Man it was cold this morning. The first time I thought to look at the temperature it was around 14 degrees. I put on my wool socks and boots and dressed as warmly as I could, had a little breakfast and went out to the airport to pull out the T6 and fly to Kentucky. The back roads on the way to the airport were icy, and later I found out there was a thin sheet of ice over the ramp, taxiways and runway too, both Kokomo and Sheridan. I didn't make it to Kentucky. It was okay though. Even if I had gotten to the airport, gotten the Cheyenne out and gotten the T-6 out, the ramp was slick enough that I would have likely had a lot of trouble getting the Cheyenne put back away. That's happened before-if you can't get traction on the ramp to get rolling, you can't move, and there wasn't even really snow to "grab", it was just a thin smooth ice layer. At the time there was also a 14 knot 50 degree crosswind, which doesn't sound like much--unless you don't have any traction and you're in an airplane that requires a lot of foot action to keep going straight and you really don't want to be sliding along and suddenly have it 'grab' somewhere. I texted the other guys and let them know what had gone wrong with the day... Later on the day got nice, the sun warmed up the ground and melted off the ice layer, and the winds died down quickly to almost nothing. It would have been a beautiful day to fly once it warmed up. But things work out for the best sometimes and I had plenty of other things I needed to do, and I saved myself 2 hours round trip in fuel plus however many hours of formation flying fuel. That's a lot of money... I tried really hard to finish this formation card by the end of this year, and if we could have gotten a checkride scheduled any time in the last 2 months I'd have made it. That'll have to be good enough. I'll finish up in the Spring, hopefully, one way or another.
We spent the rest of the day with piles of boxes and cleaning supplies spread around until finally we got everything put up, away, cleaned up, decluttered, and lookin' good. Now I don't want anybody to mess it up for awhile so I can enjoy it. ;)
Kaylee started looking for her grandparents around 4 pm, standing outside waiting to see them pull into the driveway. Then she got cold, so she watched by the front window. Then she read for awhile, couldn't stand it any more and went back outside. Rinse and repeat until they arrived around 6 p.m. She wasn't eager at all, huh? As soon as they got here, we threw them back into the car and drove them out to Indian Hills for a full bore John Dale dinner, and had a nice evening in a warm hangar with too much good food.
The prep time is over, no flights are scheduled, the holidays have begun, and it's time to kick back and relax and enjoy. :)
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