The Day of NOT

Forgive me while I have a little cheese with my whine for awhile, but I promise it ends better than it starts. ;)

This morning I had a flight from 8-10 at Glenndale, then from 10:30-2 at Kokomo. Except the weather wasn't cooperating at 8 a.m., so I had to push him back to 9 a.m., which gave us just one hour in which to fly before I had to leave so I could beat it the 30 minutes over to Kokomo to make my next lesson. I was going to miss lunch, so I cut my lesson short, to only .7, hit a McDonald's and grabbed a breakfast sandwich, and raced out to Kokomo, making it two minutes late, and...he wasn't there yet. Perfect, I think! I sit and wait, and wait, which is odd as he's usually earlier than I am. Thirty minutes later I've tried to reach him to no avail, I've been stood up, so I leave and head back to Glenndale to pick up my glasses. I'm halfway there and Steve calls-we're doing lunch back at Kokomo. I make it back to Kokomo after almost an hour of driving around, and I swear to you, I was behind a car, truck, tractor, or other vehicle going 35-45 in a 50-55 mph zone everywhere I went. It became a joke to me. I'd pass one and another would turn in front of me. I'd turn at a light or stop sign and catch up to a pickup hauling a water tank thing. Without fail! It was a conspiracy to keep me 20 mph under the speed limit apparently... I do eventually make it back to Kokomo, and spend the next two hours waiting for this, that or the other thing. Make a pointless drive to Greentown and back. Finally I get home and Kaylee packs her bag, I pack my bag, and I start to unwind.

When I got home, I told Kaylee I was going to give myself a little quiet time because I was starting to be in a really unpleasant mood and it sure wasn't anything to do with her and I didn't want to be cranky at her. She came up and gave me a big hug and said "I'm so glad that even though you're feeling cranky you can still be loving to me." She's such a sweetie sometimes!

And then the news came in from Oshkosh. Our first round of guys made it up there this afternoon with trailers, only to find that the campground was flooded and campers couldn't set up. So trailers were lined up on the hard surface road, waiting for...well, dryness. Or an idea. Or a plan. The EAA folks were freaked out and didn't know what to tell people to do, they basically just took the camping money and said "good luck". We had at least one trailer parked at a JC Penny parking lot for awhile because they had nowhere else to put it. I started looking up and Steve started calling the nearby campgrounds to see if there was any place dry we could put people at least for the next day or two. Options are good, and rather than sitting there on your thumb, you keep working the problem until a reasonable solution is achieved, something Steve is always excellent at doing. Then Oshkosh closed down all airplane parking on the grass (which is pretty much everywhere). Meanwhile their website doesn't give a hint about the water problems, which seems decidedly not right to me. Our folks weren't sure if they should turn around and come home or not, but some of us rented trailers, and we're paying for them whether we go or not, so we joked about driving them back here to Kokomo and camping out for the week. Warbirds is under water, our campground is soggy, and right now we don't have a dry place to park the T-6 should I bring it up there. The Mustang area is a little more dry, but they are also expecting a big storm tomorrow night, and rain for the next couple of days in fact, and that on top of the already saturated area is just a problem. So I left my toothbrush out of my bag and got comfy.

Jim Z. made it up to Kokomo tonight, and we had dinner out with him, Nathan & Tre and the kids, and us. Some good crab legs and a half of a Chocolate Thunder from Down Under will make anyone's day improve. ;) We learned that the guys did get to put the trailers right off the road, into the grass a bit, and that at least two of the trailers are almost double the size of the ones we actually ordered-for the same price. Being right by the road means a lot of traffic, but it also means that we won't get really muddy either, because we won't have to traverse the mud bog lanes and roads to get to our trailers. We'll be far from The Hill the kids like to play on, but we already packed their bikes, and that'll be some good exercise for them of an evening. We're not going to be leaving tomorrow, at least Nathan and I aren't in the planes, because we don't have a good place to park planes on the grass yet, and because the lady in charge of warbird parking recommends people wait until Saturday to come up due to a storm that's supposed to come through Friday. Saturday is calling for 60% chance of more storms too for that matter...more rain. So, I don't know when we'll actually head out. We are playing it by ear for now, but in the meantime we are packed, laundry is done, house is almost ready, planes are almost ready, the guys driving up will have a few more options of when to head out, and we will do what we do-have a good time once we get there. Temps are looking really nice for the week-not too hot, thankfully, cooler than Kokomo is supposed to be in fact. I'll take it. :)

Oh, I kept a copy of the paper, but here are a few more photos on the online version of a small article in our local paper by one of the reporters I took up in the T-6 the day before our July 3rd air show...

(p.s. How bad would it be to let him know there are two fairly grievous grammar errors in his article?)