Whew did I crash last night! Well, that's probably a poor choice of words around here. I was so tired I was having trouble keeping my eyes open from after dinner on, and finally I just gave up and crawled in bed. I've been waking up way early and running pretty busy, and it caught up to me last night I guess. :)
This morning I was awake by 6 a.m., we had French Toast and bacon and hash browns that Steve Tummers cooked up (and did a marvelous job as always!), and then Chuck took me out to the T-6 for Judgement Day. First Judy and I put on our flight suits and took a picture by the airplane, for posterity, since no-one was around to take our photo when we landed at Oshkosh the other day. Jon and Steve C. and AE cleaned up the T-6, detailing it down to the floorboards and the belly, making it shine for the judges. This year's judging day went much more efficiently than last year. (Do you remember last year? Boy I do!) Anyway, Chuck was able to drive us right up to the T-6, which I wouldn't have bet on in a hundred years, the guys had her all spit polished and ready to go, and the judges were even there in about 30 minutes. You just can't beat that. I had a time slot of 9 a.m. to noon, and they could come any time, and you have to be there when they come, especially on the last time slot of the day, or you don't get judged. It all just worked out perfectly. Steve, Jon and I got our photo taken in front of the plane as the "representatives" of the airplane, the judges complimented the plane after crawling all over checking it out, and I was back at (an empty) camp in under two hours.
While we were waiting, we are parked right by Runway 27, so we got to watch a bit of the "show" of pilots coming in to land. You see some good ones and you see some not so good ones and some just normal ones and some holy cow ones. I saw two light taildraggers have a little trouble, one of whom wasn't a groundloop by sheer luck or guardian angel. An RV came in 3-point, bounced his landing, and then waffled his stick back and forth while he went careening down the runway. At one point he came up on his nose and his tail swung and I thought it was all over but towing the bent bird off the side of the runway. But nope, it straightened out and he stopped and taxiied off, probably calling in for a change of shorts. There's nothing like pulling off a landing like that in front of thousands of fellow pilots, video cameras, cell phone cameras, fans, and officials. YouTube, here you come! :O
I spent a good portion of the day alone at the camp site, relaxing. I did some work, returned a few calls, returned some emails, did some SMA and some airport stuff, read a book, had some drinks, and just...chilled. Doing work in a trailer while airplanes bomb around over your head is much better than doing work at home. ;)
I ran a headset out to the Mustang. It was a sterile ramp, but I convinced them to let me up into the Mustang anyway. The problem was I had a skirt/short on, and you can't climb up onto or slide down off of the Mustang with bare skin. So I screeched my way down the flaps most ungracefully, after sticking my rear up in the air and my head down into the back seat most ungracefully to plug in the headset, after climbing up on the wing in a skirt thing most ungracefully. All in public with a pretty good audience. Oh well, my nickname wasn't "Grace" for nothing...I just hope nobody I know was out there with a camera.
We had "Campground Buffet Extraordinaire" for dinner tonight. That's where you clean out the fridge and have leftovers, all you can eat. :) For dessert AE made homemade vanilla ice cream, which I topped with nuts and chocolate chips, and THAT was tasty. A nice way to end the day...
Kaylee and Steve hit a bunch of stuff today while I was doing my thing. She climbed a rock wall, they went shopping, they went to check and see if she won a "Duggy" replica (big yellow airplane painted with a smile on its 'face'), and just had a nice time too. :)
Again, I'm sleepy, so forgive the disjointed, but we're doing just fine so far...
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