said "This morning came before I was ready." Welcome back to school! :) She had her breakfast, got dressed, grabbed her back pack full of school supplies and was on her way quickly. Today was only half a day. You know, that whole "let's lessen the shock of this whole school thing by starting off midway through the week with half a day, first" thing. She walked in happily, walked out happily, the teacher and administrator were still standing, and all in all it was a successful first day. One down, 179 to go. ;)I spent a good part of the day doing that thing I generally try not to discuss and thus bore everybody with--work. Stuffing/ sealing/ stamping/ mailing envelopes, several runs to various places, finding and ordering appropriate medical supplies for a couple of SMA folks, figuring out a few problems, doing a little accounting, etc. My two flights for today were cancelled, one for fog and one for illness. I spent a little time trying to fix my email to no avail too, so I suppose I'm going to have to really dig into that tonight. Steve is flying pretty much all day from about 10 a.m. through to about 9 p.m. tonight, so he's busy too. My day has tapered off only because of the flight cancellations-otherwise my last flight would have gotten me home around 9-9:30 tonight as well. That's good though, because this way I can get Kaylee to bed appropriately early for school tomorrow. Although getting her to bed isn't the problem--getting her to sleep is. :)
Kaylee got a letter from her Grandma today, on her first day back to school, and she loved that. Getting mail is one of the things she really gets a kick out of, though she needs to work on writing back better!
Some statistics came in last night from Oshkosh:
Total Attendance: 578,000, a 12% increase from 2008
Total Aircraft: More than 10,000
Total showplanes: 2,652 including 1,023 homebuilt aircraft, 1,007 vintage airplanes, 355 warbirds, 116 ultralights, 99 seaplanes, 36 aerobatic aircraft and 16 rotorcraft
Commercial exhibitors: 750
International visitors: 2,182 registered from 75 nations
Total estimated campers: Over 41,000
Media: 907 representatives from five countries
So those fields go from empty to over 41,000 campers in the period of days. Like I said, a city builds up around you. Seven hundred fifty exhibitors selling you things from jewelry to toys to avionics to flashlights to clothes to engines to simulators to, oh, well, everything. People from 75 different countries flying in for the event, and over 900 media reps from 5 countries. Nice. They don't call it the "Mecca of Aviation" for nothing. That's got to be a bear to organize and put on, and I can't even imagine the number of volunteers it takes to man it. You'd be surprised how many people it takes to run a small event successfully, let alone something of that scope...nor do I want to know what their liability/insurance policy looks like and costs! Plus, can you imagine if one of those big storms that moved through had a tornado in it? All those highly expensive, rare, sometimes one-of-a-kind airplanes in one place at one time? All those campers in a pop-up trailer park and tents? :O
There was a discussion recently online where someone asked if anyone else (they were all pilots) was scared of or nervous of flying. Just about everybody said they were, most said they were nervous or on edge before every single flight, and a good portion of them said things like "if you're not scared, it's time to quit". Well, then, I guess I should have quit before I began, because I was not scared when learning to fly and I haven't been scared to go fly and I don't really understand doing it if it makes you scared or nervous that much. Some of them were trying to make a point to not be complacent, but I don't have to be nervous to be alert and careful. Are they nervous every time they hop into their car to go somewhere? Man, I'd need Xanax and/or Pepto Bismol to live that way. There have been times I was nervous or on edge or a couple of times downright scared in an airplane, but it was the situation that was tense or not the best, not just going flying in general. The first time I ever went IFR by myself and I ended up with an unforecast icing problem and losing my airspeed indicator in the dark (early morning) IMC did it. Wondering if I'd bitten off more than I could chew on a mean crosswind once early on made me nervous. No weather equipment with lightning all over just hoping controllers don't turn you the wrong way made me tense. But sitting on the ground strapping in ready to launch on a perfectly good day? I guess it just surprised me a little bit. I don't think less of anyone who falls into that category, it just surprised me how many did. I'm sure it was encouraging to the original poster, who probably was a little afraid people would write back and say "Afraid?? No, are you crazy?!" :)
Time to get back to work-I have more things to order, more things to organize, mail to catch up on, an email account to try to fix, and Kaylee stuff to do with her...
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