Friday Follies

Doggone Isaac, probably taking out the second big local weekend formation clinic this year where I was actually going to get something done.  *sigh*  Of course that's fairly shallow considering the people whose houses are flooded and such, and the farmers will be grateful for the rain...we are supposed to get up to 4" of rain this weekend...

The folks on Facebook who post constantly about political things are the ones who get the angriest and thus burn out the fastest. They rant and they rave, they post one thing after another, acting as if anyone who would disagree with them must be a moron, and then start unfriending people who either complain about the barrage or make any kind of comment about what they are posting unless it's "you're so smart, and right, too!"  Sometimes they then have to huff off and "take a break", rinse and repeat.  People are free to post whatever they want on their own wall, tis true, but boy, their lives would be a lot more relaxed and they'd be a lot more pleasant to be around if they'd let go a little.

Speaking of unpleasant, I was really happy to hear the "Jersey Shore" was canceled. I've never seen an episode in my life, but that doesn't make me any less happy to have it off the air.  Now if they'd drop that horrid, nasty set of "Toddlers & Tiaras" and whatever the name of the show is with that awful little girl "Honey Boo Boo", TV land would start to be less of a cesspool.  I've never seen one episode of any of them and you still can't help but get infected it.  Ick.

We were maybe going to go to Indian Hills tonight for the start of the Labor Day Weekend Festivities, but that was canceled due to needing a night at home, instead.  Tomorrow morning I'm supposed to go to Marion early, but we'll have to see.  The weather looks maybe doable.  The guy who runs it is really, really looking for support for this, and with iffy weather it would mean a lot if we came in.  He is still mentioning and thanking us for the year we came in with the Mustang and T-6 and it was so windy that it kept a bunch of other people from coming in.  He's a good guy trying to do a good thing, and he's local.  But even if I can get there, I have an issue with it raining.  As of right now, I just got an email from the Yak guys, and they're still planning on going and flying as long as it's not IFR.  I guess we'll just have to wait for morning and see what we've got.  It used to sit out all week at Oshkosh and get rained on and be fine, but two years in a row at Mt. Comfort it sat out in rain over one night and fried the Garmin.  Ugh.  I wonder if I can rig up anything...

I've been spending so much gas on formation that I haven't really kept up with my envelope expanding program.  Not that I have a formal program, but I usually go up a few times a season and review a few things and then push a few things.  As a friend once said, anybody can fly an airplane in the middle of its envelope.  Left, right, up and down. I wouldn't say I'm in the middle, but I do have some specific things I want to work on in there. The Six still has things to teach me.  :)

Kaylee stayed home from school today with stomach problems.  She was up much of the night and just didn't feel well.  When she woke up again later that morning, she thanked me for letting her stay home.  She is doing much better tonight.

Well, one way or the other, let the weekend begin!

No Such Thing as a Free Lunch?

I think we are coming up on our last few days of nice weather for awhile, but Steve keeps reminding me of how inaccurate the weather guys are and how we may get a nice weekend after all.  Words you'll rarely hear me say, but here goes: "I hope Steve is right and I'm wrong."  ;)

I'd talk about Steve here, but I'm not sure he wants me to, so I won't.  He's had better days, but the topping on the cake was probably when he got to bed somewhere in the middle of the night and when I woke up at 6:15 to get Kaylee ready for school, I was going to have to shower and head out to Kokomo right away...only the hot water heater had gone out and the water was ice cold, and I couldn't get it fired back up.  Of course I was wrapped in a towel while Kaylee ate breakfast and I couldn't really lay on the floor and look properly either.  So I had to wake him up so he could light the thing again, and after that he just stayed up and started Round Two...

Today was blocked off to get a couple of things done on the T-6 and the C-340 at Muncie.  So first up this morning was the T-6, which I flew over around 9 a.m.  I'd told Kaylee I was going to fly over her school then, and she tried to get her teacher to look out the window for the airplane, but she wouldn't do it or let her do it.  I told her that wouldn't work.  ;)  The Six didn't take long, and when I left, some of the guys from the restaurant on field were sitting outside in chairs, so I did a low takeoff and a fly-by, then 'waved' goodbye and came back to Kokomo to get the C-340 and head right back over.  I pull up in the 340, and I don't even hardly get the engines shut down when they are there with a tug and pulling me into the hangar.  Service with a smile.  ;)  I hop out of the plane, and start walking towards the restaurant, because I know this one is going to take a little longer, and one of the guys comes over and says "Thanks for the departure!  Nice! There were four of us watching, and we all decided the show was well worth a couple of bucks from each of us--your lunch is on us!"  So I went in and enjoyed my free lunch.  ;)

The 340 did take awhile, I was there for several hours, and just made it home in time to run right out and pick Kaylee up from school. She wanted her friend to come over, and I'd had to say "no" every afternoon this week because Steve and I were gone or busy, and tomorrow didn't look any better, so today I said "yes" and took the girls out for ice cream and home to play for a few hours. Little things make an 11-year-old person (and some of the rest of us) happy, right?

I got a second-round email invite to an event being held for warbirds, mostly T-6s. Reading through it, they listed what each day was going to consist of, and it will be a poker run, various games, aerial demonstrations, waivered airspace for the aerial demonstrations and for the flour bomb drop contest, 4-ship formation contests, a Quiet Birdmen-sponsored luncheon, an awards banquet for the winners of all the contests and games, and a fly-out to other strips for breakfasts.  They suggest you come early to pick your formation 'team' with which you will be competing for best looking formation and for flying around to these various other lunches/breakfasts they're doing over a three day period. I will say that I'm sure that is a lot of fun for the guys who get together each year and do it, and it's a fun event to be able to have. I will also say that as soon as I read the words "pick your formation teams", I got a flashback to about 6th grade with two cool kid team captains picking kids out of a large group one at a time for their teams, taking turns, until the last two kids standing were grudgingly taken on one team or another--maybe, if they're lucky.  I won't be attending, because I need formation practice towards what they want for the FAST card right now, not competition flour bomb drops and banquets and doing a Poker Run in the T-6 and games.  They also don't list training at any point in the three days. This is where I was told last year to set up my own training people, call up folks and see if they'll fly with me, see if I can find a backseater to go with me, plus three more folks to fly, all out of the group where, well, I'll just say the odds of that are somewhere between slim and downright humorous. ;)  I'd told myself I wasn't going to get bent about this formation stuff anymore, and I'm not, really. I don't begrudge them having any kind of fun-filled large-group event they want to have--that's fine, and I AM sure it's a lot of fun for that gang.  I can't help but get a flash of irritation at the major T6 events held, like this, that people tell me are the places to go to, and then tell me "well, it's 'hard' to get anything done if you're new".  I have only been around for a few years--give them another 20 and more of them might soften up a bit.  ;)  Anyway, I've been able to make progress with the Russian/Chinese formation group, which is really ironic when you think about it, but they are getting the job done.

Kaylee had fun with her friend, has her homework done, her room and bathroom picked up, and is chilling and reading by 6:15 p.m.  Not bad!!   And tomorrow is Friday, and I have it off!  Then Saturday we'll see if we can get formation stuff in, or if Tropical Depression Isaac will put his foot in it and save Steve some money... ;)

Wedneday's Snapshots

I forgot to add this picture yesterday. Apparently Marion's newspaper had an article in it about the MZZ Fly-in/Cruise-in that they have each year. Along with the article was this photo of Kaylee and I arriving at Marion last year together in the T-6. I thought that was neat.  :)

I went Champ flying bright and early this morning for about an hour and a half, and this evening I went Cub flying for about an hour an a half.  The nice thing was this evening I got to solo a student.  There's just something extra nice about soloing a young lady from a grass strip in a Cub in this day and age.  Speaking of that, Dale cracked me up today.  I was in the Cub, and my student was getting ready to start us.  Dale comes up on his golf cart and sits there--I look over and say "What's up?"  He said "I'm 81 years old."  I said "Yes?"  He smiled and said "I'm 81 years old and I have never seen a girl hand prop an airplane."  I said "You've never seen me start one?"  Not that he recalled.  So he sat there in his golf cart and watched her hand prop the airplane, which went on the first try, and then he drove off smiling.  Glad to have been a first for him!  :)

Chuck took this picture of me with the student in the Cub.  It was a beautiful day all around for flying...

Steve and Kaylee were both playing the saxophone last night.  He's giving her lessons at home, and they played a couple of songs.  I warned them I WILL be taking a photo of that and posting it, but nobody wanted me to yesterday because they were in pajamas and rumpled and stuff.  But next time I see those two playing, they'd better have their hair combed.  ;)

Best Laid Plans

I'll admit that yesterday it was nice to wake up to the sound of gently falling rain, both because we need it, and because that meant I didn't have to go fly at 8 a.m. That's a bad thing to say, but I was tired, and that rain sounded really soothing. This morning there was nothing but sunshine--actually, starshine since I was up before the sun. So I flew from 8-10 in the Champ with someone, then 10:30-11:30 in the Cub with someone else, hit lunch, then had an IFR ground lesson from 1:30-3:10 when it was time to pick Kaylee up from school. She and I went to get some ice cream before coming home and starting the Homework Battles. We now have social studies and English done, with three pages of math to go. One of those pages she already did and turned in and her teacher said he never got. This happened last year several times, making her redo work we all know she already did. So from now on we will be taking photos of her homework pages so that we can just print it back off if the teacher loses it again. In the meantime, she has three pages full of math to do, which is a lot. Boo. She's taking it fairly well, though. Maybe the mint chocolate chip ice cream helped. ;)

Today is Sidney's birthday/death day. Thirteen years. That would be two teenagers in the house at the same time right now, both boys. Weird thought. But, thinking of our littlest son...who wouldn't be so little at 13!

This weekend was supposed to be kind of a nice, last big hoopla in formation flying. Saturday and Sunday, lots of people coming, flying out of Huntington, whole ball of wax. Except now Hurricane Isaac is going to rain all over that parade. The forecast has held pretty steady, overcast and 80% chance of rain that day, taking out Marion's annual fly-in, Ft. Wayne's air show, and my potentially finish up formation weekend. Not that Indiana can't use the deluge it's about to get, but man I wish it would get it Friday. Or Monday. Even Sunday. Just not Saturday. If I believed in formation gods, which I do not, but if I did, I'd say they were laughing at me again.

Speaking of laughing, much to the amusement of some of my local pilot friends, I have been drafted as the person to fly a Cub, purchased sight-unseen by someone I haven't met yet, from somewhere, Arkansas back to Kokomo, Indiana. Ty is conveniently gone, and I was left under that bus. "But you take trips all the time", you might say. Yes, I do, but not in a Cub. If I'm going on a trip, I take a trip airplane. If I'm flying a Cub, it's for instruction or local low and slow relaxation. Not a trip I'm going to have to thoroughly plan, can only go in good enough weather, with no instruments or navigation systems other than whatever hand held thing I can figure out to strap in somewhere in there, in a tiny seat, in a very slow airplane, where I can only fly about 2 to 2.5 hour legs at a time, will have to plan appropriate fuel stops and hope for the best on Mother Nature. And did I mention slooooow? I don't really know the condition of the airplane either, though it's supposed to be in good shape, but I've not heard of too many people selling a plane and saying "There's lots wrong with this thing, but it looks good!" So I'm going to need to pack a hydration pack, a piddle pack, an emergency pack, and definitely an iPod and a camera with which to record this folly. Oh, and there's not really anywhere to put these things, either. Some people like a major cross-country adventure in a Cub or a C-150. For the record, I am not one of those people. ;)

By the way, the new owner would like to come along. He will need trained in the plane, and would obviously like to see it, but...I don't want him to come. I am not riding from Arkansas to Indiana in the front seat of a Cub. The back seat is bad enough, but the front? No. Plus, I don't need stranger company for that long, either. So hopefully he can be discouraged from that. I think maybe Ty needs to re-work his schedule so HE can have this adventure! In the meantime, people are having fun at my expense on this one, coming up mid-September.

We're going to try to do things a little differently this year for the BBQ Bash. Steve was talking about it, and I'd already had thoughts in that direction. We need to shake it up a little bit--it's getting a little stale. So he's been thinking of some changes to make, and we'll hopefully make it a little different, not a lot, but enough to keep it fun and interesting for our locals. It's coming up fast, Sept. 22nd, which will only be a few days after I get back from my Cub Adventure. ;) Here's hoping for good weather, a good turn-out, and a good time!

Unrest

Last night around 1 a.m. we had a little excitement around here. Kaylee came back and said there was a group of guys screaming obscenities and fighting, badly, across the street, outside her window. Sure enough, it was bad enough, including potentially involving a mom and a child, that Steve had me call the police while he went out and tried to scare them off (from a distance). I unfortunately got a practice run on how quickly I could get a weapon out and loaded and ready to go. I will say the police response time wasn't bad. Wouldn't have been good enough if things had continued to escalate, but they did make it over pretty quickly. The guys scattered, and after about 30 minutes all was quiet again. Not the kind of thing you want...Kaylee said "Those guys were saying things I really didn't need to be hearing!" and got to see someone get hit so hard they bounced off a car and hit the ground hard, which is when she came running for us. She went to bed when all was quiet, then about 20 minutes later came back out and said "Can I sleep out here on the couch with you?" (She likes to do that on a weekend night anyway). She also was not pleased that the police officers didn't do more about it, and was coming up with a plan of her own on how they could and should be taking care of the problem, including how to draw out a couple of the troublemakers, which was kind of funny in a not-as-funny situation.

I got my numbers ready for MBros insurance and got that sent off, and got 4 out of 5 pages of info for the CAF done. The last page is the big one, where they want me to list every type of plane I've ever flown, how many hours in each and how many landings in each. Even trying to make up something halfway reasonable for that is a huge job and every time I go to start I lose motivation. I did answer the "how many landings do you have total in tailwheel airplanes" with "more than 640 landings" because I have 640 hours of tailwheel now, and that's going to have to be good enough for their purposes. I really dislike paperwork.

I think the whole family needed a day at home. We've all napped, worked on some house projects, and had a slow day. It's 4:30 p.m. and I'm just now feeling a little recuperated. Now on to a week's worth of 8 a.m. flights...

Saturday

When our Suburban got a screw in the tire resulting in a flat, and Steve took it to Discount Tire, we were all impressed that they simply fixed the tire for free and sent us on our way, even though we didn't get our tires from them and were not buying a tire from them that day either. So today when our Jeep got a screw in the tire resulting in a flat, this time I took it myself to Discount Tire, where the salesman told me that it wasn't their tire, so what he could do for me is sell me a warranty that would make those tires as if they were theirs, and they would repair it for free for the life of the tires and would balance them too, and all for only $56. I looked at him for a second and then said "Huh. Last time you guys just...fixed it. No charge." He said "Oh, yes, we could do that too, but with the warranty..." I said "I don't need a warranty, I just need it fixed." He wanted me to come over and look at a tire on display and tried to tell me how bad it could be if I ran over another screw anytime soon or ran over a screw outside of this zone. The screw wasn't in that zone, I was fine and I knew it. So I still don't want the warranty, still just want you to fix it. Finally he tried "What if I can't fix it? Do you want me to just leave it alone, or put a new tire on it?" I said "Just look at it first-if you can't fix it, give me a call and I'll let you know what we'll do then. Thanks." I'm sure he is just trying to do his job, get a commission from a sale of a warranty, something, but they didn't try that with Steve. He never did call me back, so finally Steve called in, it had been ready for a long time, but they were going to be closed before we could get out there, so they locked the key in the vehicle and left it out for us. Free. Thank you very much.

Richard drove me out to Kokomo, and I took my logbook and iPad out with me to work on updating my logbook. By the end of the day I was finally caught up. I said I wanted to break 7000 hours by the end of the summer, and I'm close. I've got about 50 hours to go, which, if current averages hold, should be under two months. Way under if MBros picks up on the trips again. One month recently I got 45 hours in, but it varies. About 188 hours in the T-6 now... Now I just have to fill out insurance info for MBros and for the CAF both.

Nathan flew all of us over to Muncie for lunch in the Aerostar, the guys worked on a couple of airplane things, I worked on my logbook, Kaylee had decided to stay home but ended up going over to a friend's house for awhile after all, and tonight Steve and some friends (and for awhile, I) sat outside and relaxed. Even the cats got to play outside for a long time. We had some homemade ice cream, and other than breaking a glass bowl all over our sidewalk and cutting my hand to add insult to injury, or injury to insult I guess it would be, it was lovely. :)

Excitement

Over lunch we toured a Tool and Dye shop facility owned and operated by a local pilot who had invited us out for a lunch and open house thing he was doing. It reminded me of the Aerostar convention in Oklahoma, the machines and processes and such. :) Most of the processes are automated, machines and robots, but there is still a person at each station who inspects the products as they come out and makes sure the quality is good. The shop was clean, climate was kept comfortable, but I'd have needed a padded seat--those guys stood in one spot, no chair in sight, for their work day, looking at the same piece of plastic coming off the line over and over and over. You'd either have to be Zen or go crazy, I think. Or I would, anyway.

Had an instrument lesson after lunch, 1.3 or working on basics. Pretty soon we'll hit some ground school and then start pounding out approaches, but first comes basic situational awareness and understanding of radials. :)

Kaylee has a fancy new (rental) alto saxophone to play in the school band. Steve showed her some basic notes, and she took off with it, playing several notes for me over the phone while we were in Kansas. Steve was surprised at how quickly she picked up the notes, as he basically expected her to make noise on it for a little while. She may have a little bit of a musical talent. Her guitar teacher said she was a quick study and naturally good at that, in fact told her she could take that far if she worked at it; she does not-bad with singing, and her music teacher at school is getting on her for playing more than he wants her to play. Irony there, but he told her she was doing surprisingly well for having just picked up the instrument for the first time the day before, but to not play so many notes right now. Anyway, if I were a good parent, I'd probably push her on the music more, but I don't have the energy. We'll see how long/if she continues to enjoy the sax, but in the meantime she's learning, and enjoying, both of which are good things, and since her dad played the sax for so long, he can help her out a little too. :)

Kaylee wanted to have a friend over for the night, but it didn't work out. That works just fine for me. I was a bad parent because I didn't want to have a sleepover tonight, but a good parent because I was going to do it anyway, and a questionable parent by not planning on entertaining them every moment all night, but now I said "yes" and the other end is the one that fell through, so I'm actually the GOOD parent instead of the mean one who said "no". Now I don't have to do the sleepover, but I'm not the one who called it off, so it's a win-win for me. ;)

Steve's off working with some other guys on some major computer project until late tonight, so I've got the place to myself to...work on dishes, laundry, paperwork, logbook catching up, and SMA stuff. Sounds exciting for a Friday night...

Kansas

It was good to be back in Kansas, and good to see family I don't get to see often enough. Not good that the reason why is a death in the family, but still good to be there. Grandma's services went well, smoothly and respectfully, and nobody mis-pronounced any names (that happened at my Grandpa's funeral, where the fellow kept pronouncing names wrong). I was on call to be the one to read what Grandma had written herself to be read at her funeral, and her obit for the paper, but at the last minute one of her sons agreed to do it, and did a fine job of it too. Yes, she wrote her own obit. That's the kind of common-sense family it is. She knew she wasn't going to live forever, she knew what she wanted put down, and she put it down, making it easier on everyone else to not have to all agree on what to say. She also had her outfit picked out, and wanted to be cremated because it's cheaper. And that's where the stubborn gene came in--she wanted to save her family money, and her family wanted to bury her next to her husband in the family cemetery. They won. ;) I thought it was very sweet that in the obit she wrote, she mentioned that she was preceded in death by her husband, her son, her baby girl, and two great-grandsons, and she named Devon and Sidney by name. Sidney was named after her--Sidney Houghton, and Houghton is her maiden name. A lot of the older generation doesn't really "count" children, particularly young children. But she never forgot her little girl, Nancy Jean, who only lived for 90 minutes, and she didn't forget my boys, either, and that...means something to me.

After the funeral we went to a community center for some food, as we have too big of a family to fit into one house. We stayed there for a few hours, then some of the family broke off to go to an uncle's house, and I needed to start heading for Kokomo. My favorite cousin (shhh) and his wife wanted to go on an airplane ride, and then another cousin and his daughter (just a little older than Kaylee) wanted to go. Fortunately for me these were the skinniest four relatives I have, a couple of real string beans, and I had a 27 knot headwind too, or it wouldn't have worked out. ;) But I took the five of us up, around town, back to the other town and my uncle's house, and back in. One of my cousins wanted to "buzz" the house, and you can get away with it out there because center doesn't have you in radar contact until above 4000', and they're out in the country...but I'm not doing that with a plane full of people, some of whom had never even been on a plane before. So we flew over at a respectable 700' or so, where they could see us fine up there. :) It was not a good day for a first ride. It was hot, it was bumpy, and it was windy. But I kept trying to warn them, and finally one of my cousins said "We trust you", and I'm not sure if that made me feel better or worse, but they ended up enjoying the ride anyway. :)

I made it home around 7:30 pm or so, tidied up the airplane and got some stuff together before finally making it home about an hour later. Kaylee was waiting for me, but I think she was happier to see the shake I brought her than me. ;) Just kidding. She'd left me a sweet note rolled up in a teddy bear's ribbon for when I landed in Kansas, told me she loved me, would miss me and pray for me. Super sweet. I wish she could have come with me--the family would have enjoyed seeing her. But, that's the way it goes sometimes...

Kansas

I waited until Kaylee was out of school so I could pick her up and say goodbye, and then I headed west to Kansas. I was only able to even go to Grandma's funeral thanks to flying. It is over 11 hours, not counting stops for food or gas, construction, traffic, etc., if you drive. It was less than 3 hours flight time. If I'd have had to drive, it would have taken a day to get there, a day to be there, and a day to get home. Flying makes it possible to be here...

One of my bad dreams last night included a part where a man and his son were on an airport ramp running toward me, and I was in a twin. Today when I arrived at Eureka, in a twin, a man was on the ramp with two little girls that came running out. Made me flinch as I relived the rest of that awful dream I'd had again. But back to reality--the girls were excited to see a girl pilot, and when they saw what a big plane I was in, they thought it was really cool. The one little girl already says she's a pilot and is going to be one when she grows up too. The gentleman, when I pulled up to the fuel pump and shut down, leaned in and said "Well, they didn't tell me you would be showing up in a fair-to-middlin' airplane!" He was impressed by the Aerostar. :)

There were just a handfull of family hanging around tonight, eating home cooked food and talking, and tomorrow is the funeral, after which at some point I'll head home...it always feels like home out here...

Distraction

I just had dreams so awful that I woke up immobile, heart banging in my ears, and then somehow my nose started bleeding to top it off. That was...weird. And highly unpleasant. I'll have to get up early, but sleep isn't happening again right this moment, and I have to get this nosebleed to lay off too, so I found a distraction in my inbox: pictures!

These were taken by a back-seater in the Lead airplane at the formation clinic I went to in Louisville, KY. (You can click on the second two photos to blow them up, like almost all the pictures on here, if you didn't know that.) The first one shows KLOU in the background, the airport we did this out of. The second and third are of me/us. This group was comprised of two Yaks, an RV and a T-6. I'm #4 in the group. A motley crew to say the least. :)

Stillness

An hour and a half in the 172 this morning working on radial identification, interception and tracking, and .7 this afternoon in the Cub working on concrete takeoffs and 3-point and wheel landings, and that was the flying for the day. A beautiful day, again. The crazy thing is, I actually need a day with at least 10 knots of wind, because this student has everything else down just fine, but we've had so many beautiful days in a row, for weeks, maybe months, that she hasn't really had any real crosswind experience. The most I've been able to muster up is 5 knots for quite awhile. I've even had her practice rolling it on one wheel just for the control aspect of it. So if I'm placing an order for wind, I'm not looking for 20 here, just 10-12 would be fine, thanks...

Here are a couple of pictures from the American Legion fly-over last Sunday:

Pre-flight briefing of the "mission".

Two T-6s over the water. Trey in the lead, I'm #2.

Just me.

At the end I took over Lead for awhile to let him get some practice in too. End of day, headed for Kokomo...

Monday's Meanderings

Steve's cousins Phil & Marlane and their two local friends joined us for lunch today, then hung out at the airport with Steve for the afternoon. For me, three scheduled flights turned into just one actual one, but that was okay, as I had other things to accomplish...

Kaylee was not happy to come home to her first round of real homework. Last night she had to finish a paper on her favorite thing she did over the summer. She chose to write a page on Oshkosh and the various reasons she loved going. I thought that was pretty neat, and enjoyed her commentary. She even included the historical reenactment of "Tora Tora Tora" in her reasons for enjoying Oshkosh this year. She did not consider that "real" homework because it was fun to write about. Tonight she had math, spelling, science and reading. That made her a little less pleased, to say the least. We're still not done with homework that's only supposed to take an hour a night. Not for our kiddo, the Master of Feet Dragging! I'm not sure why parents have to be tortured nightly with kid homework too. I vote we abolish homework and make the kids do it all at school--why else do they spend 8 hours there, after all! ;)

On the other hand, Kaylee's got her school iPad2 all decked out, set up a pass code on it, and tonight we found out she'd set up her own gmail account, her own apple ID, and was getting her email and such on there, just fine, without any help. She said she struggled getting gmail to work properly at first, but then she got it. Good grief, grown men and women struggle with setting an iPad up properly at first; 11 year olds these days are kind of scary!

I was driving out to the airport a few days ago early in the morning, had my iPod playing something soothing in my ears, the sun was coming up over the corn that's finally getting tall now that we got some rain, and I was out on the back roads that you currently have to use to even make it to the airport. As I was cruising along, I was looking over at all the wildflowers on the side of the road, the broken down old barns with trees growing around/through them, the baby black and white kitten that was hunting off in the wild grass, and the thought "You can take the girl out of the country but you can't take the country out of the girl" popped into my head and made me smile. I enjoy marble and brass and excitement and 24 hour stores and options of going out to do whatever you want, get whatever you want, whenever you want. But I'm not relaxed or at peace in "big city" settings. I'm a country girl. I like open spaces, few people, fresh air, trees, mountains, oceans and desert, all of it. Some people feel energized in the city--I feel excited for a little while, and then I just feel drained and trapped. The country just seeps into you slowly until you feel the knots letting go. John Denver has a line in a song that says "There was something in the city that he said he couldn't breathe. There was something in the country that he said he couldn't leave." That's me. Some people look down on that, considering it uneducated, unsophisticated, etc. There are certainly plenty of uneducated folks in large cities, too--look at education statistics sometime. But someone's idea of sophistication isn't what I find to be the important factor in life. I'd rather know that when someone smiles at me, they mean it. That when a guy says "I'll do that", he will. That when disaster strikes, the small community will come together and rebuild, quietly, without much fuss. They take care of their own. Yep, I'm a country girl--and proud of it. :)

The Rest of the Day

You know your 96 year old relatives aren't going to be there forever, but it still kind of seems like they will be anyway, one more year, another year, maybe one more year... One of my favorite stories, that I think my mom hates, that underscores my grandma's personality, is when I found out she thought I was an ugly baby. She was just really matter-of-fact about it. Laurie was an ugly baby, but hey, she grew up pretty (she said), and ugly babies often do grow up into pretty adults you know. My mom insists I was a cute baby. I look at pictures and I can see both sides of the story, even if I was scrawny and bald, but a grandma telling her grandchild they were an ugly baby? Well, she used the word "homely" I believe, but it means the same thing, and that's just her, and it still cracks me up. You always knew right where you stood with her, and that's something rather lacking in the world today, in my opinion. She made no apologies for what she thought, right or wrong, and was one tiny woman who was the glue to a very large family. Tough lady...

So, the rest of the day.

This morning I got up at 8 in order to get out to Kokomo early in case I had any trouble with tugs or belts or anything else. The result of this caution was that I in fact did not have any trouble at all, so I sat on the ground for over an hour waiting to be able to take off in the T-6. I had a fly-over of an American Legion event down at Indy, with Trey, in two T-6s in formation. Finally it was time, and I headed over to Metro, where Walt G. gave me one of his T-6 t-shirts that says "I flew with the Polack". Another no-nonsense fellow I can't help but enjoy. ;) Trey had a photographer from their local paper in his back seat, who took this picture (see the shadows on the ground?), and my backseater, Kaylee, had decided she didn't want to be in there as long as we were going to be out and about, which, considering I was gone from 8:30 a.m. through to almost 3 p.m., was probably good, so she could have a day off before school starts back up. So, we take off from Metro in a formation takeoff, did some practice while we waited for 12:03 p.m. so that we could pass over the American Legion event right at 12:05 p.m. As far as I know it went fine. The tricky part was that this area is right under Indy's Class C airspace, and we had to bomb around pretty low for awhile. We only had a couple hundred feet between the bottom of the airspace and the top of a few towers, and where we had to go is right next to the surface airspace, so we had to do a really tight turn over the top of them to stay out of it. We did our fly-over, then did some practice on my way back to Kokomo. It was when I got back to Kokomo that I ran into trouble. I couldn't get the Cheyenne tug started for love or money. I tried for about an hour, letting it rest, pulling like a crazy person, until my hands hurt, and finally I was sweaty and tired and hot and bothered and I just wanted to go home. So Steve came out and got it started within about 7 pulls, doing the same thing I'd been doing, which I both hated and appreciated. Because I wanted to go home, did I mention...

One nice thing I've noticed about formation the last few times--my legs aren't sore any more afterwards. All that means is that I'm finally able to quit fighting so hard, and relax. You know how doctors make the worst patients? I think CFIs make the worst students. Or...maybe it's just me. ;) I just wanted to have it, perfectly, from the get go. I expected to do that. Why, I don't know. Why should I magically be perfect when I don't expect other students of new things to be that way? I did okay, nothing dangerous, but I wanted to be as good as I wanted to be, when I wanted to be it, which was Right Now. They told me to relax during childbirth, and it didn't work there, either. I'd like those guy doctors suggesting that to try that kind of pain and relax in the middle of it themselves some day. ;) But I digress...

"Hunger Games" came out at Redbox today, and Kaylee had been counting down the days to see it, after re-reading the books again. I went online to reserve a copy, and they were all gone. The nearest copies were at least an hour away. Kaylee was not happy. So she got on the computer and checked it a couple of times herself, and one time happened to catch it right at a time someone had returned a copy, so I got right on, reserved it, and went and got it. She was pretty thrilled. ;) We watched it this afternoon, and I have to admit, while I usually don't like movies based off of books, they did a good job of this one. They stayed true to the story line and portrayed a pretty grisly topic without being very graphic at all, which I appreciated for the younger audiences. She really liked the movie, and I liked it too, actually.

Every time I see the preview for the show "Go On" with Matthew Perry, two things crack me up. When he says he has to go to therapy to talk about his feelings and he says "Do you know what I need?" and his assistant says "Feelings?", and when they're all in a group therapy circle hugging themselves and giving themselves "love" vibes, and he's sitting there with big bug eyes, totally freaked out, wishing he was somewhere else. Yeah, that would SO be me. ;) I don't know if the show will be any good or not, but those two things, those definitely crack me up.

It wasn't much of a day of rest over here, and the next week is going to be busy, both with students I have scheduled every day and with a funeral I really need to go to in Kansas, one way or another. For tonight I'm watching football again, which feels right, running laundry which just feels necessary, and closing out the day...

Hazel O. Johnson

My grandma raised 8 kids in a 2-bedroom house, survived the Kansas Dust Bowl, the Great Depression, and the loss of a 34-year old son and a baby girl, for starters. She was the single most no-nonsense woman I've ever known, and I mean that as a compliment. She raised a family full of stubborn, blunt, no-nonsense people, which also passed down to more than one of the generation after that, too. ;) Though he didn't survive, we named our second son after her. Since I couldn't bear to name a little girl either Hazel or Orrel in this day and age, we gave our son the middle name of Houghton, her maiden name. She passed away peacefully in her sleep this morning just shy of 97 years old. If you have to die, and we all do, living pretty much independently through the end, going to sleep on earth and waking up in heaven without even knowing the difference, well, that's about as good as you can hope for!

Tasty

I'm really sleepy, so pardon the extra choppiness here.

Friday we had about a dozen wives come to Glenndale's lunch too, which may be a record, so we had lots of side items and dessert, which is always a nice way to hit a Friday. ;) I ran around afterwards to some errands, then had two evening flights in the Cub in a row, both young kids, both of whom had family standing outside watching them practice takeoffs and landings. I didn't get finished until 8 p.m. with them. Kaylee was out at Glenndale with me, because Miss Maggie was at her grandparents and Kaylee and Maggie got to hang out for a few hours, go out to eat, and just play. When we finally made it home, AE had brought over some homemade peanut butter ice cream, so some of us sat around a big bonfire in our back yard in the cool temps and and enjoyed some dessert and hanging out. :)

Saturday morning I had a student back in the Cub at 9 a.m., and after we flew, she used the plane to shoot some of her senior photos while I went out to Kokomo and did a Discovery Flight. My victim hadn't flown a plane himself and was a little nervous, but his little nephew in the back seat kept yelling "WHEN ARE WE GOING FLYING!" the whole time we were starting up, taxiing, etc. And the other guy in the back seat used to be a pilot but hadn't flown in decades. The crew had a great time, the little guy in the back said "It was AWESOME" when we got back on the ground after yelling "CAN WE GO UP IN THE AIR AGAIN NOW?" (He shouted everything in case you can't tell. ;)) Next up my student came out to Kokomo to finish up her senior pictures with the T-6, so I tugged it out to a grassy area with a better background for photos than blue hangars behind it. At the end she sat in it and put on my helmet, and I was shocked that it actually fit her. Other than some children 2nd grade and under, nobody else can wear my helmet. The world has two adults with freakishly small heads. Who knew. ;)

Chuck and Nathan worked on the blue Champ today and got it up and running...Chuck took it for a flight and came back pretty fast, sweating--the cabin heat was stuck on. So they fixed that, and he suggested I go fly, and I said "Nah, I've been up today, I'm good", but then he wanted me to taxi it over to its hangar, and, well, if you're going to start up an airplane and taxi it around, it's just not right to not take it up around the patch once, right? We found one more issue that Chuck fixed on the fly (so to speak), and put it away, ready to go for next time. We think.

We spent the day at Kokomo, then took Kaylee and Maggie over to "Taste of Kokomo", which is held in downtown Kokomo. They shut down the square and block it off, and you pay $3 per person to get in. Then most of the restaurants in town have a tent/booth, and they sell snippets of their menu there. Folks wander around and try new places or get old favorites, for tickets that cost $1 per ticket, with foods and drinks set at various ticket prices. We set Kaylee and Maggie off with some tickets and a cell phone, and we were out there for a couple of hours total. Two bands were playing, one on each opposite corner of the square, and they had some tables and chairs set up along the side of the road to sit and eat. They could have used more of those, or more chairs to go with the existing tables, anyway. Of course something I wanted had one of the longest lines at the whole thing--I was in line about 15 minutes, but it was good. ;) Kaylee loved having the freedom to run around and choose which of all the foods to try out, and the girls had a fun time with it. It was a beautiful afternoon/evening to be out and about. I'm not sure it's something we need to do every year, but mostly we wanted to give the kids something different to do of a summer evening...

Growing

It was a pretty sunrise this morning, although being up to see it is still not usually my favorite activity. I left about 10 minutes early this morning for another run to St. Louis with one fellow in the back and nobody but me up front. When I got to St. Louis, weather was moving in fast, so I kicked that fellow out and told him to pay the ramp fee for me, loaded up a different fellow for the trip home, and beat feet out of there. When I got my clearance, the ground guy said "Are you aware of the convective sigmets out there for your route?" Yes, yes I am. I stayed to the south east of the line, got in front of it, and beat it home by a good hour. Flying along for awhile in Illinois you could see it over there, and it had that solid, malevolent look. You know, the one that says "I'm not messin' with that." :)

Kaylee had a friend come over for a few hours after school, and her school day round 2 was "fine", no problems, no real stories, just a happy kid after a happy day.

Tonight we had an EAA Chapter meeting at Glenndale. After I dropped Kaylee's friend off back at her house, I went on out there, where we had brownies/cake/AE's homemade ice cream. Yum. When I got home, Kaylee had attempted to make some apple cinnamon muffins, and had set up a surprise for me. A decorated table, a lit candle, these muffins and a drink with ice and diet coke. She said we were out of eggs, so she tried to substitute a few other things to try to add some flavor and such. The muffins were terrible--we couldn't even eat them. I can eat most anything, and I got a few bites down, but...it just wasn't happening. It's okay-she'd already tried one and already knew. :) But she's experimenting and figuring stuff out. I gave her a cooking tip--when it requires eggs, it actually needs those, but there are some other things you can substitute out, and you become a good cook (unlike me) by experimenting and seeing what works and what doesn't. This combo didn't work, but I appreciated the time and effort and love she put into the surprise, and I was proud of her! Maybe she'll get the Stants cooking thing--that would be great. :)

She also finished the entire Patterson book series I'd given her to read on my iPad. All 8 of them. And several of them are not small at all. You go, girl...

Wednesday Part II

Kaylee's day deserved a post of its own down there. :)

My day started at 6:10 a.m., getting ready for a trip to St. Louis and getting Kaylee up for school. the older she gets the harder it is to wake her rear end up. I may have to resort to ice cubes or something soon. ;) But it was a clear morning to take a trip, which was good, because it was the first time we'd flown the plane in awhile, and a nice VFR day is always a nicer way to start off a plane that's sat there for awhile. When I got there, I had to take off the battery charger and put back on the cover. That shouldn't be too big of a deal, but I ran into trouble getting the last few screws in, and was practically climbing up on the wing to try to reach it, couldn't figure out why it wasn't fitting right. Eventually I was saved by a big strong man who figured out what the hang-up was. I would roll my eyes here, but truth is, I really hadn't figured it out yet. In my own defense, it was very very early in the morning. ;) The tug was out of gas, so I lugged a can over there to fill her up and finally be able to get going, my guy ran 30 minutes late because of construction, and Finally we were off into the Wild Blue Yonder! On the ground for about 90 minutes or so, and then we headed off. Again, it was VFR, which was handy this time because I had the same GPS failures as I had one other time. All the screens went to "NO GPS POSITION" right as St. Louis gave us direct to a different waypoint. I had to use my iPad to pull up the correct heading, got everything set up and organized, thus giving it a minute to come back on its own before I had to call in and let ATC know. As before, it did come back up, and worked fine the rest of the flight. This time was much less exciting because 1) it didn't take me by as much surprise this time, 2) it was VFR which made it a lot easier to deal with while hand flying, and 3) I had another pilot on board this time, so we could work it out as a team, one flying, one getting the navigation and radios set up. So, no big deal, bottom line, other than I want to know what caused it so it can hopefully be prevented from happening at a less opportune time. 2.7 hours of flight time later, I was home in time to grab a late lunch and get ready to get Kaylee from her first day.

I saw This Video posted on Facebook, and I really liked it. There's a discussion elsewhere about how unrealistic it is to post videos of warbirds and say "you too could fly like this". But...I don't think it has to be that way. This kid is 12 years old and spent a lot of time and effort selling chicken eggs just to save money for one flight on this airplane. He got it, and look at his face, hear how he speaks to the guys there. Unless something comes along, this kid is going to be flying, and if his passion is that high for warbirds, well, I for one won't be surprised at all to see him sitting in one some day, one way or the other. It also goes to show the difference between airplanes in a museum and airplanes that are flying history. You can't replace the sight, sound, and smell of these airplanes actually in the air where they belong. That's where they come alive, not in a museum, sitting on a concrete floor under florescent lighting. But here, like this... Pretty neat story. :)

First Days

So, today was the first day of 6th grade. I remember 6th grade pretty clearly, and it's weird for me to think about Kaylee being the age I was then...

I had a flight to St. Louis this morning, so I couldn't take her, but I did get her up and hang out with her until I had to leave. She was ready to go early, eager and awake. I'll enjoy that while it lasts. ;) She said she had a great first day. She has two teachers, a homeroom teacher and a secondary, and she likes both of them. They are supposed to get minimal homework, if any, on Fridays, they came home with an organization folder, and they'll get their iPad 2 by Friday, supposedly. They can't download whatever apps they want or anything, but still, they are giving every 6th grader an iPad 2 to work on. Amazing. She signed up for band, and she decided to play the saxophone like her dad. She has several friends she talked with today and has a "playdate" (do you still call it that when they are tweens?) set up for tomorrow. I was home in time to pick her up, and she jumped off the bus running full tilt across the parking lot, happy and excited, and we went out for ice cream and a chat about the day. I enjoy those times with her, listening to her talk a mile a minute while we eat ice cream and people watch. :)

Below are some of the pictures I took of her for her first day. She told me "Do NOT put that one on Facebook." So I didn't. I put the smiley posed one on Facebook. But this isn't Facebook, and I know Grandmas and Grandpas will appreciate them all--so here you go: Kaylee's first day of 6th grade:

Final Countdown

Okay, okay, last comments. Every time I think about a couple of things from the weekend--flying inverted over the Yak Lead and waving at him after "shooting" him down, and having a couple of former Air Force guys who are the real deal, who don't blow sunshine at someone if they don't mean it, who paid me some nice compliments, I find myself...probably "smirking" is the right word, picturing the flying in my head and smiling. That was a nice boost. I didn't even feel like going this weekend, but I'm obviously glad I did. I learned some things, got in some flying, and had some fun while I was at it. Sometimes this formation training stuff is not so much fun. Formation flying is enjoyable, but trying to get everybody and everything lined up and working is a pain. Politics is a pain. The disorganization of the groups is a pain. For me just having to be around a whole group of people I don't know and have the chemistry work out is a pain. Not everybody is going to be buds with everyone, and this isn't a school where you can just go get your lessons; you have to get a group of people who like you and halfway think you're okay and want to help you and be around you, and break into the middle of it, or it's a no-go from the get-go. I started formation because I enjoyed it and I thought it would be a fun new skill to learn and get proficient at and would be neat if Nathan and I could have the option to fly Checkertails together in waivered airspace, like at Kokomo's airshow or something. Four years later, parts of it give me a headache, but at least there's a light at the end of the tunnel, and I've even made a new friendly acquaintance or two. I think. ;)

Enough of that for awhile. ;)

Kaylee and I spent much of her last day of freedom together. I took her to see "Ice Age: Continental Drift" after lunch, complete with expensive junk food from the theater and a $5.25 drink she didn't like. We then ran out to her school so I could sign the paperwork for her to be able to ride the bus to and from school. Once that was accomplished I had to bring her home while I went on a Cub flight at Glenndale. She asked me to bring her back some fast food, but by the time I got back, she'd already made herself mac & cheese on the stove. This morning she made us both cheesy scrambled eggs on her own. Including her pancakes, she has probably just exceeded my cooking skill level. ;)

The Cub flight was fun, because the student hadn't been able to fly for almost a month due to weather, maintenance, family vacation, and Oshkosh combined. So this afternoon was beautiful, and as soon as we took off, they said "Oh MAN it's good to be back. This is so nice. I missed it sooooo much." We just flew around for awhile before hitting takeoffs and landings. When we were done, they got out and literally hugged the Cub, which I took a picture of, and sent it to their family member as a part-joke. Seventeen years old and already quite hooked, I'm afraid! Now the problem is that this person's pretty much ready to solo, but couldn't get in to get a medical until the 28th. Oh well, at least they'll be good and ready to solo by the time they do, right?!

Tonight's the last night of non-school freedom for Kaylee and us all. Here's hoping for another good year!

Wrapping Up

A few photos from the weekend...obviously I couldn't get any from actually flying, but it's a shame, because Saturday evening's sunset flight was gorgeous, the sun was hitting the airplanes so beautifully, and there were a bunch of hot air balloons around too. Right now anyone who knows formation is asking me "How did you see hot air balloons young lady? You're supposed to only look at Lead." We were enroute (spread out) for awhile specifically because of the traffic so we could all keep our eyes open. :) Anyway, it was really pretty and I wished I had a backseater with a camera!This was in the Tucano, just doing a little turn. Notice the Garmin panel? He mentioned that I flew the plane very well--it's kind of hard not to with a G-500 set up exactly like the one in the 340. ;) I think it was during the loop I happened to glance inside when something caught my peripheral vision and notice these big red chevrons on the 500 screen. I asked him what they were, having never seen that before on MY G-500 for some reason, and he said it was a "LOWER YOUR NOSE!" warning. Heh. Oh, and on one maneuver, the helmet was so big on my head that it started floating off of me. Cracked me up. In the upper right you can see the G-meter. We'd just gotten started--I put my camera away after this for the rest of the time in the air...
Throttle quadrant for the left hand, stick for the right hand, rudder trim under my index finger on the left hand. I was just taxiing here...
Here's the outside of the plane...
This was actually the hangar we hung out in for the weekend. Behind that wall on the right was a C-340, a baby P-51, a Yak, and a Christian Eagle. This area here was where we did all the flight briefs and debriefs, and then the ramp was right out the door...
And here's the other corner. Pretty cool area, it looks like an FBO or somebody's house, not a hangar set-up!

This afternoon Kaylee and I went shopping for a new shirt for her for school. It took us over 2 hours and every store in the mall, but she ended up finding one thing she liked that she felt looked nice and was comfortable too. Whew. Later in the evening we went to her school's Open House, where she found out who her homeroom teacher is, ran into a couple of friends, turned in a little paperwork, and started thinking a little more chipperly about starting up school again day after tomorrow. I'M not ready to start getting up at a time starting with a "6" in it again, but at least I don't have to then spend the next 8 hours at school. I don't miss that...

Weekend Warriors II

I got to sleep around 1:30, and woke up at 4:30 wide awake. Got sleepy again around 6:30, and had to get up at 7:30. Nice. ;) But we all got up, got going, and were at the airport by 9:00, briefing the first flight of the day. They'd agreed that today they'd all just fly to work with me. So I was #4, and we were out for over an hour the first time. That's a long time to be a new #4; it was a lot of work, that's for sure. Some things went well, some things were rougher, some things were nailed, a couple I blew, but all in all, the consensus was that it went well. They seem to feel they could finish me off before the end of flying season this year, which would be awfully nice. I don't care if it's RPA or NATA, either. RPA has stricter tolerances and more to have to do to pass, but that's not a bad thing either.

That first flight for today I had a backseater. He is a retired Air Force fighter pilot, and he's flown every fighter from the 70s on. F-4, A-10, F-16, you name it, he flew it. He was shot down in N. Vietnam twice and had to be rescued by helicopter, and he's won every major award possible, from Purple Heart on down. I saw them on his wall along with photos of him in about 10 different jets. He said "Can I ride with you? I've never flown in a T-6 before!" lol Sure. Meanwhile, the #3 guy I was flying off of was another, more recently retired Air Force fighter pilot named Nevill. At one point in our flight, we went to what they call "Extended Trail", where basically One starts maneuvering and Two has to keep him within a certain 'cone', and three and four do the same thing with each other. It's using lag and lead to maintain distance and position without touching power, no matter what your Lead does. So One and Two are going to town, which I keep an eye out with my peripheral so I always know where they are, and my lead starts diving, climbing, yanking and banking and cranking, and off I go on him. (So to recap, a fighter pilot in front of me is maneuvering while the fighter pilot in my back seat observes as I, a not fighter pilot, tries to keep him in my sights within a certain range at all times no matter what he does. Got it. ;)) It's actually kind of a fun exercise, used as a tension breaker as much as a learning tool, though when I first started flying with them I wasn't very excited about doing that as opposed to just getting with it and flying actual formation practice. It gets more fun once you know what you're supposed to actually be doing. ;)

When we got back on the ground, Neville came over and talked about what a blast he had, and how much he loved the extended trail. My backseater was very complimentary, to which Neville said "Yes, no matter where I went, I'd look back, and there you were, always had me in your gun sights, didn't matter what I did! That was great!" So that was my smile for the day. My backseater had a total blast back there, after the flight he thanked me about 17 times for letting him ride along, says he loves the T-6, and said about six times, four of them to me, "You're really very aggressive in the airplane." The first time I wasn't sure what to say to that, and he said "Don't change that. That's a good thing." A few minutes later: "Really, you're quite aggressive on the rejoins and stuff. That's the way to be." He was pretty surprised, as evidenced by his tone of voice and how many times he mentioned it. I honestly didn't think I was being all that aggressive. Maybe I was just aggressive for a girl. ;)

We did have one major flub that started off as a deliberate flub and ended up a bigger, undeliberate flub. They wanted to practice a blown rejoin and boy did we ever get one. Airplanes ended up going blind, all out of whack, all over the place. Not cool. So we did three more deliberate blown rejoins until they went smoothly. It was really good practice.

Land, debrief, lunch, brief, then the last flight of the day after which we were heading for home. I was #4 again, and started off kind of rocky this time for some reason. Tired, probably, but by the middle of that flight I'd settled back in. Of course, come to think of it, that's the flight where Lead had a camera pointed back at all of us. Figgers. ;) We did maneuvers until about Shelbyville, then split off our own ways and headed for home. I had to fly over and let a couple people know I was home, and then I topped off the day by making an absolutely perfect, roll-it-on, greaser 3-point landing, something I haven't done in awhile in that plane. I halfway wanted to go and do another takeoff and landing and see if I could pull that off again, maybe had accidentally rediscovered the trick, but I was tired and couldn't stand the thought of ending on my usual "Well, I'm here, anyway" 3-pointer, so I put it away. Driving home and picking up food, I got so tired I felt like I could fall asleep in the car. That's a special kind of tired, a mental and physical tired. It's good, though. :)

Kaylee was sitting outside on the grass in the front yard waiting for me, and it was good to be home...

Weekend Warriors

When I woke up Saturday, I wasn't feeling any more like going to Kentucky than I was the night before. I didn't want to get up, and then I went to take a shower and the hot water heater had quit. After Steve got it re-lit and I was waiting for 30 minutes to take at least a warm-ish shower, I was looking at the weather and forecast, and man, it was just beautiful. It was definitely a day to do SOMETHING. There was a breakfast at Noblesville I could have gone to, and a fly-in at Westfield, and another at North Vernon. Or there's this formation clinic. I hadn't heard back on email or text as to what time to be there, so I planned on being there around 9, originally, thinking they were an hour behind us. Nope. Delay after delay after delay, then getting to the airport to pull all the planes out, then I needed gas, I was later and later, and I still thought "I feel like being home." But once I got the T-6 fired up and taxiing out, I couldn't help but perk up. ;) I sent a text to the organizer and told him if I shouldn't come, let me know now, otherwise I'd be there in an hour, and I left. The flight to Louisville took me right past every single other fly-in going on. So I did a fly-by at Westfield. Noblesville's pattern was packed out so I just waved from a distance, and I didn't know anybody at North Vernon, so I just looked at them from above. About halfway to the airport I was going to, I checked my texts and had one the organizer that said "Come on down, but we're not at Kxxx any more, we're at KLOU. Park by the L-39." It's a doggone good thing I can check my phone in the air, or I'd have gone to the wrong airport (again), something that gets changed on the fly, apparently.

Of course I hadn't looked up KLOU, and the iPad doesn't fit in the T-6 cockpit or map compartment, but God bless Garmin. ;) After I landed, tower asked me where I was going, if I was maybe going to Hangar 5, and I'm all "I Dunno, I'm supposed to park next to an L-39. You know where one of those is?" So he directed me there, and I taxiied up just in time for the first formation flight of the day to be leaving. Said hi to everybody then watched them launch while I got my stuff together.

The next flight they wanted to do was tactical formation, basically dog fighting. They had 8 maneuvers they'd done ground school on that morning that I missed, all things I'd never even heard of. Hook and Cross and Scratch and 90 Right Lag and so forth. They asked if I wanted to go do that, or if I wanted to save my gas for actual route formation. Right then a guy with a Tucano (this Tucano) said "If you'd rather, you can come up with me. We'll go Yak Hunting." Well, that's a much better offer. I'm not there for tactical fighting, I'm there for FAST card training, and I'll always take an opportunity to fly a different airplane. So we loaded up in his Tucano, he took off, got about 100' off the ground and said "Your Airplane". That thing has something like 1200 hp; it was a hoot. I climbed up, did some 60-80 or so degree turns and wingovers, and the weirdest thing is that the rudder trim on the throttle stick is what you actually use for rudder in the air, not your feet. That's a little tough to get used to, but it works. Then he did some rolls, slow rolls, loops, two tail slides, all that good stuff. The plane reminds me of the Mustang on aerobatic maneuvers...it's just very smooth and powerful. Then the Yaks were up, and it was time to go bust into their tactical formation practice with some real "application". It ended with Yak Lead saying "I can't see the Tucano" and the Tucano saying "I'm on your six, and you're dead. Now...look up" as we went on past him inverted right over the top of him. Now that was fun. *grin* I flew us back to the airport, he did the landing, and then he gave me a flightsuit patch. Super nice guy, I really appreciated the flight, that was a lot of fun. It was also the limit of my stomach. I have just got to start admitting I really, really can't do what I used to do. But I did do that, and I really, really liked it, too. ;)
Next up was my first formation flight of the day, and there were only three of us, so we we did a Phantom 2, meaning I was #4, we had a Lead and a #3, and a space where 2 would be. My (personal) gyros were a little tilted, though I didn't admit it, but fortunately it went pretty well. We came back in and did a 3-ship "vic" ("V") pass over the field, then an echelon pass, then an overhead break to landing. The guys on the ground said the vic pass looked dead on, the echelon pass I was a little wide, which is par for the course, because I never did do a really nice echelon this weekend for some reason.

That was the last flight of the day, the sun was going down, and I still didn't know if I was going to come home that night or if I had a way to get to a hotel or what, but then the guy whose hangar we were in said he was bringing us all home to his house instead of a hotel. That felt a little...different...to me, kind of personal, ya know? But there was a group of 7 of us staying, including another lady named Katie, not a pilot, and the room I was in (by myself) was much nicer than any hotel. We all sat up until 1 a.m., had a delicious dinner of ribs and side items, had some beverages, and just sat around talking. He has a beautiful house, 5000 sq ft in the woods out in the country, a lighted pool, and the house was just built a few years ago, so it's all brand spanking new. Steve would love the woods it was in and the layout of the house, with the big open windows facing the trees, etc. Really lovely, and REALLY nice of him to let a bunch of people crash at his house instead of making us all get hotel rooms. And feeding us! And refusing to take a dollar for it...

This is so long, I'll divide it up to give you a reading break, all you fascinated people out there. ;)

Let the Weekend Begin

I've lost my iPad again, to my 11-year-old. She was out of novels to read, and I had a series of kid adventure novels by James Patterson that I thought she might like. I gave her the one hard-copy book I had in the series at home, and she read that in one afternoon, got hooked, and wants to read the rest of them. So I set her up with the first book in the series, and she's been on the couch reading off my iPad for the rest of the day. She's going to be mad when I leave tomorrow and take the iPad with me for the weekend. ;)

Patterson is the murder mystery guy I like to read, but the first kid series he wrote is about a rough and tough girl named Max who is the leader of a group of six young kids who can all fly, (with wings, not an airplane), and their battles, adventures, etc. He has since written two other kid series, along with his usual novels. There's a prolific fella!

We had a nice evening, sitting out in the back yard with friends in the cool breeze with warm drinks and a nice big fire (now that the burn ban has been lifted in the last few days), just having a relaxing Friday.

I should pack a bag, but I don't think I'm going to. Tomorrow there are about 8 options of things to do. I don't know that I feel like flying an hour away for a formation clinic, but I just don't get a lot of chances to do it in a year, and if I can, I should. Weather looks good, even. So...we'll see. Maybe after a good night's sleep I'll be more raring to go...

Shot...Up?

That seems wrong...

I went to bed at 9:30 p.m. last night, because I had to be back up at 3:30 a.m. for a flight to Pennsylvania today. I warned who I was supposed to be flying with about IFR conditions below minimums at our destination (which ended up not being a problem) and about thunderstorms that I jokingly said to someone "I'm going to wake up to the sound of thunder, I just know it", which is what actually ended up happening. Forecast didn't call for it that early, though there was a chance, but upon waking up there was a line of storms covering the whole state, and another line in Ohio, and the the batch in Indiana was moving our way with the ugly stuff, while we were on the edge, and there was thunder and lightning going on out my window. If I could have beaten it out, I would have been okay, I think, but in an hour it should have been amongst us, and did I mention the thunder and lightning at the house? We had two important meetings to get to, one of the main bosses. But this stuff is mostly logic and science combined with a little gut, and my gut wasn't happy. I woke Steve up to see if it was just me, and while he was looking and waking up, I went to take a shower. No hot water. The water heater had died. Heh. He re-lit it, but I had to take a lukewarm shower to be ready. That woke me up even if it was still the night before, not morning. ;) Bottom line, I called and canceled the flight, with misgivings. I thought it might be doable, but close, and potentially not doable. But maybe it would be fine. Hate those. I want it to either be "no way in heck are you going to try that" or "sure, go for it." That "maybe" stuff is for the birds. Today's maybe wasn't good enough. Kaylee was asleep on the couch (I'm not sure why she was out there), so I snuggled with her for a minute, and watched the weather for an hour, after which I determined I probably *could* have gotten out, but it stopped moving north and started moving more east and disapating, the opposite of what it was doing when I called it off. I hate it when hindsight shows me I could have probably gotten it done. But not as much as I hate looking at something ugly in the air and thinking "this is stupid". I felt like crud most of the day, head and stomach, and while it's a little hard for me to let go of failing at accomplishing something, I was still somewhat relieved to not be fighting weather out east and back amongst all the storms that were blowing up and feeling as bleh as I did anyway. Instead I spent the day with Kaylee, and that was right...

It was right for ME, anyway. Kaylee wasn't quite so thrilled. See, there was another place I could go to get her vaccinations in, so after a phone call and a set up, that's what we did. She was not thrilled. She needed four shots. We went in, and she was brave, and we were joking around, and she did fine after the first shot. The second burned going in, and she was wobbly after that. The third was okay, but the fourth, in her words, HURT. That was the MMR. That and the tDap are the ones that hurt, and they bled a lot, through the bandaids, and she sat there and didn't say anything, but I could tell by the look on her face that she was putting on a brave front. She held herself still and calm and quiet, answered politely, and I could see she was gutting it out, and once we got in the car, she tried not to cry until I told her it was okay. She has decided that needles are not cool, that two of those REALLY hurt, that her arms felt weird and bad, that she would rather have gotten mumps and other diseases than have the shots. I got her a mocha shake and cuddled with her on the couch and just chatted for a few hours with a tylenol and an ice pack until she felt better, and then later that evening I showed her pictures of kids with some of those diseases to let her know that one needle prick was a lot better than weeks worth of potentially life-threatening icky diseases. By then she was willing to hear it. ;) She was mad at herself at first, said "YOU wouldn't have cried about it", and I said "No, I don't mind shots, though it doesn't exactly tickle anybody, but you did a whole lot better than a lot of people, some who pass out, some have to have their parents hold them down, some scream and make a scene in there...you did just fine." I let her know that her dad and her Grandma Chiles were highly Not Fond of needles too. She sort of liked that, because it bugged her that she was "weak" about the shots. I told her she was in no way "weak", sitting there strong and brave and quiet, and that you don't have to like something or not feel anything to be strong. She asked if her dad would be mad at her for crying later, and I said no, he'd perfectly understand her not feeling whippy about needles. ;) She did well, doing what she needed to do even when she was scared and bothered. She said the needles made her feel sick to her stomach, like throwing up. No passing out vibes though, so she's doing better than some of her relatives. ;) Those are the first shots she's had since about kindergarten, and the last she'll need until she's an adult, so she was happy about that.

I still don't feel well, but don't feel like going to bed, either. I'm not ready for Friday, I guess. But ready or not, here it is, already an hour into it, actually! *sigh* This week went FAST...

Shot Down

It was a perfectly smooth morning, perfect for a first Instrument lesson. I was supposed to have flights until 7 pm, but the other were canceled for one reason or the other, so I took the opportunity to work on some stuff for Kaylee going back to school.

One thing she needs is 6th grade vaccinations. The doctor couldn't get to her until October. The county health department couldn't do it until September. But Walgreens has walk-in vaccines. I called and verified that, and verified they had the four she needed. They had all four, but per company policy, would not give her one of the shots (chicken pox) unless she was over 50 years old. Weird, but okay, I could still get the other three done. I worked on her list of school supplies, figured out what we needed to buy vs what we already had, and then we took a trip to Walgreens. It was after we got there that I told her she was getting shots too. She was not thrilled. We went shopping first, and then I walked up and said we were there for vaccinations, and the lady said "Great, where are your prescriptions?" My what? Oh, nobody mentioned you have to have gone to a doctor anyway to get a prescription to get the shots, which, why wouldn't you then just get the shots from the doctor in the first place? Why must I get a prescription, I ask, for vaccinations that are state required of every kid anyway, but the answer is "because you must." Okay. So I take her home, and call the doctor for a prescription, and they tell me they won't give me one without seeing her in person, and by the way, we can't fit her in for three months. But in the meantime, the school could refuse to allow her to attend without the shots. Or I could claim religious reasons and refuse the shots and then they'd let her go after all. Insert seriously exaggerated eyeroll here.

I called around to various "walk-in" clinics and finally got her an appointment for one week after she starts school, and that's the best I can do with that. (Other than knowing ahead of time that I'd need to start the process 3 months early, but you'll have to forgive me, as I've never had a school-age child before and hadn't heard any other parent talking about planning months in advance for vaccinations.) At least these are the last vaccinations she'll have to have for a good while. I'm sure that thrills her, too. :)

Gotta love bureaucracy...

More of the Same

I had a lesson at 9 a.m. in the Champ, but my Explorer had other ideas when it decided not to start. The battery was so dead I couldn't even get my door locks to work with the button. Steve was busy, there weren't any jumper cables in the Explorer, and Richard had left his in Florida, but he did have a battery charger/booster. So we put the truck in neutral, got a couple of handymen who are here working on a few things on the house for us, and pushed it back to the garage where we could plug in the battery charger. I got my lesson in around 10 instead, which was fine, and then when I went to start the Explorer for lunch, it was DOA again. Chuck & Steve jumped it, I drove it to the mechanic's, picked up our Suburban there, and made it to lunch just in time. ;) I had another flight after lunch, in the 172, then had a school board meeting until about 8 p.m.

The school is one of the few boards I really don't mind being a part of. For awhile it was a bit less...relaxing, but this year things have really relaxed, gotten productive, there are good folks on there, we joke and get along well, and we've all felt the shift in the atmosphere over there, and it's definitely for the better. The school's doing great, we are having to turn away kids, there's a waiting list for some of the grades, the problems have solutions, and a lot of the people are very wise and Godly men and women whose opinions I respect. Me, I'm one who isn't as nice. I want to do the right thing for the kids and the school, but without the school staying in business, you won't be there to do the right thing for the kids. So sad stories make me sad, but they don't make me want to make decisions to cost the business money.

We need to get Kaylee ready for school, and I have some formation stuff coming up, but other than that it's looking like a whole lot of days of "I flew this and this" coming up again...

Field View, Indiana

Kaylee had some trouble last night, kept waking up with some kind of night terror issue, and I kept waking up for a different issue, so it was sort of a short night's sleep. It was a really nice cabin, nice amenities, it was good to come back to air conditioning and a shower and the Olympics at night, and had a nice porch for a little rocking and relaxing, when it was cool enough out to do so. We had a big ole breakfast, which ended up sustaining us through to dinner time, and then went to the airport to head home. The Mountain View airport is a nice facility, but the runway kind of cracks me up. It has hills in it.

It was only about a 2 hour flight home, the bad weather held off or went through early, depending on how you look at it, and we were back in short order, needing to unpack and get ready for the busy week ahead.

I got my photos up from our trip, which you can see on My Site.

And here is a series of photos of us in the Aerostar this afternoon:

Mountain Two

It was a hot one, but it was a good day to hit the Ozark Folk Art Center. It's a little hard to describe. It's like an old-time community, with a bunch of log cabin buildings filled with small businesses set up with people dressed often in period clothing, demonstrating how to do these old world skills, kind of like Connor Prairie, only modern, too. The one I liked the best was painting copper with fire. Copper pieces heated up with a little blow torch until they changed colors, put in patterns, and set in those colors. Beatiful, rich colors, all done just with fire. Pretty cool. We watched glass creations being made, pottery, candles, knives, baskets, clothing, quilts, you name it, there was a shop on how to do it. Many of the shops were air conditioned too, so that didn't hurt. ;)

The last thing we did there was go to their adventure area, where they had a zip line, rock wall, tree top adventure (walking on swinging ropes and branches amongst the tree tops), and a free fall thing that dropped you 35 feet down like a parachute drop. Kaylee did the zip line first, and then the drop. Then me and mom went up and did the zip line too. It was really pretty in between the tall trees like that, and you're up over a small ravine. Great scenery-I'd have loved to take my camera with me, but for some reason nobody would let me. ;) Some photos were taken, but I don't know how well they turned out yet or if they will ever see the light of day. ;)

Dinner at JoJo's on the River, a drive up around the mountains, and then it was time to go to a concert. His name is Mike Snider, and he was *really* funny. It's a bluegrass and comedy thing, he tells stories, sings, plays, and has a fiddler, a bass player, and a girl who plays I think a bazooki. The show lasted about 2 hours, with a 15 minute intermission, and they kept us entertained the entire time. I didn't expect that--I thought one hour would do for me, but it was great, we loved it...

It was a fun day! A wee bit hot down here at 104 or so, but very enjoyable!

Mountain View

First thing this morning I took Kaylee to school, to register her for 6th grade. I had to fill out a bunch of paperwork, and then they sent me to the computer lab where I had to fill the same paperwork out on the computer. Why? Shouldn't we be able to just do it online and if they need paper copies they can print it? Anyway, she's now registered, and her first day of 6th grade is August 15th.

After a brief stop at Glenndale for fried chicken, we started trying to leave and fly to Mountain View, Arkansas. We stopped at home, got to the airport, and Steve left his phone at home. So I preflighted the plane, added a bit of oil and got stuff ready, while he ran home. It took us awhile, but we finally got off the ground around 3 or so. The on board weather didn't work, but it was VFR for the most part, so it wasn't too big of a problem, other than one layer I was in briefly, IMC, going around some buildups we'd seen ahead, and I get a call from ATC that said "You have moderate precip 5 miles ahead, 12 o'clock. Are you above that?" No, couldn't see it visually and couldn't see it in the plane. She said "Sorry for the late call on that!" She just saved the nice paint job on Gumby. :) The airport itself is down kind of in a valley, not as tight as the airport in Missouri that MBros used to go into a lot, but the hills are bigger here. One funny thing, Steve and I were sitting in our cabin, and I was running some numbers on performance, and we found out we'd both been looking at the same stuff as I circled over the runway coming in to land. I was looking off the ends of 9 and 27, noting where to go, the obstacles in the way, etc. It's not something I think about doing, you just...do. What you go into, you look at how you're going to get out of, too. Two hours later, Steve mentioned the same tower I'd seen off one end and the same paths that I plan on aiming for with the best terrain clearance depending on which way we have to take off. Just kind of funny. :)

Mom & Ernie met us at the airport, we got Gumby towed into a hangar, and we were off, driving through the mountains, enjoying the view, and checking into the cabin, which is very nice and has excellent air conditioning. ;) We went to a place called "Jack's" for dinner. It's on the White River, great view, and you have to join their private club in order to eat there. I had probably the best salmon I have ever eaten. Steve had prime rib that was also excellent. Seriously good food. Kaylee and her Grandma walked down to the river and played for awhile, we went for a bit of a drive around the mountains as the sun was going down, and then we came back "home" here and went downtown to walk around. As the sun went down, musicians were gathered on porches of businesses and houses, and gazebos in the park housed three different groups of musicians as well, and people would wander from group to group, pull up a bench or their own lawn chair, and listen to the picking and the foot stomping and the singing and dancing of some true bluegrass music. You had everything from gospel to goofy going, and you could just go from group to group and listen in. One group was on a big house's wooden porch, and these folks would play while a barefoot man would dance on the porch. His feet acted as a bass, or maybe drum beat on the wooden porch, and added a nice flavor to the music. The stars came out, a little wind came up to help cool us off, and a little strawberry shake/black walnut ice cream helped finish off the job. Finally Kaylee was ready to come back, after several hours, so we headed back for the cabin to cool back off, watch some Olympics, and get ready for bed.

I like Mountain View, Arkansas. It's a neat place, great atmosphere, good music, and lovely scenery. I love mountains....even little-ish ones. :)

But for tonight, I'm ready for bed!