, but after I landed, I heard the gentleman up front turn around and say "See, I told you women make better pilots than men." Apparently they'd had a conversation about it prior to coming out after I had called them back to set up the time. They guy in back said "I've flown with both men and women who were good and not so good." Front said "Yes, but women just have more finesse with the controls." Back agreed then said that men were more likely to get themselves killed by hot dogging. I took off my headset and piped in with "There are timid and aggressive men and timid and aggressive women, but if one was doing a general characterization, I'd say I've found that men are more aggressive and have more difficulty asking for clarification if they don't 'get' something, and women are easier on the controls but don't always have the confidence they need to have if something out of the ordinary happens. But those are just generalizations and people don't fit inside that all the time." It was funny, when I rolled out on landing, Back said "Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for flying Laura Air. We the judges would like to award that landing a 9.7, 9.8 and 9.9 respectively! Nicely done indeed!"

Actually, we had a good time. They have said that they would definitely like to use me again in the future for any other unusual occurrences in the area, which they say happen at least every Spring, so I presume I'll see them again.

So, today I flew several UFO hunters around central Indiana so they could take photographic evidence of unusual occurrences happening in our area. What did you do today? ;)

At least life is rarely dull around here...