Windy One

The winds started picking up right around 8 a.m., and by the time I flew at 10, they were gusting up to 26 knots. Lots of fun. :)

Kaylee hung out with me at the airport through lunch, after which we came home and she played in the sprinkler for awhile while I did some work. I took Kaylee to her gymnastics class, and her teacher said that the next time they do testing week, she'll probably pass her cartwheels as long as she does them like she did today. Finally! :)

I got up my photos from the Refueling Mission finally, what few that I did take. You only get a couple minutes in the "pod" because there are twenty-two people all wanting a look during a 30-40 minute refuelling shot, so you have to be polite and move on. That reminds me. There was one guy on board, I don't even know his name, but he was That Guy. He sat up in the cockpit behind the pilots, taking the 'prized' seat, for the entire first half of the flight. People were coming in and out, trying to see and hear, and he just sat there. He did the same thing when the refueling mission was going on, staying down in the boom pod much longer than anyone else. He was The Guy who brought his own set of headsets to the plane and walked around the entire time wearing them as ear protection, even though there was nowhere to actually plug them in and listen to anything. He was The Guy who walked around with that strut, that "I'm the Man" strut. There were probably a dozen pilots on board that plane, but he was The Guy who wanted to make sure that everybody around knew he was The Pilot. He was also The Guy who had a disapproving look on his face when I walked past him to sit up front and watch the landing from behind the pilots. I would bet he felt that the seat should go to a Deserving Pilot, aka Him, not just to a (he assumes) non-pilot just because they're a girl. :) Anyway, I later found out that I wasn't the only one who noticed Mr. Seat Hog SwaggerPants, which made me laugh a little, though not as much as finding out he's still a student pilot. I'm glad that he's excited about aviation, and I think it's kind of cute, but I hope he learns a little...humility. Not my problem, of course, but it was kind of amusing.

Something that is my problem, however, is the UFO guys. While the Discovery Channel was willing to hop in the plane and just do it, these guys from Los Angeles want us to add them and their parent company to our insurance and purchase $10 million dollars worth of liability insurance to cover them all in the plane. They wanted to know if we had parachutes on board, what safety features we had, etc. In a C-172 by the way. All this for what amounts to a 30-40 minute sight-seeing flight and two hours of my time. It started off okay, but by the end of today I'd had two conference calls, a dozen emails, and one giant headache. I don't need the money that bad, so I am getting ready to inform them of the unavailability of myself and my aircraft for their show. I would like to help them out, and I certainly don't want to cause them any additional headaches in trying to come up with what they need, but tv show opportunity or not, it's like this: either they can get their own insurance and deal with it that way, or they can find another place to get an airplane and pilot; sometimes it's as easy as that...