I ended up with 9.5 hours of flight time yesterday. In the morning I flew with a student for half hour or so, and then I got a call from a gent asking if I'd run him over to Richmond, asap. We knew I'd have to leave Richmond around 1 to get back to Kokomo in time for me to fill up the airplane and go be in St. Louis by 3:45. He ran late so we left Richmond around 1:20, and of all things had a tailwind heading west. I got fuel in the airplane, ran to the hangar and got another headset, hopped right back in the airplane and headed west to St. Louis to pick up a couple guys. Because of the tailwind in the wrong direction, instead of being 20-30 minutes late to pick them up, I arrived at exactly 3:46 p.m. Couldn't have made that one any more perfect. I didn't even get out of the plane and they were climbing in and away we went to Logansport. I didn't get out of the plane there either, dropped them off and I went to Kokomo. By now it is 6 p.m., and I have not had a single bite of food since last night's dinner, and you can't exactly drink anything when you're flying 4 hours straight either. Richmond didn't have a vending machine of all things. I didn't get a chance to get out at the other two airports, and I hadn't known the day was going to go like that so I hadn't packed my own snacks, so by the time I got back to Kokomo, my stomach was eating itself. You know those Snickers commercials where Aretha Franklin is complaining in the back seat of a car and the guy hands her a Snickers and says "Eat this" and she says "Why?" and he says "Because you always turn into a diva when you're hungry" with the tagline of something like "you're just not yourself when you're hungry"? That was me. ;) (I did get into town to grab a sandwich real quick when I got back to Kokomo that evening.)
The sequence of events of this day and the trip are such that it's sort of amazing that it all worked out exactly the way it did. First was the timing on the trips--I should have been half an hour late to St. Louis making them late to their meeting, but I wasn't due to the wrong-way-tailwind. But when I landed at St. Louis, the airplane didn't want to start. It wouldn't even turn over. This is bad. I tried four times or better with no success, shut everything off, sat there and contemplated my options, none of which were good, turned it back on, tried it "one more time", and boom, she fired. Didn't want to, but I caught it before it died and we were on our way. When I got to Logansport, instead of shutting down the airplane, I had them get out with it running--which I don't ever do. Once I landed back at Kokomo and shut it down, it never got started again. It started to once, but then it did that clicking noise with nothing turning, and from there it was over. Even with jumper cables and a Durango, she wasn't even trying to turn over. I was one push button away and one shut down away from all of us being stuck. So next I need to get back to St. Louis, but we don't have an airplane. Jon and Steve C come out to the airport at 7 in the evening and like a pit crew change out a voltage regulator, change out a battery, and do their best to get it running. When it becomes obvious that we're running out of time, Steve S. calls a guy I don't even know personally and asks him if it's okay if I borrow his nice airplane for 4 hours in the middle of the night. He says yes, but it's out of fuel and it's after hours. I call the after hours number and they say they'll be out soon. I get a text--my guys will be ready for pickup at 9:45 pm to go back to St. Louis. It's 8:50 now and I need to leave Kokomo by 9:25 in order to get there on time. Fuel truck arrives at 9:15, I get equipment and headsets and everything transferred over, and I start up the "new" airplane at 9:25, arriving at my destination in time for the guys to drive up, hop in and go. They had no idea, and I didn't tell them yet either, that it took 7 people (me, Steve C., Steve S., Nathan, Jon, fuel truck guy, and other airplane owner) over 2 hours of constant phone calls, effort, work, and/or coming out to the airport on a Tuesday evening, etc., just so that I could pull up at the exact right time and make it happen.
I also had weather come up. A nice blob of it out west that I wasn't sure I was going to beat out. Instead, it stayed just far enough away that I paralleled it most of the way there and most of the way home, too. I didn't see a drop.
So while all the...excitement...was a little tiring for everyone, I mostly found myself really grateful that everything worked out the way it did. It might have been down to the last possible minute, over and over and over, but somehow it managed to work just fine, and that last start we got out of it in St. Louis, boy...
I made it back to Kokomo early even, at 1:30 a.m., because now the tailwind was in the right direction-heading east. It took me until 2 to get everything put away, closed up, cleaned up, etc., which put me home at almost 2:30. I was still a little wound up and had been out of touch most of the day, so I stayed up until 3 and I was finally wound down enough to get some sleep.
While I was on the ramp at Kokomo and the guys were trying to fix the airplane, Kaylee called, and while the pit crew worked, I helped her out over the phone with her "Complete and Simple Predicates" homework sentences. Multi-tasking at its finest? ;)
Quite a day...
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Monday, August 29, 2011
Monday Monday
A student on their first cross country in about 9 months, second ever trip for them, ended up with a nice flat nose wheel tire on landing at their first stop. Fortunately they handled it just fine, but had to sit at the other airport for several hours waiting to have a mechanic look at it there, then waiting for us to send someone up there to fix it, and finally coming on home.
I flew with them in the morning for a bit and went over cross-country stuff, ran to lunch, and came back to fly for just over an hour in the Champ. Finished with him, and Chuck flew me up over to where our 172 was fixed and stranded, and I flew it to Sheridan on an errand then back to Glenndale, in time to fly with a new guy in the Champ, getting his tailwheel endorsement. The first lesson is more ground than flight, so we spent about an hour on the ground, then flew for over half an hour before calling it a day. I made it home somewhere around 7 pm.
One humorous thing on the Champ flight. I made the comment "you need less right rudder". He said "Really? The ball is centered." I sat there for a second, then said "Really? Because my butt says you need less right rudder." He did a few more turns and a big slip and then said "Aw, man, the BALL is stuck! Right in the center! And here I was having the best flight of my life!" I don't know how you break, or fix, a ball, but by george we managed it. :D
I did get pictures of the ramp full of F-22s when we flew over them today, with a cruddy camera. Here's one. :)
Kaylee is doing well, less sneezing, fewer requested cough drops, she slept great last night, and had a great day at school today. Last week every paper she brought home was a 100%, which is neat. She's doing just fine...
I flew with them in the morning for a bit and went over cross-country stuff, ran to lunch, and came back to fly for just over an hour in the Champ. Finished with him, and Chuck flew me up over to where our 172 was fixed and stranded, and I flew it to Sheridan on an errand then back to Glenndale, in time to fly with a new guy in the Champ, getting his tailwheel endorsement. The first lesson is more ground than flight, so we spent about an hour on the ground, then flew for over half an hour before calling it a day. I made it home somewhere around 7 pm.
One humorous thing on the Champ flight. I made the comment "you need less right rudder". He said "Really? The ball is centered." I sat there for a second, then said "Really? Because my butt says you need less right rudder." He did a few more turns and a big slip and then said "Aw, man, the BALL is stuck! Right in the center! And here I was having the best flight of my life!" I don't know how you break, or fix, a ball, but by george we managed it. :D
I did get pictures of the ramp full of F-22s when we flew over them today, with a cruddy camera. Here's one. :)
Kaylee is doing well, less sneezing, fewer requested cough drops, she slept great last night, and had a great day at school today. Last week every paper she brought home was a 100%, which is neat. She's doing just fine...
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Family
Happy Birthday to our niece Rania! I hope you are having a special, fun day. :)
Today is also our son Sidney's birthday. We would have a much different household with a 13 and 11 year old set of boys in here! Thinking of and remembering our littlest angel.
We all slept in this morning, and I had myself one weird dream last night, that I woke up remembering vividly. It included Steve, me and Kaylee, a table full of desserts, Michelle and Barack Obama, and some kind of supernatural bad creepy thing happening. It would actually make for a great scary book, but unfortunately Koontz and King never ask for my opinion on what to write next. ;)
Thanks to Hurricane Irene, a group of 20 F-22s were sent to Grissom for protection. Friday as I was driving around I kept seeing the F-22s, and I thought it was the same two playing around. Nope, found out later it was them bringing their planes up here to get out of the path of the hurricane. I may have to go over to Grissom to take a picture if they're out on the ramp...welcome to Indiana, fellas.
Kaylee is still not quite herself. She's a little stuffy, a little cranky, a little sleepy, but no fever, a perfectly good appetite (which is always the biggest clue of illness with her), and enough energy. Hopefully this day off today along with sleeping in several hours will help her recup and get ready for the upcoming week...
Today is also our son Sidney's birthday. We would have a much different household with a 13 and 11 year old set of boys in here! Thinking of and remembering our littlest angel.
We all slept in this morning, and I had myself one weird dream last night, that I woke up remembering vividly. It included Steve, me and Kaylee, a table full of desserts, Michelle and Barack Obama, and some kind of supernatural bad creepy thing happening. It would actually make for a great scary book, but unfortunately Koontz and King never ask for my opinion on what to write next. ;)
Thanks to Hurricane Irene, a group of 20 F-22s were sent to Grissom for protection. Friday as I was driving around I kept seeing the F-22s, and I thought it was the same two playing around. Nope, found out later it was them bringing their planes up here to get out of the path of the hurricane. I may have to go over to Grissom to take a picture if they're out on the ramp...welcome to Indiana, fellas.
Kaylee is still not quite herself. She's a little stuffy, a little cranky, a little sleepy, but no fever, a perfectly good appetite (which is always the biggest clue of illness with her), and enough energy. Hopefully this day off today along with sleeping in several hours will help her recup and get ready for the upcoming week...
DC-4 Dance
Watching this video made my eyebrows raise. At one point he has two engines feathered (shut off completely) while he's doing this routine, and he's definitely fully inverted, stating off right over the ground at the end there. In a DC-4. Can't do this in the USA. Most pilots have commented on this pilot's, uh, guts. The best comment I've read so far though was also very true: "Outstanding Execution. Questionable Judgment." I keep picturing the B-52 that pulled a low-level turn that looked very much like one of those and ended up driving into the ground in front of everyone. But this guy didn't do that--yet--and it's pretty darned impressive flying.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Weekend Begins
Friday was a typical day of errands, hanging out at Glenndale for Friday Lunch, and flying. Well, not all of the flying was overly typical I guess. I had a lesson at Kokomo, drove back to Glenndale and picked up the Citabria, and flew it to Sheridan to do some checkride prep with a guy down there. When we got done, I took back off in the Citabria with the iPod in my ears and spent the entire trip back to Glenndale just climbing up. When I got about 5 miles south of Glenndale, I did a couple of stalls, then went ahead and did several spins. I did spins in both directions until I got down to about 2500' AGL, then lined up on final for Runway 36 at Glenndale and slipped it down the rest of the way to landing. That was a nice way to break up the day. :)
When I got home, Steve and Kaylee were outside around a pit fire with AE and Kenny, so I pulled up a chair and joined everyone, and we just hung out and talked until about 11:30 p.m. when we let the fire finally burn out and everyone went home.
I would have liked to sleep in a little this morning, and I would have liked to let Kaylee sleep in a little more too, but I had a job to do today, so we all left the house at 9 something this morning and went to Kokomo Airport, arriving just in time to see my morning appointment pull up in his airplane. I got the T-6 out and preflighted while Kaylee drove the golf cart to the ramp to pick up the gent, and then we had an hour ground and an hour flight for a flight review. Ground/taxi/tailwheel work, steep turns, slow flight, stalls, going upside down at least once, and a couple of takeoffs and landings later, it was mission accomplished. I was more tired than the guy was after it was over, I think. :)
This evening our family loaded up and went out to the Winding Creek Bluegrass Festival held out where the Ko-Ko-Mah reenactment is each year. It's out in a really lovely wooded and hilly area, with nice paths, old-style wood cabin buildings, some booths/tents, a couple of stages for acts/concerts, a lot of people camping out, etc. When we walked in, a woman came up to us and handed us all a free ear of steamed, buttered corn on the cob that she shucked right in front of us. That was good stuff, man. We walked around, checked out the area, then went down to the wooded theater area where folks had lawn chairs set up, the stage was lit nicely, and they had rope lights strung around some of the trees to provide a nice ambiance and light as it got darker. They then had several bluegrass bands play, and they were still playing when we left at 9:30 p.m. We had Indian Fry Bread, homemade chicken and noodles, homemade vanilla ice cream, and enjoyed the company of a couple of friends while we sat in our lawn chairs and enjoyed the concert. They did some gospel as well, and one of the guys said to come back tomorrow because they were bringing in a real live Kentucky preacher. He said folks weren't just going to get music, they were going to get some good down-home country preaching. You don't really hear that at a large public venue in this day and age I guess, and I thought it was kind of neat. They also sang a song about how country music, country strength and country values were disappearing fast. There were fiddlers and harmony and guitars and bass, and while I wouldn't tune my radio in to bluegrass on a regular basis, when you're sitting in a chair in the woods with yummy foods as the sun goes down with lights around and music going, there's not much that is more relaxing. Especially if you have bug spray, which we did. ;) Best of all, when we went to leave, there was a guy driving a big John Deere tractor who was giving us a ride on a wooden trailer back to our car, when he stopped and asked if Kaylee would like to drive. She was all over that, so she ran up to the tractor, climbed up it, sat in front of him and he let her drive us and the trailer/platform all the way back to our car. Now that was pretty cool. She's now driven a big ole John Deere. I tried to take pictures of that, but as you'll be able to see, it was dark and I only had my cellphone, so it didn't go too well. Go central Indiana...some places might consider a bluegrass festival "backwards". I consider it...simpler. And in some ways, better.
When I got home, Steve and Kaylee were outside around a pit fire with AE and Kenny, so I pulled up a chair and joined everyone, and we just hung out and talked until about 11:30 p.m. when we let the fire finally burn out and everyone went home.
I would have liked to sleep in a little this morning, and I would have liked to let Kaylee sleep in a little more too, but I had a job to do today, so we all left the house at 9 something this morning and went to Kokomo Airport, arriving just in time to see my morning appointment pull up in his airplane. I got the T-6 out and preflighted while Kaylee drove the golf cart to the ramp to pick up the gent, and then we had an hour ground and an hour flight for a flight review. Ground/taxi/tailwheel work, steep turns, slow flight, stalls, going upside down at least once, and a couple of takeoffs and landings later, it was mission accomplished. I was more tired than the guy was after it was over, I think. :)
This evening our family loaded up and went out to the Winding Creek Bluegrass Festival held out where the Ko-Ko-Mah reenactment is each year. It's out in a really lovely wooded and hilly area, with nice paths, old-style wood cabin buildings, some booths/tents, a couple of stages for acts/concerts, a lot of people camping out, etc. When we walked in, a woman came up to us and handed us all a free ear of steamed, buttered corn on the cob that she shucked right in front of us. That was good stuff, man. We walked around, checked out the area, then went down to the wooded theater area where folks had lawn chairs set up, the stage was lit nicely, and they had rope lights strung around some of the trees to provide a nice ambiance and light as it got darker. They then had several bluegrass bands play, and they were still playing when we left at 9:30 p.m. We had Indian Fry Bread, homemade chicken and noodles, homemade vanilla ice cream, and enjoyed the company of a couple of friends while we sat in our lawn chairs and enjoyed the concert. They did some gospel as well, and one of the guys said to come back tomorrow because they were bringing in a real live Kentucky preacher. He said folks weren't just going to get music, they were going to get some good down-home country preaching. You don't really hear that at a large public venue in this day and age I guess, and I thought it was kind of neat. They also sang a song about how country music, country strength and country values were disappearing fast. There were fiddlers and harmony and guitars and bass, and while I wouldn't tune my radio in to bluegrass on a regular basis, when you're sitting in a chair in the woods with yummy foods as the sun goes down with lights around and music going, there's not much that is more relaxing. Especially if you have bug spray, which we did. ;) Best of all, when we went to leave, there was a guy driving a big John Deere tractor who was giving us a ride on a wooden trailer back to our car, when he stopped and asked if Kaylee would like to drive. She was all over that, so she ran up to the tractor, climbed up it, sat in front of him and he let her drive us and the trailer/platform all the way back to our car. Now that was pretty cool. She's now driven a big ole John Deere. I tried to take pictures of that, but as you'll be able to see, it was dark and I only had my cellphone, so it didn't go too well. Go central Indiana...some places might consider a bluegrass festival "backwards". I consider it...simpler. And in some ways, better.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Thirsty Thursday
I saw a blog post that made me smile...I agree with it. I'm too tired to wax eloquent on it right now, so have a read: Life Is Hard. :)
I ended up getting myself into a web forum hububub. I usually manage to avoid that just fine, but there have been a few attacks in a row on some things that were left unaddressed, and they were out of line and inaccurate and I just couldn't stop myself. That's what happens when you have an afternoon or two "off" of work. This was on formation flying and overhead breaks and basically folks were spouting off all this stuff about the pattern entry being dangerous, reckless, illegal, etc. and popping off facts that aren't real. I tried to just provide some facts and go away, but of course there is always that one guy who has to pick random quotes, twist them and make them not about what you were talking about in the first place, redirect, add in facts that aren't real, personally attack you a little bit, all sorts of stuff. I managed to keep my posts accurate and non-inflammatory and even though I had to let him have the last inaccurate word if I was ever going to escape from the conversation, I still think at least some folks got the picture and the correct info. Now, back to not getting myself into web arguments. ;)
I was driving around doing errands when suddenly, even over the sound of my iPod headphones, I could hear the Oldsmobile rattling, pretty bad. I went into the post office, and when I came out it was still knocking and rattling, so I called Steve and held the phone by the car hood and said "I don't think this is good." So, the Oldsmobile is parked, the Jeep is at the repair shop, and Steve had the Suburban. That meant I got to pick up Kaylee in the Corvette, with the top off.
The wind blew our hair all the way out to Kokomo Airport. The T-6 was back together, and Kaylee wanted to go with me, so I got her in the back seat, and we took off together. "Take your daughter to work day"? ;) I was originally just
going to do two takeoffs and landings and just get back to familiar with the plane, but since Kaylee wanted to fly, well, I'm not going to turn that down. So we flew over her grandparents' house, then I asked her if she wanted to do the flying and she said okay. I had to do the rudder in the turns still, but she did really nice, smooth turns, straight and level, etc. Finally I came back in and did my two landings...one 3-pointer and one wheel landing. I have to say, both of those landings were the best landings I've done in that thing in quite awhile. The wheels rolled on. I'll probably not pull off another set of landings like that again for awhile, particularly if anyone else is with me or around, so I'm going to enjoy their memory for awhile. ;)
When we got down, Kaylee started working on her homework, and Steve finished up with his flight lesson and came over, and we did a first official T-6 checkout flight with him up front. We did some ground/taxi ops, three takeoffs and landings, and went out and flew awhile too. We had a good time, and when we got back Kaylee took some pictures for us. It was cute watching her wave at us on our way out and back in. :)
Unfortunately, I think she may be getting sick. She's got the dark circles under her eyes, she is fully stuffed up even on Zyrtec, and she's really tired. Tomorrow's Friday. I guess we'll have to see how she wakes up as to whether or not she makes it to school... :(
Busy day, I'm so tired it's taken me forever to type this...
I ended up getting myself into a web forum hububub. I usually manage to avoid that just fine, but there have been a few attacks in a row on some things that were left unaddressed, and they were out of line and inaccurate and I just couldn't stop myself. That's what happens when you have an afternoon or two "off" of work. This was on formation flying and overhead breaks and basically folks were spouting off all this stuff about the pattern entry being dangerous, reckless, illegal, etc. and popping off facts that aren't real. I tried to just provide some facts and go away, but of course there is always that one guy who has to pick random quotes, twist them and make them not about what you were talking about in the first place, redirect, add in facts that aren't real, personally attack you a little bit, all sorts of stuff. I managed to keep my posts accurate and non-inflammatory and even though I had to let him have the last inaccurate word if I was ever going to escape from the conversation, I still think at least some folks got the picture and the correct info. Now, back to not getting myself into web arguments. ;)
I was driving around doing errands when suddenly, even over the sound of my iPod headphones, I could hear the Oldsmobile rattling, pretty bad. I went into the post office, and when I came out it was still knocking and rattling, so I called Steve and held the phone by the car hood and said "I don't think this is good." So, the Oldsmobile is parked, the Jeep is at the repair shop, and Steve had the Suburban. That meant I got to pick up Kaylee in the Corvette, with the top off.
The wind blew our hair all the way out to Kokomo Airport. The T-6 was back together, and Kaylee wanted to go with me, so I got her in the back seat, and we took off together. "Take your daughter to work day"? ;) I was originally just
going to do two takeoffs and landings and just get back to familiar with the plane, but since Kaylee wanted to fly, well, I'm not going to turn that down. So we flew over her grandparents' house, then I asked her if she wanted to do the flying and she said okay. I had to do the rudder in the turns still, but she did really nice, smooth turns, straight and level, etc. Finally I came back in and did my two landings...one 3-pointer and one wheel landing. I have to say, both of those landings were the best landings I've done in that thing in quite awhile. The wheels rolled on. I'll probably not pull off another set of landings like that again for awhile, particularly if anyone else is with me or around, so I'm going to enjoy their memory for awhile. ;)
When we got down, Kaylee started working on her homework, and Steve finished up with his flight lesson and came over, and we did a first official T-6 checkout flight with him up front. We did some ground/taxi ops, three takeoffs and landings, and went out and flew awhile too. We had a good time, and when we got back Kaylee took some pictures for us. It was cute watching her wave at us on our way out and back in. :)
Unfortunately, I think she may be getting sick. She's got the dark circles under her eyes, she is fully stuffed up even on Zyrtec, and she's really tired. Tomorrow's Friday. I guess we'll have to see how she wakes up as to whether or not she makes it to school... :(
Busy day, I'm so tired it's taken me forever to type this...
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
What Is
I was supposed to go on another trip this morning, starting at 6:30 a.m., home around 4 p.m., but they canceled the trip due to the meeting venue being changed. So instead I got Kaylee to her school bus stop by 7:38, then came home and slept for another hour and a half. Ahh.
Kaylee had a great day today, but when she woke up she said her throat was sore. She was sniffling last night, so I sort of figured it was allergy drainage and didn't think anything about it until I saw a post from one of her classmates' mother that it was her 3rd day with a fever and now her daughter (Kaylee's classmate/friend) is also sick. Oh, Fan-Tastic. *sigh* I broke out the vitamins. We made it through five days of school before someone came down sick in the petri-dish that is school. I hope Kaylee (and we) avoid this...
So far the math Kaylee is doing in school is what she did in about 3rd grade, so I hope they pick up the pace there a little bit. On the other hand, some of the other subjects like language are jumping in right where she was. She's doing well so far, even though she has homework every night and is less than thrilled about that. She got in trouble at school today for working on her homework in class. She said it was reading time and everyone else was reading a book, but she didn't feel like reading a book so she worked on her homework. The teacher came by, took away her paper, said "No, no, no!" and made her "turn over a card" which is a disciplinary action. You only get two per week before you...I don't know what happens, actually. lol Anyway, she said she didn't know she wasn't supposed to work on it during reading time, but now she does. I must be missing something because I don't see the problem either, but hey, rules are rules. :) That was her bummer for the day, but otherwise she's still having a really good time transitioning to the new school. Steve and I said we hope she gets at least a good solid month in before things start going too wrong, you know, to get a good foundation. ;)
A news story has been running about a women's basketball coach known to be a fierce competitor who has just been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's. It was her story, how she was "fighting back", etc. Her son came on camera and said that she's practicing what she preaches, which is "It is what it is, but will be is up to me." She doesn't mean that she can control Alzheimer's, only how she handles what's coming. Steve said "That's a good quote--I bet that ends up on your blog." As much as I hate to prove him right, well, sometimes you gotta throw a bone, right? ;)
Kaylee had a great day today, but when she woke up she said her throat was sore. She was sniffling last night, so I sort of figured it was allergy drainage and didn't think anything about it until I saw a post from one of her classmates' mother that it was her 3rd day with a fever and now her daughter (Kaylee's classmate/friend) is also sick. Oh, Fan-Tastic. *sigh* I broke out the vitamins. We made it through five days of school before someone came down sick in the petri-dish that is school. I hope Kaylee (and we) avoid this...
So far the math Kaylee is doing in school is what she did in about 3rd grade, so I hope they pick up the pace there a little bit. On the other hand, some of the other subjects like language are jumping in right where she was. She's doing well so far, even though she has homework every night and is less than thrilled about that. She got in trouble at school today for working on her homework in class. She said it was reading time and everyone else was reading a book, but she didn't feel like reading a book so she worked on her homework. The teacher came by, took away her paper, said "No, no, no!" and made her "turn over a card" which is a disciplinary action. You only get two per week before you...I don't know what happens, actually. lol Anyway, she said she didn't know she wasn't supposed to work on it during reading time, but now she does. I must be missing something because I don't see the problem either, but hey, rules are rules. :) That was her bummer for the day, but otherwise she's still having a really good time transitioning to the new school. Steve and I said we hope she gets at least a good solid month in before things start going too wrong, you know, to get a good foundation. ;)
A news story has been running about a women's basketball coach known to be a fierce competitor who has just been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's. It was her story, how she was "fighting back", etc. Her son came on camera and said that she's practicing what she preaches, which is "It is what it is, but will be is up to me." She doesn't mean that she can control Alzheimer's, only how she handles what's coming. Steve said "That's a good quote--I bet that ends up on your blog." As much as I hate to prove him right, well, sometimes you gotta throw a bone, right? ;)
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Tuesday Topics
I think Grissom needs better weather forecasters. Maybe less educated ones. Like me. I was supposed to have another long, multiple round-trips flight to St. Louis this afternoon through evening, getting back after 2 a.m. again. The weather sounded mostly fine. I then pull up the radar and there is a mass of weather in Illinois, headed southeast at a track that looked pretty much right at us. I go back to all the forecasts around, and none of them reflect what my eyeballs see. I show Steve. Yep, doesn't look promising to him either. I show Nathan. He suggested I get a hotel room in St. Louis. I finally have to call and let the guys know that I can't guarantee this trip will go off, that it doesn't look good. So right now it's 3 pm as I write this paragraph. My updated forecast says I should have storms from 2-3 pm then it should be fine. Wrong. As of 3 it hasn't even arrived. So how educated in weather do you have to be to look at radar and tell people when the weather is going to arrive? These guys are often not even close...
I spent a few hours this evening finishing off my logbook. One hundred and twenty entries I had to make. I still don't have everything added up, I'll do that before bed tonight, but I know of several of those entries that are for trips ranging from 3-10 hours each. I've been a busy girl...
Kaylee is still enjoying school, although she is not enjoying having homework. She had two pages of math, one of science and one of language to do tonight. Thing is, all but one of them was really easy, and it STILL took her awhile to get done. Hopefully this easing into it thing will work out so that by the time it starts getting hard, she'll be ready to hit it. That's my story and I'm sticking to it... She does like the bus ride though, and she gets to ride with two new friends, so they all enjoy the 20-30 minute ride both ways.
I slept in this morning so that I would be good and rested for my long flight late tonight. I am, in fact, well-rested, even though I'm not going on that trip now. It's kind of nice. ;)
Kenny & Ann were out in the yard working on making the garden there looking beautiful. Richard has been watering my lovely rose plant, and now with all the rich, dark soil and the new plants out there, it's looking very peaceful and pretty. Thanks everyone!
Well, I'll get some dinner going here, finish adding up my logbook, and maybe do a little billing. Maybe...
I spent a few hours this evening finishing off my logbook. One hundred and twenty entries I had to make. I still don't have everything added up, I'll do that before bed tonight, but I know of several of those entries that are for trips ranging from 3-10 hours each. I've been a busy girl...
Kaylee is still enjoying school, although she is not enjoying having homework. She had two pages of math, one of science and one of language to do tonight. Thing is, all but one of them was really easy, and it STILL took her awhile to get done. Hopefully this easing into it thing will work out so that by the time it starts getting hard, she'll be ready to hit it. That's my story and I'm sticking to it... She does like the bus ride though, and she gets to ride with two new friends, so they all enjoy the 20-30 minute ride both ways.
I slept in this morning so that I would be good and rested for my long flight late tonight. I am, in fact, well-rested, even though I'm not going on that trip now. It's kind of nice. ;)
Kenny & Ann were out in the yard working on making the garden there looking beautiful. Richard has been watering my lovely rose plant, and now with all the rich, dark soil and the new plants out there, it's looking very peaceful and pretty. Thanks everyone!
Well, I'll get some dinner going here, finish adding up my logbook, and maybe do a little billing. Maybe...
Monday, August 22, 2011
Aviate
I started in on my logbook last night, and wow was that an eye-opener. I hadn't put in any entries since Kaylee got out of school, in May. :O Worse yet, I haven't been posting times real well in my blog either, trying to eliminate some of the boring stuff from there. So now I'm having to go back through my blog, and the scheduling page to see who I was with, and sometimes the time sheets to figure out what to put in. THAT'S not time consuming or anything. I made it through to July 2nd before going to bed. So for my next update, today I was in KS for 1.2 then 19R for 1.8 to MIE and back. I'm not going to have to look up this entry anyway. ;)
If nothing else, all the deaths in the air show realm have brought about a lot of conversation and introspection in the aviation community. Safety, risk, procedures, benefits, etc. Even Steve and I talked about it for awhile tonight. How we feel about various things, how we used to vs currently do a few things, etc. A lot of times people read about accidents and they come away with why it won't happen to them. Another way to look at it is to come away with how it could happen to you, and what you can learn from it. Not these accidents exactly. I don't think either Steve nor myself is going to be flying low level hard core aerobatics, and I'm for darned sure not going to be standing on one airplane while grabbing at another looking for a lift. But a slip, a mistake, something routine that turns not routine...you can apply it to what you actually do and how you do it, inspect it, and if need be make changes. We have, on a couple things...
I was flying along to Muncie today by myself, when the tower told me to keep an eye out for a banner tower. He was pretty easy to spot, with a giant red banner behind him. He passed right next to me, and I extended my downwind so I could check out what his banner said. All that effort, and it was a back to school special of some sort. Phoo. ;)
Kaylee had her first homework tonight-she wasn't too thrilled about that, but she got it done with a little pushing. Math--and easy math--and a harder weather paper. One of the questions was something like "what do dropwindsonde and radiosondes have in common?" Er. Thank goodness for Google...
If nothing else, all the deaths in the air show realm have brought about a lot of conversation and introspection in the aviation community. Safety, risk, procedures, benefits, etc. Even Steve and I talked about it for awhile tonight. How we feel about various things, how we used to vs currently do a few things, etc. A lot of times people read about accidents and they come away with why it won't happen to them. Another way to look at it is to come away with how it could happen to you, and what you can learn from it. Not these accidents exactly. I don't think either Steve nor myself is going to be flying low level hard core aerobatics, and I'm for darned sure not going to be standing on one airplane while grabbing at another looking for a lift. But a slip, a mistake, something routine that turns not routine...you can apply it to what you actually do and how you do it, inspect it, and if need be make changes. We have, on a couple things...
I was flying along to Muncie today by myself, when the tower told me to keep an eye out for a banner tower. He was pretty easy to spot, with a giant red banner behind him. He passed right next to me, and I extended my downwind so I could check out what his banner said. All that effort, and it was a back to school special of some sort. Phoo. ;)
Kaylee had her first homework tonight-she wasn't too thrilled about that, but she got it done with a little pushing. Math--and easy math--and a harder weather paper. One of the questions was something like "what do dropwindsonde and radiosondes have in common?" Er. Thank goodness for Google...
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Restful Productivity
It's nice when you can get a lot done at your own pace in your own home, comfortably. We caught up on a whole lot of stuff today, work and personal and home and school and SMA and all. I've gotten a sudden influx of requests to SMA Support, and some of those require a little research, and I got a lot of that done as well. Kaylee wasn't really thrilled to have to organize and clean up her areas too, but this was a family pick-up day, and we needed it! It feels pretty good, getting all this done, and what I'd like to work on this evening if it doesn't get to be too late is updating my logbook too. Maybe.
An article came out a few days ago talking about the anniversary of women entering aviation, and this is a quote I'm pulling from it:
The first female pilot in the U.S. received her license 100 years ago, and female pilots are still a minority at less than 6% of licensed pilots in the country. "As a female pilot I feel we bring different skills," said Jennifer Storm, a spokeswoman for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.
I would like to ask Ms. Storm what "different" skills we female pilots bring to the equation. I've been trying to figure that out. There are the usual pilot skills required to fly airplanes, and then there are...what...skills that we females bring that are different? Less aggression than the men pilots is typical of many female pilots, but that's not a skill. There are often personality differences between men and women pilots on average. Anyway, if you come up with what skill we ladies possess that men don't for flying airplanes, let me know...
On a less pleasant arena, this has been a really, really bad weekend for aviation. Yesterday a professional aerobatic performer was practicing in his aerobatic box in NJ when another airplane likely busted the box and ran into the back of him, causing a mid-air. The performer escaped with his parachute and survived, but the fellow who ran into him didn't. Same day at an airshow in Kansas City, a long-time experienced performer stalled out in a maneuver and spun into the ground in front of his girlfriend, the crowd, a couple of my online friends, and a million YouTube viewers. Same day a highly experienced Red Arrow jet team performer crashed at an airshow, breaking away from his team and just hitting the ground, and nobody knows why. He didn't survive either. Today, less than 24 hours later, an aerial performer, who has done this for 25 years and was the son of another performer, was doing his act of going from a Stearman to a helicopter, when he lost his grip and fell 200' to his death in front of the crowd. There are a lot of people really hurting in the airshow/performer world right now. It's a pretty small community. I didn't know any of these gents personally, but I know several people who did know them, ate with them, hung out with them, enjoyed their company, flew with them. They were highly proficient, highly experienced pilots/performers, every last one of them, and I know more than one pilot who is now saying they are ready for this air show season to be over. Every year there are losses in the community. Last year I remember they lost two in the same weekend for the same show. This one was a particularly bad streak, and my heart goes out to the family and friends of those lost this weekend.
That's an unpleasant note to end on, so let me move on to a Kaylee story. She came home Friday pretty excited because tomorrow is the day that she and everyone in her classroom gets their very own Netbook. Yep, they are handing out computers to every 5th grader, and they come in tomorrow. The kids are required to bring in earphones and a flash drive, and each Netbook is tagged and specifically set up to block inappropriate sites, we're not allowed to put on any software or anything, and the school is responsible for all maintenance and repairs of them (unless the kid drops it out of an airplane or something). The kids can use it in class to research stuff, to do homework assignments, and bring it home every night to continue to work on it and charge it up. There will be a "virtual locker" on there where they can hold assignments and materials. How cool is that? How crazy is that to do for 5th graders?! We'll see how it goes--this is a new program for the school so I hope most of the other kids are as careful with theirs as we will make Kaylee be with hers.
The other kind of nice thing was that Kaylee off-handedly said that they'd done a reading placement test on Friday, and she did really well on it. They told her the score she got, and she said "Is that good?" and her teacher told her it was the highest scores in her class, so that was kind of neat. She told me that they were asking a bunch of really hard words and she didn't know a lot of them, but that she had been taught to read the paragraph for context to figure out what the word could mean, so that's what she did, and she shrugged and said "I still didn't really know what some of them meant but I must have guessed at them pretty well." Heh. If you can learn that skill, it helps learn lots of cool new words. She loves words, and her first spelling test is tomorrow, so when I went over all her words today, she sighed and said "MOM, these are EASY". The challenge word of "rhinoceros" wasn't quite as easy. I told her not to worry, they'll get plenty harder for her soon enough. ;)
Yesterday Kaylee wanted a bowl of ice cream, but she hadn't really had anything healthy to eat yet, so I told her to drink a V8 first, and then she could have a small bowl of ice cream if she wanted. So she drinks her V8 slowly, sits there, gets up, tosses the can, then stands there in front of me with her hands on her hips and says "HEY! You manipulated me!" I said "What do you mean?" She spouts back with "NOW I'm not HUNGRY! I don't WANT ice cream! You manipulated me!" I grinned at her and said "You're welcome." She got her ice cream later that night at our Airplanes and Ice Cream social anyway. She's fun. ;)
An article came out a few days ago talking about the anniversary of women entering aviation, and this is a quote I'm pulling from it:
The first female pilot in the U.S. received her license 100 years ago, and female pilots are still a minority at less than 6% of licensed pilots in the country. "As a female pilot I feel we bring different skills," said Jennifer Storm, a spokeswoman for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.
I would like to ask Ms. Storm what "different" skills we female pilots bring to the equation. I've been trying to figure that out. There are the usual pilot skills required to fly airplanes, and then there are...what...skills that we females bring that are different? Less aggression than the men pilots is typical of many female pilots, but that's not a skill. There are often personality differences between men and women pilots on average. Anyway, if you come up with what skill we ladies possess that men don't for flying airplanes, let me know...
On a less pleasant arena, this has been a really, really bad weekend for aviation. Yesterday a professional aerobatic performer was practicing in his aerobatic box in NJ when another airplane likely busted the box and ran into the back of him, causing a mid-air. The performer escaped with his parachute and survived, but the fellow who ran into him didn't. Same day at an airshow in Kansas City, a long-time experienced performer stalled out in a maneuver and spun into the ground in front of his girlfriend, the crowd, a couple of my online friends, and a million YouTube viewers. Same day a highly experienced Red Arrow jet team performer crashed at an airshow, breaking away from his team and just hitting the ground, and nobody knows why. He didn't survive either. Today, less than 24 hours later, an aerial performer, who has done this for 25 years and was the son of another performer, was doing his act of going from a Stearman to a helicopter, when he lost his grip and fell 200' to his death in front of the crowd. There are a lot of people really hurting in the airshow/performer world right now. It's a pretty small community. I didn't know any of these gents personally, but I know several people who did know them, ate with them, hung out with them, enjoyed their company, flew with them. They were highly proficient, highly experienced pilots/performers, every last one of them, and I know more than one pilot who is now saying they are ready for this air show season to be over. Every year there are losses in the community. Last year I remember they lost two in the same weekend for the same show. This one was a particularly bad streak, and my heart goes out to the family and friends of those lost this weekend.
That's an unpleasant note to end on, so let me move on to a Kaylee story. She came home Friday pretty excited because tomorrow is the day that she and everyone in her classroom gets their very own Netbook. Yep, they are handing out computers to every 5th grader, and they come in tomorrow. The kids are required to bring in earphones and a flash drive, and each Netbook is tagged and specifically set up to block inappropriate sites, we're not allowed to put on any software or anything, and the school is responsible for all maintenance and repairs of them (unless the kid drops it out of an airplane or something). The kids can use it in class to research stuff, to do homework assignments, and bring it home every night to continue to work on it and charge it up. There will be a "virtual locker" on there where they can hold assignments and materials. How cool is that? How crazy is that to do for 5th graders?! We'll see how it goes--this is a new program for the school so I hope most of the other kids are as careful with theirs as we will make Kaylee be with hers.
The other kind of nice thing was that Kaylee off-handedly said that they'd done a reading placement test on Friday, and she did really well on it. They told her the score she got, and she said "Is that good?" and her teacher told her it was the highest scores in her class, so that was kind of neat. She told me that they were asking a bunch of really hard words and she didn't know a lot of them, but that she had been taught to read the paragraph for context to figure out what the word could mean, so that's what she did, and she shrugged and said "I still didn't really know what some of them meant but I must have guessed at them pretty well." Heh. If you can learn that skill, it helps learn lots of cool new words. She loves words, and her first spelling test is tomorrow, so when I went over all her words today, she sighed and said "MOM, these are EASY". The challenge word of "rhinoceros" wasn't quite as easy. I told her not to worry, they'll get plenty harder for her soon enough. ;)
Yesterday Kaylee wanted a bowl of ice cream, but she hadn't really had anything healthy to eat yet, so I told her to drink a V8 first, and then she could have a small bowl of ice cream if she wanted. So she drinks her V8 slowly, sits there, gets up, tosses the can, then stands there in front of me with her hands on her hips and says "HEY! You manipulated me!" I said "What do you mean?" She spouts back with "NOW I'm not HUNGRY! I don't WANT ice cream! You manipulated me!" I grinned at her and said "You're welcome." She got her ice cream later that night at our Airplanes and Ice Cream social anyway. She's fun. ;)
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Bag Lady Barbie
I got a letter from Sam's Club today. It said there was a recall on a product I had purchased and that I should bring it in for a full refund. The problem? The product I bought was a delicious 7-layer cheese, bean, sour cream etc. dip and the reason for the recall was that the serial number of the product I bought was being recalled for a possible Listeria Bacterial Problem. I got the letter a week after I bought it, and six days after a bunch of us ate it out at Kokomo Airport. I suppose the good news is that nobody I know of got sick. :O
Tonight was our monthly "Ice Cream and Airplanes" social out at Glenndale. The ice cream cost $35, cups/bowls/spoons/supplies were about $35, and we had a small but respectable turn-out, with several folks flying in or going for airplane rides throughout the evening. Maggie and Hannah came out too, so Kaylee and the girls disappeared for a few hours there. Then they got out Chuck's golf cart and drove it around the airport for awhile and had some fun. Eventually they ran into Jim K.,
who handed them a large plastic bin of drawers full of...Barbie Stuff. They came walking in carrying that squealing and yelling and as excited as if it was Christmas. They spent the next hour going through everything in the bins and somehow managing to divide it up equally amongst the three girls without any rancor that I could hear, which is a mini miracle of its own. Steve's office looked like, as Walt put it, "The Oshkosh of Barbies!" There was stuff *everywhere*. The whole room was swimming in clothes and dolls and accessories and tea party stuff and horses and toenail polishers and all sorts of girlie treasures. It took until 9 pm before the girls had sorted out the stuff, divided it up, put it all into their own individual trash bags to carry, and were ready to head home. Chuck texted Jim with a "Thanks a lot" and Jim texted back with "No, thank YOU." Heh. Kaylee's in there playing with them now. :)
It's nice, I'll have another day of no flights and not having to go anywhere before an upcoming busy week (again)...
Tonight was our monthly "Ice Cream and Airplanes" social out at Glenndale. The ice cream cost $35, cups/bowls/spoons/supplies were about $35, and we had a small but respectable turn-out, with several folks flying in or going for airplane rides throughout the evening. Maggie and Hannah came out too, so Kaylee and the girls disappeared for a few hours there. Then they got out Chuck's golf cart and drove it around the airport for awhile and had some fun. Eventually they ran into Jim K.,
who handed them a large plastic bin of drawers full of...Barbie Stuff. They came walking in carrying that squealing and yelling and as excited as if it was Christmas. They spent the next hour going through everything in the bins and somehow managing to divide it up equally amongst the three girls without any rancor that I could hear, which is a mini miracle of its own. Steve's office looked like, as Walt put it, "The Oshkosh of Barbies!" There was stuff *everywhere*. The whole room was swimming in clothes and dolls and accessories and tea party stuff and horses and toenail polishers and all sorts of girlie treasures. It took until 9 pm before the girls had sorted out the stuff, divided it up, put it all into their own individual trash bags to carry, and were ready to head home. Chuck texted Jim with a "Thanks a lot" and Jim texted back with "No, thank YOU." Heh. Kaylee's in there playing with them now. :)
It's nice, I'll have another day of no flights and not having to go anywhere before an upcoming busy week (again)...
Friday, August 19, 2011
Friday
First (half) week of school, complete. No day was less than a 9.5 on a scale of 10 for "awesomeness". Today only lost half a point because they had 3 pages of math work to do, but it gained a little because Fridays they get an extra 20 minutes of free time recess. ;)
It was too foggy to fly this morning, but close to lunch time it got good enough to go out of Glenndale (Class G airspace), and mess around for awhile. I took the Citabria up and about just for about 40 minutes or so, just playing around with some takeoffs and landings. You just have to like the Citabria...
I had a flight review in the T-6 I was supposed to give with a guy that we set up last week, but the guys didn't get the Six together, so we had to cancel him. On the good news front, I get to sleep in tomorrow if I want. ;) Today is Orville Wright's birthday, which is officially "National Aviation Day". I was going to celebrate it by getting current in the Six, but at least I got to commit aviation in my other favorite airplane today on Aviation Day. :)
It was too foggy to fly this morning, but close to lunch time it got good enough to go out of Glenndale (Class G airspace), and mess around for awhile. I took the Citabria up and about just for about 40 minutes or so, just playing around with some takeoffs and landings. You just have to like the Citabria...
I had a flight review in the T-6 I was supposed to give with a guy that we set up last week, but the guys didn't get the Six together, so we had to cancel him. On the good news front, I get to sleep in tomorrow if I want. ;) Today is Orville Wright's birthday, which is officially "National Aviation Day". I was going to celebrate it by getting current in the Six, but at least I got to commit aviation in my other favorite airplane today on Aviation Day. :)
Thursday, August 18, 2011
What Didn't Happen
The answer to that would be...pretty much everything. This is sort of typical in a day around here, and sometimes I like it that "ruts" don't happen too often, and other days I wouldn't mind a little bit of things going according to plan.
So originally I was to fly 9-11 this morning, eat lunch, then fly 2-5. Steve had the morning open then had flights from 4-7 pm then an evening engagement. So that's the plan. Steve ends up on the phone all morning with one problem after the other, not getting to his morning computer fire-fix-the-problem-now session until just before lunch. Then my morning airplane goes down for maintenance, so my morning is free. Cool. I even go back to sleep after getting Kaylee on the school bus for her second day of fifth grade, do dishes and laundry. My new plan is to fly this afternoon then take Kaylee to the store to pick up locker supplies. Then my afternoon flight is rescheduled for Saturday. Hey, my whole day is free! I can work on mid-month billing! I can go to Verizon and see if they can restore my contacts! I can take Kaylee out and about. But then at lunch Steve remembers he forgot the logbooks for 32L at Kokomo and asked me to go get those and bring them to Glenndale for his lesson later. No sweat, I drive to Kokomo, pick up logbooks and go to Glenndale. I go to leave shortly thereafter to run errands and do some stuff before getting Kaylee, and he has another problem--another computer emergency somewhere else, making his afternoon flights a problem. I wait an hour and a half while he's on the phone, and then find out he needs to pick up Kaylee instead and be ready to fix the next emergency, while I go down to Sheridan and take his two lessons. Okay, first lesson with a new fellow in 32L, mission complete. Next lesson right after that was a ground lesson with the airplane logbooks that I had run to Kokomo to get. Except the student never shows. Over half an hour later I go ahead and leave, to hear later that he'd thought he was on at 7, not 6, his mistake, sorry. So all that driving around and fetching books and going south and waiting, from the time lunch was over until 7 p.m., and what I actually accomplished was one lesson for 1.2. And that's life in the fast lane. ;)
I did the backup assistant thing with my phone before I activated my new phone. It said it was successful. I went online and double checked and my contacts were there. I activated my new phone, do the backup assistant to upload my contacts, and...it has my google contacts, but no phone contacts. I can't send texts because it doesn't pull the info from my google contacts. I just lost hundreds of phone numbers, warbird guys, airport guys, family, all of them, gone. I go online and my contacts are gone from there too. I am guessing I did the backup assistant and backed up my new blank phone to the online place and that's how I wiped them all out. Regardless, I am not happy about it. Glad to have a new shiny working phone, but losing all those contacts...not good. Chuck suggests I take my two phones to Verizon and see if they can pull data off my old phone. My SD card is out of that phone and into my new one so I don't know, but I was going to go over there and ask today...except I was too busy doing nothing else to make it over. ;)
On the other hand, when asked how today was, Kaylee said that on a scale of 1 to 10, her second day of school was a 10. She enjoys the bus rides, and she has made four new friends so far (when I asked her about friend potential, she laughed and said "they are already my friends!") . She loves her huge new playground for recess, and can't wait to pick up her Netbook that every 5th grader gets to take home. She says one of her two teachers is the best teacher ever, friendly and fun, and the other is "nice" too. She loves the new environment, the big building, her locker, getting to see a friend she already knows at recess, all of it. I asked her if she'd run into the "jerk" yet, because we all know there's a jerk everywhere you go. She hasn't found them yet. She said that there are "popular kids" in the other class, but they seem like nice popular kids, not mean ones, and she gets along fine with them and even hangs out with them sometimes. Steve took her to Meijer after school to pick up a few locker supplies. She's having a ball these first few days. I'm happy for her. :)
So originally I was to fly 9-11 this morning, eat lunch, then fly 2-5. Steve had the morning open then had flights from 4-7 pm then an evening engagement. So that's the plan. Steve ends up on the phone all morning with one problem after the other, not getting to his morning computer fire-fix-the-problem-now session until just before lunch. Then my morning airplane goes down for maintenance, so my morning is free. Cool. I even go back to sleep after getting Kaylee on the school bus for her second day of fifth grade, do dishes and laundry. My new plan is to fly this afternoon then take Kaylee to the store to pick up locker supplies. Then my afternoon flight is rescheduled for Saturday. Hey, my whole day is free! I can work on mid-month billing! I can go to Verizon and see if they can restore my contacts! I can take Kaylee out and about. But then at lunch Steve remembers he forgot the logbooks for 32L at Kokomo and asked me to go get those and bring them to Glenndale for his lesson later. No sweat, I drive to Kokomo, pick up logbooks and go to Glenndale. I go to leave shortly thereafter to run errands and do some stuff before getting Kaylee, and he has another problem--another computer emergency somewhere else, making his afternoon flights a problem. I wait an hour and a half while he's on the phone, and then find out he needs to pick up Kaylee instead and be ready to fix the next emergency, while I go down to Sheridan and take his two lessons. Okay, first lesson with a new fellow in 32L, mission complete. Next lesson right after that was a ground lesson with the airplane logbooks that I had run to Kokomo to get. Except the student never shows. Over half an hour later I go ahead and leave, to hear later that he'd thought he was on at 7, not 6, his mistake, sorry. So all that driving around and fetching books and going south and waiting, from the time lunch was over until 7 p.m., and what I actually accomplished was one lesson for 1.2. And that's life in the fast lane. ;)
I did the backup assistant thing with my phone before I activated my new phone. It said it was successful. I went online and double checked and my contacts were there. I activated my new phone, do the backup assistant to upload my contacts, and...it has my google contacts, but no phone contacts. I can't send texts because it doesn't pull the info from my google contacts. I just lost hundreds of phone numbers, warbird guys, airport guys, family, all of them, gone. I go online and my contacts are gone from there too. I am guessing I did the backup assistant and backed up my new blank phone to the online place and that's how I wiped them all out. Regardless, I am not happy about it. Glad to have a new shiny working phone, but losing all those contacts...not good. Chuck suggests I take my two phones to Verizon and see if they can pull data off my old phone. My SD card is out of that phone and into my new one so I don't know, but I was going to go over there and ask today...except I was too busy doing nothing else to make it over. ;)
On the other hand, when asked how today was, Kaylee said that on a scale of 1 to 10, her second day of school was a 10. She enjoys the bus rides, and she has made four new friends so far (when I asked her about friend potential, she laughed and said "they are already my friends!") . She loves her huge new playground for recess, and can't wait to pick up her Netbook that every 5th grader gets to take home. She says one of her two teachers is the best teacher ever, friendly and fun, and the other is "nice" too. She loves the new environment, the big building, her locker, getting to see a friend she already knows at recess, all of it. I asked her if she'd run into the "jerk" yet, because we all know there's a jerk everywhere you go. She hasn't found them yet. She said that there are "popular kids" in the other class, but they seem like nice popular kids, not mean ones, and she gets along fine with them and even hangs out with them sometimes. Steve took her to Meijer after school to pick up a few locker supplies. She's having a ball these first few days. I'm happy for her. :)
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Like a Comet
So today was the first day of 5th grade. I didn't sleep well at all last night-I couldn't fall asleep, and I couldn't stay asleep either. I wasn't worried about her first day of school or anything, I just Could Not Sleep. Doggone insomnia that hits randomly now and then. *sigh* Anyway, when my alarm went off at 6:14 a.m., it didn't even matter because I was already awake. Which is nuts. I got up and went to the living room, and within four minutes Kaylee came walking in rubbing her eyes-she'd set her alarm and gotten up all on her own. She was eager to go, but said "I don't really care for getting up when it's still dark." Yeah, me neither kiddo, but I suppose we'd both better get used to it. ;) We had almost an hour to get ready. She wanted me to curl her hair with a curling iron, and then didn't like how it looked so made me flatten the front back out. She wanted to put on mascara, lip gloss and eye shadow. I said okay...to the lip gloss. She put on the new outfit she picked out yesterday, and finally we were ready to go. It took me a whole six minutes to get to her bus pickup location, so we waited there for over ten minutes, watching other kids sitting in cars and waiting. Kaylee was so excited, and had someone she already knew who was also there for her first day, and that made things a little easier too. When she drove off on the bus, I sent up a prayer that she would have a good, positive first day of school. It was her first time in a public school, her first real school bus ride, her first day of 5th grade, all new teachers, new environment, she has more than one teacher, has a locker, and doesn't know any but one kid in the whole school, didn't know where anything was, none of it. She did swimmingly. (The school mascot is a "comet" by the way.) Steve picked her up at the bus stop after school in the Corvette with the top off for her first official ride home. :) She had lots to say about her new teachers, her new school, her new buildings, all of it. And there are something like 25-28 kids (can't remember the number off-hand) of kids in her class, of which 8 are boys and the other 17-20 are girls, so she has lots of potential new friends. She's...eager. And I am happy for her. :)
After I dropped her off at school, I ran home, showered, ran out to Glenndale and flew KS with a student over to Muncie for the second day in a row (different student). This student needed her 3 solo takeoffs and landings at a tower controlled field too. The problem is, the tower field is an hour round trip flight, so to save students money I usually go over with them to practice it dual for the first time for a few "laps", then I'll have them drop me off at the FBO so they can go do their solo 3 take offs and landings. Today the airfield was deserted. We did two practice ones, the student was stumbling a little on the radio but doing okay, so I had them drop me off. Student takes off, and whomp, it's incoming traffic from everywhere. Four or more airplanes in the pattern all at once all of a sudden. Tower had my student do a 360 degree turn to the right, then another one to the left and follow a jet in (and caution wake turbulence) all on their first solo landing at a tower. I'm inside listening to this with my head in my hand. But I'll tell you what, the student killed it. In a good way. And from that first takeoff on, they took control and did great. The line guy came up to me and said "Hey, your student is doing great with all this" and the tower even got on the radio and said "NICE job KS, you're doing great". It was their first time ever talking to anyone, and they nailed it. After three full stop TOLS, they came and got me and we headed home for a total of 2.4 hours flight time. Hood work, VOR tracking and tower TOLS all in one flight. Check.
I was 20 minutes late for lunch but folks sat there and let me eat with them anyway. ;) I then ran to Sheridan to meet the next fellow, for another 2.2 flight, this time down to Terre Haute's little "Sky King" airport. They have a 3500' x 50' runway and a 1900' x 50' runway, and it's right outside the Terre Haute Class D airspace. I like it. Neat airport. Anyway, this was an IFR flight, and we got lots of stuff in. Filing, radio work, hood work, VOR tracking, they changed our airway on us and had us intercept it, approaches, we even did a little partial panel work. Good times, good times.
My brief stop at Glenndale to pick up a hood for that "IFR" flight allowed me to see a little box sitting on the counter. MY CELL PHONE! Woo hoo! My phone died, so I've been without for several days now. That was my replacement phone, and I was quite happy to see it, even if I couldn't do anything with it yet.
By the time I got everything put away and got home it was after 5 p.m., so Kaylee got to tell me all about her first day of school. I then activated my new phone and I am Back in Business. I've lost all the texts I'd saved from Kaylee and a few others that I wanted to save, but my voicemails and photos and contacts and such are all on there, so I'm not in too bad of shape for having had a phone meltdown, particularly since it was all free to replace, including shipping. All's well that ends well. :)
Richard got me a beautiful red flowering plant as a thank you for helping with his head, and Kenny got it planted today outside, and it is just sitting so prettily out there. I enjoyed seeing it when I came in tonight from work. It will bloom a couple of times, and it is in full bloom now, so I get to enjoy it several times this year. :) Tomorrow will come early again, but I think we're off to a swimming start...
After I dropped her off at school, I ran home, showered, ran out to Glenndale and flew KS with a student over to Muncie for the second day in a row (different student). This student needed her 3 solo takeoffs and landings at a tower controlled field too. The problem is, the tower field is an hour round trip flight, so to save students money I usually go over with them to practice it dual for the first time for a few "laps", then I'll have them drop me off at the FBO so they can go do their solo 3 take offs and landings. Today the airfield was deserted. We did two practice ones, the student was stumbling a little on the radio but doing okay, so I had them drop me off. Student takes off, and whomp, it's incoming traffic from everywhere. Four or more airplanes in the pattern all at once all of a sudden. Tower had my student do a 360 degree turn to the right, then another one to the left and follow a jet in (and caution wake turbulence) all on their first solo landing at a tower. I'm inside listening to this with my head in my hand. But I'll tell you what, the student killed it. In a good way. And from that first takeoff on, they took control and did great. The line guy came up to me and said "Hey, your student is doing great with all this" and the tower even got on the radio and said "NICE job KS, you're doing great". It was their first time ever talking to anyone, and they nailed it. After three full stop TOLS, they came and got me and we headed home for a total of 2.4 hours flight time. Hood work, VOR tracking and tower TOLS all in one flight. Check.
I was 20 minutes late for lunch but folks sat there and let me eat with them anyway. ;) I then ran to Sheridan to meet the next fellow, for another 2.2 flight, this time down to Terre Haute's little "Sky King" airport. They have a 3500' x 50' runway and a 1900' x 50' runway, and it's right outside the Terre Haute Class D airspace. I like it. Neat airport. Anyway, this was an IFR flight, and we got lots of stuff in. Filing, radio work, hood work, VOR tracking, they changed our airway on us and had us intercept it, approaches, we even did a little partial panel work. Good times, good times.
My brief stop at Glenndale to pick up a hood for that "IFR" flight allowed me to see a little box sitting on the counter. MY CELL PHONE! Woo hoo! My phone died, so I've been without for several days now. That was my replacement phone, and I was quite happy to see it, even if I couldn't do anything with it yet.
By the time I got everything put away and got home it was after 5 p.m., so Kaylee got to tell me all about her first day of school. I then activated my new phone and I am Back in Business. I've lost all the texts I'd saved from Kaylee and a few others that I wanted to save, but my voicemails and photos and contacts and such are all on there, so I'm not in too bad of shape for having had a phone meltdown, particularly since it was all free to replace, including shipping. All's well that ends well. :)
Richard got me a beautiful red flowering plant as a thank you for helping with his head, and Kenny got it planted today outside, and it is just sitting so prettily out there. I enjoyed seeing it when I came in tonight from work. It will bloom a couple of times, and it is in full bloom now, so I get to enjoy it several times this year. :) Tomorrow will come early again, but I think we're off to a swimming start...
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
The Last Day
Steve's been having Kaylee slowly adjust to the new time we'll have to get up by having her go to bed an hour earlier each night until she's at her appropriate bedtime here, and getting up an hour earlier every morning. This morning was 7 a.m., and tomorrow morning is 6:30, which is when we'll have to get up to get her to the bus stop on time. She did okay with the 8 a.m. wakeup, but this 7 a.m. one got her. She did it on her own and came on in, but she was sleeeepy. Tomorrow she'll be busy and wound up, but I bet she's tired tomorrow night. :)
I flew for 2.3 this morning, then another 1.2 this afternoon after lunch, then picked up Kaylee and took her shopping for a new "first day of school" outfit. It took us a couple of different stores and a couple of hours, but then she found it. I then took her to get her hair trimmed, and we went looking for shoes too, but that was unsuccessful. The slip on shoes all rubbed the back of her foot wrong, the sandals were all ugly, flip flops are not what she had in mind, and the prettiest shoes all had heels, which I wouldn't let her get to wear to school all day long. Some day she'll thank me for that. She's happy with everything else though, and it only took me until 8 p.m. to get it all accomplished. :O She's really excited about tomorrow, and I hope she is as happy with her new school situation as she anticipates. :)
I thought this was pretty unbelievable. Like I've said elsewhere, it's good to know that should I run an airplane out of gas, the resulting "crash" won't be my fault. Give me a break. And the FAA did not say it wasn't the pilot's fault, because they do not make determinations the day of a crash, it takes them 6 months or more to get out a report. But there is very little wiggle room around the fact that if he ran it out of gas, it's his fault, inoperative "warning" light and all, considering there is still timing, visual checking, and fuel gauges, and I don't know what planet this story came from...but this guy isn't going to hear the end of this one any time soon...
I flew for 2.3 this morning, then another 1.2 this afternoon after lunch, then picked up Kaylee and took her shopping for a new "first day of school" outfit. It took us a couple of different stores and a couple of hours, but then she found it. I then took her to get her hair trimmed, and we went looking for shoes too, but that was unsuccessful. The slip on shoes all rubbed the back of her foot wrong, the sandals were all ugly, flip flops are not what she had in mind, and the prettiest shoes all had heels, which I wouldn't let her get to wear to school all day long. Some day she'll thank me for that. She's happy with everything else though, and it only took me until 8 p.m. to get it all accomplished. :O She's really excited about tomorrow, and I hope she is as happy with her new school situation as she anticipates. :)
I thought this was pretty unbelievable. Like I've said elsewhere, it's good to know that should I run an airplane out of gas, the resulting "crash" won't be my fault. Give me a break. And the FAA did not say it wasn't the pilot's fault, because they do not make determinations the day of a crash, it takes them 6 months or more to get out a report. But there is very little wiggle room around the fact that if he ran it out of gas, it's his fault, inoperative "warning" light and all, considering there is still timing, visual checking, and fuel gauges, and I don't know what planet this story came from...but this guy isn't going to hear the end of this one any time soon...
Monday, August 15, 2011
Breathing
I feel a lot lighter today. I pushed back my morning student by 30 minutes so I could finally pick up my contacts from the eye doctor, since they've been "in" since last Thursday and I haven't been available at all during their business hours ever since to go get them. I flew for an hour this morning, then immediately tossed Kaylee in the car and drove half an hour over to Eastern School with all her transcripts in order to try to finally get something resolved here once and for all. We got in, the Principal saw us within 20 minutes on what was probably one of the busiest days of the year, he looked through her transcripts and basically talked straight to her for about 10 minutes. He didn't ask me any questions unless she didn't know the answer--he wanted to hear from the person who would be attending his school. I liked him. Kaylee liked him too. And he liked her. After 10 minutes he agreed to allow her to register and become a part of his school, and off we went to fill out paperwork. A lot of paperwork. I got it all in, paid a check for book fees, and we left there registered and ready to go for the first day of school on...Wednesday. :O
Kaylee was really excited. She wanted to go to this school, and it ended up working out well, and she can't wait. They serve breakfast. And lunch. And have lockers. And more than one teacher that you have even in 5th grade. And they're 'big' with four different 5th grade classes. Lots of kids her age. And a Christian after-school program. In a public school. And the whole school has an atmosphere of friendliness and closeness, with big posters up about good character, morals, etc. She's really hoping for a positive, good year, and of course we're hoping for the same for her. :)
So having that over and done with and cemented, finally, makes me feel a lot more relaxed. School supplies---check. Registration---complete. First day of school---coming up fast!
After lunch I had another lesson from 2-4:30, instrument stuff, then flew over to Muncie to fly with another fellow over there for 1.9. I got home sometime around 8 p.m. Another busy day, productive, and good...
Kaylee was really excited. She wanted to go to this school, and it ended up working out well, and she can't wait. They serve breakfast. And lunch. And have lockers. And more than one teacher that you have even in 5th grade. And they're 'big' with four different 5th grade classes. Lots of kids her age. And a Christian after-school program. In a public school. And the whole school has an atmosphere of friendliness and closeness, with big posters up about good character, morals, etc. She's really hoping for a positive, good year, and of course we're hoping for the same for her. :)
So having that over and done with and cemented, finally, makes me feel a lot more relaxed. School supplies---check. Registration---complete. First day of school---coming up fast!
After lunch I had another lesson from 2-4:30, instrument stuff, then flew over to Muncie to fly with another fellow over there for 1.9. I got home sometime around 8 p.m. Another busy day, productive, and good...
Sunday, August 14, 2011
The Bad, The Good, and the Even Better
I ended up doing nothing last night but falling asleep good and early. This was facilitated by my exhaustion, lack of motivation to do anything productive, and the TV being taken over by non-stop coverage of the stage collapsing at the Indiana State Fair. The collapse happened due to a huge wind gust before a storm, 77 mph winds, and killed four people and wounded over 40. They spent the next three hours going over all of those facts repeatedly, until I fell asleep.
I woke up a normal human being again, which is always nice. ;) Fog this morning canceled my/Steve's flight, so we worked on our respective projects. Several things have broken around here lately. A toilet handle, one of the locks on the back door, and yesterday my cell phone started having problems. I couldn't get the touch screen to work at all, couldn't hit any buttons, and I'd have to take the battery out of the phone to try to reboot it and get it to work. It got worse and worse until today I couldn't use my phone at all. This is not good. Then I went out to the Jeep with Kaylee to run errands, and it wouldn't start. Completely dead. This is not good either. Kaylee and I took the Cutlass while Steve charged up the battery on the Jeep (which did not fix the problem), fixed the lock on the back door and did several other outside/garage things.
I got all the statements for the airport folded, stuffed, stamped and on their way, made a bank deposit, then went to the Verizon store to see if they could help me with my non-functioning phone. Three different people looked at it and played with it, then the most knowledgeable told me I should do a full data reset, put it back to factory settings, etc. I told them to go ahead. He came back in about 7 minutes and said he couldn't get it to break again and that it may have fixed it. He handed it to me, told me to sign into my Google account to reload all my contacts, I hit one button, and it froze. I handed it back to him, and he laughed and suggested we go over to the registers where he could look up my account and see what we could do. At this point I am a bit bummed out, and when he says "I need an address of where to send your replacement phone", I said "How much would it cost?" He said "Oh, you're still under the 1 year manufacturer's warranty--it's free." Oh Yeah. Now THAT'S good news. I get a brand new phone. Thank heavens! It won't get here for another 4-5 days, which means I am effectively without a phone for an awful long time here, but at least it's coming and it's free.
After that bit of good news, I took Kaylee shopping for School Supplies. She took her time picking out The Backpack that was more grown-up looking while still being "Her". She went through a black and purple one that she felt would be more "mature", but was too stodgy for her, then a brightly colored one that would be more "fun", but she was afraid that it would be too childish, then picked out one she thought would be cool to other kids, but it wasn't really "the real Kaylee". This stuff is important to a fifth grader entering a new school. She found The Backpack in another aisle, brightly colored but mature looking, fun and all her. She proclaimed it to be perfect. I wiped sweat off my brow in relief. ;) The rest of the supplies went quickly, as there weren't many. Some folders, some paper, some binders, some red pens, and most of the rest of the supplies we already had here at home from previous years. When we got home, I put all of her school supplies in her backpack, and she is ready to head off to her first day of school in a new grade at a new place with new rules, teachers, students and atmosphere. Now if I can hear back from them and get her official registration complete before the first official day of school on Wednesday, that would be great...
Steve cooked us up some burgers and brats for dinner, we're listening to some music and relaxing for a bit before another crazy week starts up. Crazier than usual, since I've got people scheduled even over my lunch hour on at least one day because I'm so busy students can't get in, and Kaylee starts school, one guy has to finish his rating by the 23rd if at all possible and another is pushing hard to be done too. I've got some days scheduled until 8 pm or later, and am booked solid, and will be getting up at 6:15 or so a.m. every day to get Kaylee off to the school bus by 7:20. It's going to be...interesting!
Tonight I was outside playing Frisbee with Kaylee, when she lost the Frisbee behind our house. Back in that area there was a big ole spider web. She said "YOU get it." I said "YOU get it." She said she wasn't going to get it, and ran inside and got a plastic baseball bat and swiped out the big web. She then said "NOW you can go get it." I said "I'M not getting it-you threw it back there, YOU go get it." She huffed and said "YOU'RE the ADULT here!"
I may be the adult but I'm still not going back there. Steve came out and got it. Problem solved. ;)
I woke up a normal human being again, which is always nice. ;) Fog this morning canceled my/Steve's flight, so we worked on our respective projects. Several things have broken around here lately. A toilet handle, one of the locks on the back door, and yesterday my cell phone started having problems. I couldn't get the touch screen to work at all, couldn't hit any buttons, and I'd have to take the battery out of the phone to try to reboot it and get it to work. It got worse and worse until today I couldn't use my phone at all. This is not good. Then I went out to the Jeep with Kaylee to run errands, and it wouldn't start. Completely dead. This is not good either. Kaylee and I took the Cutlass while Steve charged up the battery on the Jeep (which did not fix the problem), fixed the lock on the back door and did several other outside/garage things.
I got all the statements for the airport folded, stuffed, stamped and on their way, made a bank deposit, then went to the Verizon store to see if they could help me with my non-functioning phone. Three different people looked at it and played with it, then the most knowledgeable told me I should do a full data reset, put it back to factory settings, etc. I told them to go ahead. He came back in about 7 minutes and said he couldn't get it to break again and that it may have fixed it. He handed it to me, told me to sign into my Google account to reload all my contacts, I hit one button, and it froze. I handed it back to him, and he laughed and suggested we go over to the registers where he could look up my account and see what we could do. At this point I am a bit bummed out, and when he says "I need an address of where to send your replacement phone", I said "How much would it cost?" He said "Oh, you're still under the 1 year manufacturer's warranty--it's free." Oh Yeah. Now THAT'S good news. I get a brand new phone. Thank heavens! It won't get here for another 4-5 days, which means I am effectively without a phone for an awful long time here, but at least it's coming and it's free.
After that bit of good news, I took Kaylee shopping for School Supplies. She took her time picking out The Backpack that was more grown-up looking while still being "Her". She went through a black and purple one that she felt would be more "mature", but was too stodgy for her, then a brightly colored one that would be more "fun", but she was afraid that it would be too childish, then picked out one she thought would be cool to other kids, but it wasn't really "the real Kaylee". This stuff is important to a fifth grader entering a new school. She found The Backpack in another aisle, brightly colored but mature looking, fun and all her. She proclaimed it to be perfect. I wiped sweat off my brow in relief. ;) The rest of the supplies went quickly, as there weren't many. Some folders, some paper, some binders, some red pens, and most of the rest of the supplies we already had here at home from previous years. When we got home, I put all of her school supplies in her backpack, and she is ready to head off to her first day of school in a new grade at a new place with new rules, teachers, students and atmosphere. Now if I can hear back from them and get her official registration complete before the first official day of school on Wednesday, that would be great...
Steve cooked us up some burgers and brats for dinner, we're listening to some music and relaxing for a bit before another crazy week starts up. Crazier than usual, since I've got people scheduled even over my lunch hour on at least one day because I'm so busy students can't get in, and Kaylee starts school, one guy has to finish his rating by the 23rd if at all possible and another is pushing hard to be done too. I've got some days scheduled until 8 pm or later, and am booked solid, and will be getting up at 6:15 or so a.m. every day to get Kaylee off to the school bus by 7:20. It's going to be...interesting!
Tonight I was outside playing Frisbee with Kaylee, when she lost the Frisbee behind our house. Back in that area there was a big ole spider web. She said "YOU get it." I said "YOU get it." She said she wasn't going to get it, and ran inside and got a plastic baseball bat and swiped out the big web. She then said "NOW you can go get it." I said "I'M not getting it-you threw it back there, YOU go get it." She huffed and said "YOU'RE the ADULT here!"
I may be the adult but I'm still not going back there. Steve came out and got it. Problem solved. ;)
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Turn Left Go Fast
My alarm going off at 5:30 this morning didn't make me overly happy, but I thought "Hey, I'm going to the Air Race, where they said they were desperate for volunteers; should be fun." I arrived at the airport by 6:45, and had been told to go "to the FBO". Walked in to the FBO, a woman walked up to me, I said "I'm here to volunteer", she said "Great!" and led me outside and handed me a 10 pound bag of pancake mix and said "We need to mix up these pancakes for the grill". This isn't what I had in mind, but okay, I'm game. She didn't have a measuring device and suggested I wing it. I've never actually made pancakes before, but how hard can it be, right? She put an 8 year old boy with me. As I read the directions, I realized I needed 17.5 cups of pancake mix and 4 quarts of water. But how many cups are in a quart? Nobody knows. The lady said "just add water and stir it up until it looks right". I stare at it for a bit and the kid says "Have you ever MADE pancakes before?" No, no I have not, okay?! The kid calls his mother on the cellphone and in Spanish asks her how to make pancakes. I say "I think we've got it here." Another guy comes over and says "Aren't you supposed to add eggs?" I say "No, the directions just say add water. He walks over to the kid with the phone and says "ask your mom if we're supposed to add eggs." Kid asks, then says "No eggs." *sigh* I can READ, people. ;) I mix up a couple batches of these pancakes, the grill guys make them up, and I sit there for an hour with nothing else to do, so I wander upstairs to find that's where the air race volunteers had gone and they have nothing for me to do. So I go back to breakfast and wait until two other folks with nothing to do leave, and I take over filling up cups with OJ & milk, then take over handing out pancakes and sausage when everybody else leaves and it's just me there. Around 9:30, breakfast is "over", but I get rid of food until 10, at which time the next crew comes in from somewhere else and "we have our own people". So I'm no longer needed, and after wandering around staring at myself for a few minutes, I went home, so I could turn around and drive back down to Sheridan for a long lesson just a couple hours later. Basically what I did was get up super early and drive almost 2 hours round trip to help out Montgomery Av. on their pancake breakfast instead of helping at the Air Race itself, which is ironic on a couple of levels, not the least of which being that they are our direct competition in flight training. ;)
(We actually get along fine with them, it's not an ugly kind of competition like we used to have with a certain no-longer-in-existence-FBO around here...the one that would call the FAA on our instructors, spread as many bad rumors about us as possible, etc. ;))
Now it's 6 pm and I made it home and I do believe I'll order myself some Chinese and SIT for awhile. Even though I don't have the billing in the snail mail yet and even though I don't have Kaylee's school supplies and even though I've got two people trying to take a checkride, one in the next week and I need to do some prep work on that and even though I am completely out of milk in the house and should run to the post office, the store, and to pick up my contact lenses, and even though I have some other things I'm supposed to do asap...I am officially cranky at the moment, so what I am going to do is sit and eat Chinese for an hour or two. The end. ;)
(We actually get along fine with them, it's not an ugly kind of competition like we used to have with a certain no-longer-in-existence-FBO around here...the one that would call the FAA on our instructors, spread as many bad rumors about us as possible, etc. ;))
Now it's 6 pm and I made it home and I do believe I'll order myself some Chinese and SIT for awhile. Even though I don't have the billing in the snail mail yet and even though I don't have Kaylee's school supplies and even though I've got two people trying to take a checkride, one in the next week and I need to do some prep work on that and even though I am completely out of milk in the house and should run to the post office, the store, and to pick up my contact lenses, and even though I have some other things I'm supposed to do asap...I am officially cranky at the moment, so what I am going to do is sit and eat Chinese for an hour or two. The end. ;)
Friday, August 12, 2011
Briefly
Again with the flying. I really need to update my logbook because I am quite sure I am months behind again, and I'm busy enough this is going to be a...chore.
I went from 9-11 this morning, had lovely Fried Chicken Friday, then flew until 4 p.m. doing Instrument stuff. Phone calls, a little work, a little laundry, and looked over photos that Steve T. took up at Oshkosh. He has over 1000 photos, and Jon had several hundred, and I had 500 of my own. It's really hard to cull through them and put up just a few representative photos, but at some point I'll get a few more up that are of things I participated in or saw but didn't end up getting shots of. I'm always glad to not be the only one with an active camera. :)
Tomorrow starts early. TOO early...
I went from 9-11 this morning, had lovely Fried Chicken Friday, then flew until 4 p.m. doing Instrument stuff. Phone calls, a little work, a little laundry, and looked over photos that Steve T. took up at Oshkosh. He has over 1000 photos, and Jon had several hundred, and I had 500 of my own. It's really hard to cull through them and put up just a few representative photos, but at some point I'll get a few more up that are of things I participated in or saw but didn't end up getting shots of. I'm always glad to not be the only one with an active camera. :)
Tomorrow starts early. TOO early...
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Glass
The air was like glass today. Clear, cool, and completely smooth. I flew from 9-11, 11-1, ate a quick lunch, ran a few errands, came home for a few, flew the Citabria over to Sheridan and flew from there from 4-almost 8 pm, then flew the Citabria back "home". Got there and it was such a perfect sunset evening that Chuck took me for a sunset ride in the Citabria out and out for awhile. We ran into a hot air balloon...er, visually, not literally, and we circled around him a bit at a distance to check it out. Glenndale was pretty busy, with the powered parachute, the kitfox, Citabria and several folks out and about bumming around on a gorgeous evening.
It was a beautiful day to fly.
It was a beautiful day to fly.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Good Heavens
I can't begin to tell you how long this day was and how after all that not much was accomplished in the end anyway. A bit of lack of sleep may not have helped me find the right vocabulary words today when I needed them, but the rest I can't blame on that ;) Kaylee and I ran around today after lunch for about 4 hours. One school lost her paperwork, one place had me come back there twice and wanted me to come back a third time, my contacts were never ordered so now I'm on borrowed time on my last one-week trial pair that I've had for two weeks already while they order more, some other paperwork isn't what it was supposed to be, it was just...a crazy day. It's also ten days past the end of the month billing and only 5 days to the mid-month billing and I'm not done because I keep having either students all day to fly with, big trips, exhaustion, or a recovery from a 10-day visit to Wisconsin. ;) I'm not sure what to do on a couple of things, either, and I'm getting dissatisfied with "Limbo", which is a place I've been residing in for a couple of things here. Well, most of these things will resolve within the next week, so that's good, anyway. :)
If anyone knows of anyone who could use anything Tupperware or from Thirty-One Gifts, I would appreciate you passing this info on or placing an order with them, even if it's small. These two ladies separately set up fundraisers for SMA Support, and they aren't getting much response because the big SMA organizations also set up Tupperware and Thirty-One Gift fundraisers for the same time frame (after these ladies did, by the way). Both ladies are giving their full commission up, one of them doesn't even know me, but is a friend of a friend, and 20% of all orders will go back to SMA Support. Because they did this on their own, I'd love to be able to help them have at least a decent "turnout" for their efforts...thanks...
Location http://my2.tupperware.com/tup-html/B/brandydshifflett-welcome.html
________________________________________
August is Spinal Muscular Awareness (SMA) Month. Since it is I'm doing a Tupperware fundraiser to help support families that are fighting this disease. My commission will be donated to help SMA families get the support and supplies they need.
August is a great month to buy Tupperware. There a lot of great sales going on. Plus you'll be able to purchase great products for taking lunches to school and work that will save you a lot of money.
To help out you can shop at www.mytupperware.com/brandydshifflett.
All orders will be shipped directly to your home.
Please feel free to pass this along to your family and friends!
Thanks so much for your support!
----------------------------
and
----------------------------
My dear friend, Julie Kelly, is an Independent Consultant for Thirty-One Gifts and, in honor of SMA Awareness Month, is donating 20% of the net proceeds from this fundraiser to SMA Support so that Laura Stants can continue providing support and equipment to families all over the globe.
The fundraiser begins on July 25, 2011 and ends on August 29, 2011.
Everything in the catalog is 15% off (does not include personalization), and orders can be shipped directly to your house!
To take advantage of this offer, visit Julie's website at http://www.mythirtyone.com/62383/ and view the Fall catalog starting on July 25,2011.
To place an order: Email Julie at jjkangels@aol.com with your order (she will call you personally to get your credit card information) or, if you prefer to place your order directly with the website, email her with your name and full address to be added to the online ordering system as a guest. You will then receive an email w/a direct link to the ordering page. In order to assure that SMA will get a donation, please be sure to follow the above instructions.
If anyone knows of anyone who could use anything Tupperware or from Thirty-One Gifts, I would appreciate you passing this info on or placing an order with them, even if it's small. These two ladies separately set up fundraisers for SMA Support, and they aren't getting much response because the big SMA organizations also set up Tupperware and Thirty-One Gift fundraisers for the same time frame (after these ladies did, by the way). Both ladies are giving their full commission up, one of them doesn't even know me, but is a friend of a friend, and 20% of all orders will go back to SMA Support. Because they did this on their own, I'd love to be able to help them have at least a decent "turnout" for their efforts...thanks...
Location http://my2.tupperware.com/tup-html/B/brandydshifflett-welcome.html
________________________________________
August is Spinal Muscular Awareness (SMA) Month. Since it is I'm doing a Tupperware fundraiser to help support families that are fighting this disease. My commission will be donated to help SMA families get the support and supplies they need.
August is a great month to buy Tupperware. There a lot of great sales going on. Plus you'll be able to purchase great products for taking lunches to school and work that will save you a lot of money.
To help out you can shop at www.mytupperware.com/brandydshifflett.
All orders will be shipped directly to your home.
Please feel free to pass this along to your family and friends!
Thanks so much for your support!
----------------------------
and
----------------------------
My dear friend, Julie Kelly, is an Independent Consultant for Thirty-One Gifts and, in honor of SMA Awareness Month, is donating 20% of the net proceeds from this fundraiser to SMA Support so that Laura Stants can continue providing support and equipment to families all over the globe.
The fundraiser begins on July 25, 2011 and ends on August 29, 2011.
Everything in the catalog is 15% off (does not include personalization), and orders can be shipped directly to your house!
To take advantage of this offer, visit Julie's website at http://www.mythirtyone.com/62383/ and view the Fall catalog starting on July 25,2011.
To place an order: Email Julie at jjkangels@aol.com with your order (she will call you personally to get your credit card information) or, if you prefer to place your order directly with the website, email her with your name and full address to be added to the online ordering system as a guest. You will then receive an email w/a direct link to the ordering page. In order to assure that SMA will get a donation, please be sure to follow the above instructions.
Tuesday, August 09, 2011
The Long Day
It was a less interesting day than the last time I ran this circuit, with no "emergencies" and no bad weather right by me, but it was still a pretty long day.
I left around 1 p.m. and took the RG over to St. Louis Downtown airport. Landed,
shut off the plane, and my two passengers came right out to the airplane and got in. I started right back up and flew them to Logansport. Dropped them off, flew to Kokomo to top off the plane, charge up the iPad, eat a quick dinner, file flight plans, check weather and get ready. Flew back to Logansport, and at 10 pm or so they arrived and I flew them back to St. Louis. By now it's midnight, and the airport in St. Louis is closed--I dropped them off and turned right around and flew back to Kokomo. Fortunate that I can not use the restroom for 4 hours straight, huh? ;)
The weather stayed off to my south the whole time; I could see the lightning
flashing over there, lighting up the clouds. It was really quite beautiful--as long as it's over there and not where I am. ;)
Heading west the winds were fierce, and I was only doing 102 knots groundspeed for awhile there. That was ridiculous, so I requested 4,000' and got as low as I could. At least I got up to 116-119 knots at that point. On the other hand, I was getting almost 160 knots on the way home, so that helped.
I landed back at Kokomo somewhere after 2 a.m. and got to bed sometime after 3 a.m. I turned off my phone so that no texts or anything would possibly wake me up, so I could try to sleep until 10 or so and get a decent catch-up for the day. Instead I heard a lawnmower outside my window bright and early, and I never did get to sleep again fully after that, but it's better than after the 5 a.m. one last week. :)
I'll tell you what, if I'm not current instrument flying and such after these last few weeks, then nobody else is either. ;)
I left around 1 p.m. and took the RG over to St. Louis Downtown airport. Landed,
shut off the plane, and my two passengers came right out to the airplane and got in. I started right back up and flew them to Logansport. Dropped them off, flew to Kokomo to top off the plane, charge up the iPad, eat a quick dinner, file flight plans, check weather and get ready. Flew back to Logansport, and at 10 pm or so they arrived and I flew them back to St. Louis. By now it's midnight, and the airport in St. Louis is closed--I dropped them off and turned right around and flew back to Kokomo. Fortunate that I can not use the restroom for 4 hours straight, huh? ;)
The weather stayed off to my south the whole time; I could see the lightning
flashing over there, lighting up the clouds. It was really quite beautiful--as long as it's over there and not where I am. ;)
Heading west the winds were fierce, and I was only doing 102 knots groundspeed for awhile there. That was ridiculous, so I requested 4,000' and got as low as I could. At least I got up to 116-119 knots at that point. On the other hand, I was getting almost 160 knots on the way home, so that helped.
I landed back at Kokomo somewhere after 2 a.m. and got to bed sometime after 3 a.m. I turned off my phone so that no texts or anything would possibly wake me up, so I could try to sleep until 10 or so and get a decent catch-up for the day. Instead I heard a lawnmower outside my window bright and early, and I never did get to sleep again fully after that, but it's better than after the 5 a.m. one last week. :)
I'll tell you what, if I'm not current instrument flying and such after these last few weeks, then nobody else is either. ;)
Monday, August 08, 2011
Second Verse Same as the First
I left the house around 8:45 this morning and got back home around 9:00 tonight. Flew the 172 this morning out of Glenndale, another 172 this afternoon out of Kokomo, then the RG on a 3-hour Instrument training flight up to Goshen, shooting approaches and holds and all that good stuff. The weather was not great, but we had a really nice little bubble of goodness. We did have to leave Goshen early as I was watching a wad of weather move towards us, and we paralleled it all the way to Kokomo, did some approaches there until another wad of weather got just west of Grissom, after which I called it quits. Weather stretched across most of the state, except wherever we were, and later I found out there was even a tornado/funnel spotted up not far from where we'd been. (Of course I stayed well clear of the weather, by the way.)
Kaylee came with me to Glenndale this morning, and after I finished with that lesson, in the hour before we ate lunch, I ran her to the library. She'd finished all seven of her books in two days flat, so I took her over in order to pick up some more reading material. So far she's already read another two books today. I'd tell her to slow down so she'd have something to read the next few days too, when I can't take her back to the library, but who am I to talk. ;)
Tomorrow is going to be a loooong day...
Kaylee came with me to Glenndale this morning, and after I finished with that lesson, in the hour before we ate lunch, I ran her to the library. She'd finished all seven of her books in two days flat, so I took her over in order to pick up some more reading material. So far she's already read another two books today. I'd tell her to slow down so she'd have something to read the next few days too, when I can't take her back to the library, but who am I to talk. ;)
Tomorrow is going to be a loooong day...
Sunday, August 07, 2011
Oshkosh 2011
This is the first video I've seen of Oshkosh 2011, and it's by the guy who did my all-time favorite Oshkosh video, two years ago now. Some nice shots in there...
Recuperating
Saturday Steve and I stopped at Sam's Club and picked up some big thick burgers to grill, some 7-layer dip and scoop chips, ice cream, all sorts of goodies to take out to the Kokomo Airport for the day. Nathan and the kids were out there so he could work hard on Gumby, and Steve and AE were out there to work on organizing and straightening up the hangar and a few other things. If you're going to be working throughout the day, you might as well have something refreshing to eat and drink in the meantime. Yesterday was also an aerobatic competition that was being held out at Kokomo, so the airport itself had a NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) to avoid the airspace below 5000' and 2 nm. So we set up some chairs outside where there was a breeze and watched some of the folks compete during a break too.
My job was to go to Missouri and get Kaylee. I had to leave while the airport was busy, but I talked to the "Chief Judge" who told me that if I could go NOW, I could go now. So I went NOW, and picked up my IFR in the air once clear of the area. I only ran into one small area of "moderate to extreme precipitation" that I had to go around (I've only recently heard them using the word 'extreme' when it comes to weather. Did something change and I missed it? "Severe" isn't a bad enough word?) and otherwise the trip was uneventful.
Kaylee's had a very busy summer. She always does, and she always likes it, but this year with camp she ran out of time to do all the things she wants to do before school starts. She never got to go out on the boat, for one, and got her first ever bout of homesickness. I think it was more tiredness from all the activities than anything else. I understand-I'm tired too. :) She says she loved everything she got to do and everybody she got to see. When I picked her up, she sort of laid down in the front seat of the Bellanca (airplane), and didn't say much for awhile, which isn't like her. I had to climb up through some clouds and deviate around some weather for awhile, and when I finally got past that line, Kaylee sat up, looked around and said "Mommy, it looks like Heaven." It did, at least my version of it. Gorgeous deep blue sky, silver-white layer of clouds right underneath the wings, the sun making shadows and light all over the surface. If you saw an angel sitting on top of one of those, it would look just like a movie set for heaven. :)
I was about 20 miles out from Kokomo when the controller informed me that there was a hot aerobatic box right now and that he was going to call in and tell them to "knock it off" so I could come in and land. Ack, no. That's a good way to honk off people--take a guy doing his competition aerobatic routine, probably the best routine of his life, and force him to quit and fly off so I can come in and land? Make him start it over? No thanks. ;) I told the controller that I was cancelling IFR at this time and that I'd deal with the local aerobatic thing myself. Same as before-call in, stay out of the box, land as fast and obscurely as possible, try not to bother the people as much as possible, put the plane away and hope nobody got too mad.
I made it home in time for the guys to fire up the grill for dinner. AE had brought pork bacon burgers for lunch, and they were Really flavorful; I was surprised. For dinner we had the giant burgers I'd gotten at Sam's. We sat and ate and watched the performers and chilled out until they quit and it got dark, Nathan finished working for the day, the guys wrapped up their organizing stuff, I had flown 4 hours and brought the kid home, and it was time to relax.
And that's exactly what we've mostly done today. Kaylee slept in past 11 a.m., and I let her. Steve went on a rampage and had organized our kitchen cabinets and drawers, getting rid of baby stuff and old dishes and things we don't use or need, and spraying everything down for these dumb pesky little ants we keep getting. Kaylee's put away most of her stuff that was lying around except for her two suitcases which she does NOT feel like touching right now, and me, I read a John Sandford book which I greatly enjoyed, sitting around in pajamas all day. It's 4 p.m. and I'm just now starting in on some dishes, laundry, and billing. But for awhile today, I just needed to do nothin'. Which I did quite well, thank you very much. ;)
My job was to go to Missouri and get Kaylee. I had to leave while the airport was busy, but I talked to the "Chief Judge" who told me that if I could go NOW, I could go now. So I went NOW, and picked up my IFR in the air once clear of the area. I only ran into one small area of "moderate to extreme precipitation" that I had to go around (I've only recently heard them using the word 'extreme' when it comes to weather. Did something change and I missed it? "Severe" isn't a bad enough word?) and otherwise the trip was uneventful.
Kaylee's had a very busy summer. She always does, and she always likes it, but this year with camp she ran out of time to do all the things she wants to do before school starts. She never got to go out on the boat, for one, and got her first ever bout of homesickness. I think it was more tiredness from all the activities than anything else. I understand-I'm tired too. :) She says she loved everything she got to do and everybody she got to see. When I picked her up, she sort of laid down in the front seat of the Bellanca (airplane), and didn't say much for awhile, which isn't like her. I had to climb up through some clouds and deviate around some weather for awhile, and when I finally got past that line, Kaylee sat up, looked around and said "Mommy, it looks like Heaven." It did, at least my version of it. Gorgeous deep blue sky, silver-white layer of clouds right underneath the wings, the sun making shadows and light all over the surface. If you saw an angel sitting on top of one of those, it would look just like a movie set for heaven. :)
I was about 20 miles out from Kokomo when the controller informed me that there was a hot aerobatic box right now and that he was going to call in and tell them to "knock it off" so I could come in and land. Ack, no. That's a good way to honk off people--take a guy doing his competition aerobatic routine, probably the best routine of his life, and force him to quit and fly off so I can come in and land? Make him start it over? No thanks. ;) I told the controller that I was cancelling IFR at this time and that I'd deal with the local aerobatic thing myself. Same as before-call in, stay out of the box, land as fast and obscurely as possible, try not to bother the people as much as possible, put the plane away and hope nobody got too mad.
I made it home in time for the guys to fire up the grill for dinner. AE had brought pork bacon burgers for lunch, and they were Really flavorful; I was surprised. For dinner we had the giant burgers I'd gotten at Sam's. We sat and ate and watched the performers and chilled out until they quit and it got dark, Nathan finished working for the day, the guys wrapped up their organizing stuff, I had flown 4 hours and brought the kid home, and it was time to relax.
And that's exactly what we've mostly done today. Kaylee slept in past 11 a.m., and I let her. Steve went on a rampage and had organized our kitchen cabinets and drawers, getting rid of baby stuff and old dishes and things we don't use or need, and spraying everything down for these dumb pesky little ants we keep getting. Kaylee's put away most of her stuff that was lying around except for her two suitcases which she does NOT feel like touching right now, and me, I read a John Sandford book which I greatly enjoyed, sitting around in pajamas all day. It's 4 p.m. and I'm just now starting in on some dishes, laundry, and billing. But for awhile today, I just needed to do nothin'. Which I did quite well, thank you very much. ;)
Friday, August 05, 2011
MOVE
I really like this...the places to go, the things to see, the experiences to have.
MOVE from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.
Thursday, August 04, 2011
Thursday
Flew this morning for 1.1, flew this afternoon for 1.3, ate lunch with friends and dinner with another friend, did some work and put up a few more photos.
This is a page of photos that an aviation photographer, Paul B., took back at Oshkosh 2010 of Nathan and I in the Mustang and T-6. It was my first and thus far only professional photo shoot where the plane I was flying was a subject, which is kind of neat. It was not the smoothest of mornings, from issues with getting fuel so I could even go at all, which is a really long story full of last-minute problems that left me uncharacteristically and thoroughly stressed out, to issues with my radio, which left me more stressed out, to missing part of the briefing because of the fuel issue so not knowing for sure what I was supposed to be doing which also really stressed me out to being out there at 6 a.m. and getting a close-up photo taken of myself which probably wasn't good, to not having a perfect flight, which always irritates me. I'm not normally a high-strung person. In fact, I'm usually irritatingly laid-back about things and figure they'll work out. This time I felt a bit overwhelmed and behind from the get-go. Decidedly grateful for the opportunity, but still stressed. Seeing the photos now for the first time is neat, because now I can look at them and smile. After the photo shoot, Nathan and I flew around the lake at Oshkosh, and the view was incredible. We swapped places and he let me fly off of him for awhile, and the sun on the lake in the early morning, with all of the air show grounds below and the sun glinting off the polished Mustang just a few feet from your face, it's just incredible. The fact that I had to execute a go-around at Oshkosh because I was too fast to land behind him without worrying about running over him was embarrassing, particularly since people saw it and commented, but it was better than, well, running over him with his own plane. ;) It wasn't an easy morning, but I guess learning experiences rarely are. And I love the photos, love having them...they represent memories I'll keep forever of some pretty amazing opportunities...
This is a page of photos that an aviation photographer, Paul B., took back at Oshkosh 2010 of Nathan and I in the Mustang and T-6. It was my first and thus far only professional photo shoot where the plane I was flying was a subject, which is kind of neat. It was not the smoothest of mornings, from issues with getting fuel so I could even go at all, which is a really long story full of last-minute problems that left me uncharacteristically and thoroughly stressed out, to issues with my radio, which left me more stressed out, to missing part of the briefing because of the fuel issue so not knowing for sure what I was supposed to be doing which also really stressed me out to being out there at 6 a.m. and getting a close-up photo taken of myself which probably wasn't good, to not having a perfect flight, which always irritates me. I'm not normally a high-strung person. In fact, I'm usually irritatingly laid-back about things and figure they'll work out. This time I felt a bit overwhelmed and behind from the get-go. Decidedly grateful for the opportunity, but still stressed. Seeing the photos now for the first time is neat, because now I can look at them and smile. After the photo shoot, Nathan and I flew around the lake at Oshkosh, and the view was incredible. We swapped places and he let me fly off of him for awhile, and the sun on the lake in the early morning, with all of the air show grounds below and the sun glinting off the polished Mustang just a few feet from your face, it's just incredible. The fact that I had to execute a go-around at Oshkosh because I was too fast to land behind him without worrying about running over him was embarrassing, particularly since people saw it and commented, but it was better than, well, running over him with his own plane. ;) It wasn't an easy morning, but I guess learning experiences rarely are. And I love the photos, love having them...they represent memories I'll keep forever of some pretty amazing opportunities...
Wednesday, August 03, 2011
You Wouldn't Believe It If I Told You...
That was quite a day, and out of almost 11 hours of flying, 10.2 of them were pretty uneventful. That last .8 packed in a whole lotta something, even for me, stories to maybe be shared some day, but for now it's 5 a.m. and I'm home, tired, sweaty, and half afraid to go to sleep lest I lose all of tomorrow. ;)
Oh, one wild thing from after I was on the ground--I'm driving home, and my light turns green for me to cross highway 31 and head down Markland towards home. Suddenly the world lights up bright as day, then goes completely black. I blinked and almost hit my brakes because it was so weird, I couldn't see anything. The power had gone off, there were no other cars, and all the businesses, street lights, stoplights, etc all went dark, and the only thing I could see was in front of my nose via my headlights, which was dim thanks to the flash of light before hand that killed my night vision. Then all of a sudden things started popping back on, and all was back to normal, but that was one weird sensation-like you drove into a black hole, or dropped down the rabbit hole or something...
Oh, one wild thing from after I was on the ground--I'm driving home, and my light turns green for me to cross highway 31 and head down Markland towards home. Suddenly the world lights up bright as day, then goes completely black. I blinked and almost hit my brakes because it was so weird, I couldn't see anything. The power had gone off, there were no other cars, and all the businesses, street lights, stoplights, etc all went dark, and the only thing I could see was in front of my nose via my headlights, which was dim thanks to the flash of light before hand that killed my night vision. Then all of a sudden things started popping back on, and all was back to normal, but that was one weird sensation-like you drove into a black hole, or dropped down the rabbit hole or something...
Tuesday, August 02, 2011
Annnd, We're Back
I am sitting in a deserted FBO at Terre Haute, IN looking at the Bellanca out on the ramp and waiting for a wad of storms to pass through Kokomo so I can get in and get home. It's been quite a day!
I had a flight lesson from 9-11 this morning, had lunch, and then took the Viking to St. Louis to pick up someone and bring them back to Kokomo. I was back by 5 or so, and did some work out at the hangar and ran a few errands for a couple hours. Steve then brought Kaylee out to the airport, and I took her with me to pick him back up in Logansport at 9:30 pm and take him back to St. Louis Downtown. We arrived around 11:30 p.m. or so, dropped him off, then headed over to Cape Girardeau, where Kaylee is spending some time with her grandparents. I have to fuel up there, and headed out. When I get settled in on the way home and zoom out on radar, I immediately see I have a problem. I start timing the wad of weather and my progress, and it quickly becomes apparent that I ain't gonna make it, as they say. It was close, but no. Then I figured I'd land at Sheridan, where there was even an open hangar, and I could push it out of the way until the weather passed. But the more I timed it, the more it looked like me and the weather were going to get to Sheridan at very close to the same time. Sometimes that's okay, but in this case if I were to get that close and then find out I wasn't going to make it in safely, I couldn't have backtracked because the weather was closing in on the side, too, and would have cut me off. Not enough options. I still could have deviated east to Muncie, but that's not on the way. So I decided to do a pre-emptive stop in Terre Haute, where the rain was not going to come do anything to the Viking on the ramp, either. And I think I also picked Terre Haute because this is where Steve was stranded due to weather once, and had a horrible time in the middle of the night with no money for the vending machines. I had a purse full of quarters and a wallet with lots of ones. I have a computer, and air conditioning, and a book to read, and my phone, something else he didn't have, albeit my battery is running low. ;) I also have my mom's homemade peach crepes that she handed me before I left, that were frozen at the time and have just thawed to perfection. So I'm sitting here eating peach crepes, drinking water and doing a blog entry while waiting for this weather to get out of my way while trying to make sure I don't get too sleepy. So far I'm doing fine, but if I get tired I can get a hotel or sleep on the couch here...
Ah, the glamorous life of a pilot, huh? ;)
I had a flight lesson from 9-11 this morning, had lunch, and then took the Viking to St. Louis to pick up someone and bring them back to Kokomo. I was back by 5 or so, and did some work out at the hangar and ran a few errands for a couple hours. Steve then brought Kaylee out to the airport, and I took her with me to pick him back up in Logansport at 9:30 pm and take him back to St. Louis Downtown. We arrived around 11:30 p.m. or so, dropped him off, then headed over to Cape Girardeau, where Kaylee is spending some time with her grandparents. I have to fuel up there, and headed out. When I get settled in on the way home and zoom out on radar, I immediately see I have a problem. I start timing the wad of weather and my progress, and it quickly becomes apparent that I ain't gonna make it, as they say. It was close, but no. Then I figured I'd land at Sheridan, where there was even an open hangar, and I could push it out of the way until the weather passed. But the more I timed it, the more it looked like me and the weather were going to get to Sheridan at very close to the same time. Sometimes that's okay, but in this case if I were to get that close and then find out I wasn't going to make it in safely, I couldn't have backtracked because the weather was closing in on the side, too, and would have cut me off. Not enough options. I still could have deviated east to Muncie, but that's not on the way. So I decided to do a pre-emptive stop in Terre Haute, where the rain was not going to come do anything to the Viking on the ramp, either. And I think I also picked Terre Haute because this is where Steve was stranded due to weather once, and had a horrible time in the middle of the night with no money for the vending machines. I had a purse full of quarters and a wallet with lots of ones. I have a computer, and air conditioning, and a book to read, and my phone, something else he didn't have, albeit my battery is running low. ;) I also have my mom's homemade peach crepes that she handed me before I left, that were frozen at the time and have just thawed to perfection. So I'm sitting here eating peach crepes, drinking water and doing a blog entry while waiting for this weather to get out of my way while trying to make sure I don't get too sleepy. So far I'm doing fine, but if I get tired I can get a hotel or sleep on the couch here...
Ah, the glamorous life of a pilot, huh? ;)
Monday, August 01, 2011
Home, Day One. ;)
When I went to bed last night, Steve and Kaylee had both passed out on the couch, and I let them sleep there. I slept so hard last night it really was a "mini death", and when I woke up the first time this morning to use the restroom, I felt like I was drugged, so I went back to bed and passed right back out. I didn't get up until 9:45 or so, and when I did finally get up, I felt like a whole new woman. :) My muscles are sore, apparently from all the walking, packing, lifting, etc., but it's good to be home.
I took Kaylee to the library today; she started reading a book in the car on the way home and I haven't heard two words out of her since. She's lying on the floor on her stomach with her feet up, reading in a classic "Boy Do I Remember Doing That Too" pose.
Guess what I got up today? Photos, of course. ;) I only have my own up so far--I know Jon and a couple of others took some photos that they'll pass on soon, and I have 400 of my own, so it was hard to narrow things down a little, but I knew if I didn't get mine up now, then I'd be overwhelmed when the others came in and I might not get anything done. Plus it's the end of the month so I have to dive right into billing, plus I'm not done unpacking from Oshkosh, plus I have a lot of work to do towards getting ready for school this year, plus I have students every day most of the day for quite awhile to come. So I'm not sure what I'm going to do with all of that, but I do know it'll work out.
I took Kaylee to the library today; she started reading a book in the car on the way home and I haven't heard two words out of her since. She's lying on the floor on her stomach with her feet up, reading in a classic "Boy Do I Remember Doing That Too" pose.
Guess what I got up today? Photos, of course. ;) I only have my own up so far--I know Jon and a couple of others took some photos that they'll pass on soon, and I have 400 of my own, so it was hard to narrow things down a little, but I knew if I didn't get mine up now, then I'd be overwhelmed when the others came in and I might not get anything done. Plus it's the end of the month so I have to dive right into billing, plus I'm not done unpacking from Oshkosh, plus I have a lot of work to do towards getting ready for school this year, plus I have students every day most of the day for quite awhile to come. So I'm not sure what I'm going to do with all of that, but I do know it'll work out.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)