Mississippi Revisited

When the alarm went off at 3:30 this morning, I had a bit of a struggle getting up.  I could have slept in until about 3:45, but I figured I'd use that extra 15 minutes to move slow instead, and that did help.  The problem wasn't so much the four hours of sleep, but that my head was all stuffy and my nose was running.  Great.  ;)

Of course we were able to watch the sun rise, as we were bucking the usual headwinds down there.  The forecast was for 900' broken, 1500' overcast and 5.5 miles visibility.  That's pretty much VFR, so...no big deal.  The headwinds slowed us down, as usual, and an airspace deviation slowed us down too, also no big deal, as we were going to get there in VFR conditions with between 45 minutes to an hour's worth of fuel.  And then the weather started going downhill. The TAF still called for good stuff, but the reality wasn't cooperating, and the area went from 900' to 600' to 400' to 300' to 200' on our 3.5 hour flight.  But where we were going was 300' and 10 miles visibility, which is...odd.  Other places around were 1.5 miles or 2 miles visibility, but our place was 10 miles.  Heck, at 10 miles visibility I'm not too worried about missing the airport on an approach.  But in case it socked in after all, I stopped short at a place that was at 600' to get some more gas, getting in a nice ILS.  You kind of hate doing that, because it adds an hour to your time, which makes you late, it's a pain to divert and fuel up and take back off and get back in it, etc.,.  But it's not as much of a pain as leaving yourself no extra gas for a missed approach and no option to go anywhere else if it socks in on you.  And this time it worked out pretty well, because where we ended up had an amazing FBO.  When you go inside there, they have bowls of fresh fruit on every table back in the dining room area.  They also have a chocolate ice cream machine with cones, nachos and cheese, hot dogs with "fixings", a waffle maker with a batter dispenser like in a hotel, free sweet and unsweet iced tea, and a vending machine with the usual stuff.  Now THAT'S where you need to end up if you need to spend the day somewhere!  No dead mice, no tumbleweeds on a broken-up ramp, no stale crackers left in the fridge, just a lot of Awesome.  Getting into our original destination, it sure enough stayed at 10 miles visibility and 300' overcast, and we shot an LPV GPS approach down.  (If you don't know what that is, you also don't care, I know.)

While I was down there, I was at the home base of an online friend of mine, who stopped by, and we went up flying for awhile when the ceilings lifted.  It was his first time flying a twin, so that was fun. We weren't up very long at all, just a quick swing around the area.  We were sitting around outside in the breeze, and two acquaintances of his were hanging around too, and one of them was bringing up a food, and he said to me "Well, you're probably a little younger than I am..." I said "I'm 41."  He raised his eyebrows and said "Well, you're probably a little older than I am.  No way you're 41.  Really?"  I said yes, and thanks for that by the way.  The guy across the table said "Wait a minute, seriously, you're not actually 41."  I said "Yes, really, I am, and thank you too."  He gave me a "cheers" sign with his drink and said "You've done well."  That was pretty nice, actually, because I've been feeling wrinkly, saggy, and kind of...aging...this last couple of years.  Not because of a number, just because I've gotten better contacts and glasses and I can see a little too well.  Sometimes fuzzy vision has its benefits.  ;)

The trip home went a little faster, as usual, and we got home in time for D to make it to the ultrasound of his first child, to determine the sex of the baby.  He was under strict instructions that to miss this was Not Acceptable.  So we made it, of course...and it's a Girl, by the way.  :)

Well...

First day back in the air, two flights, went fine.

Kaylee's outfit, Gi, whatever you call it for Tae Kwan Do came in, and it's too big for her, she swims in it.  It's 55% cotton so I'll try washing it in hot water and drying it on high heat and see if I can't get it shrunk a little...

Well, this one is short and sweet, as I really need to try to get to sleep here as fast as I can.  I have to be up in 5 hours from now as it is, 3:30 a.m., to head down to Mississippi.  Le Sigh.

Memorial Day

One kind of neat thing about Facebook is that you could see, at least of my friends, how many of them were remembering the fallen today, many had family or others who had touched their lives that they honored today.

At midnight last night I was contacted to see about doing a series of Memorial Day fly-overs, in formation with 5 other airplanes, at seven different events over in the Ohio area.  I was also asked to do a solo fly-over at Ft. Wayne.  The problem was two-fold.  1). The weather and 2). My health.  The bigger problem was that neither one was so bad as to be a definite no-go.  Participating in these fly-overs today means something to me, and I'd be honored to be able to do that.  On a more shallow note, I also haven't been able to go on any of the formation flights like this that I've been invited to since this season began, and I don't wish to stop being invited as a non-participant.  But mornings are still not great for my throat, head, lungs, and I'd have had to get up at 6 a.m. or earlier to be over in Ohio by the time they wanted to start.  I also couldn't swear not to get stuck by rain or even storms trying to come back to Indiana.  The 6 p.m. flyover at Ft. Wayne would not have happened anyway--that's right when we had a line of storms moving through.  So, instead I stayed home quietly today.  I am feeling better.  I'm supposed to fly tomorrow with students, so I'll give that a go, I think my three days of forced inactivity, sleeping in, drinking water and resting helped head it off.

I read "Inferno" by Dan Brown today. As usual he incorporates a lot of symbols and secrets and factual information with art and history to weave a pretty interesting tale.  This one is more about the word being overpopulated, and one man's quest to fix that problem any way he could.  They posed an interesting question: If you could flip a switch and randomly wipe out half the world's population, would you?  Everyone answers, of course not.  The follow up question was: If you could flip a switch and save half of the word's population, along with most of the earth's resources, which will otherwise be headed for extinction or destruction within a relatively short time-frame, would you?  One guy decided yes, he would, to save the world, and his solution was actually pretty ingenious.  This is a spoiler alert, so if you plan on reading it, don't read the rest of this paragraph.  Throughout the whole book, the race is on to find and stop a virus he set up to disperse around the world that they assumed would wipe out 1/3 of the world's population, as in the Black Plague, which had fascinated him.  Instead, in the end, his solution was more simple and less violent.  He created a vector virus, something they're actually working on by the way, to infect the world's population, which would lie dormant in 2 out of 3 people, but in the 3rd, it would activate, and render that person...sterile.  And this vector virus changed their DNA, so even the people who have kids will pass on that genetic component, and future generations will also all be reduced by 1/3.  Nobody actually dies, no blood bath like you expect from all the talk of the Black Plague, just a large reduction in population growth for the foreseeable future.  The book ended with them being too late to stop the virus, and world leaders of WHO wondering if they should try to reverse it...if they'd cause more damage trying to mess with the human genome again when they didn't even know how he'd done it, or if they should just leave it alone because it actually was a fairly elegant solution to the world over-population disaster, even if it was unfair, dangerous, immoral, etc. to do.   By the way, the over-population statistics really are disturbing, and we really are vulnerable to another plague to thin the herd...

Kaylee is wrapping up the end of her school year, and I suppose it goes without saying that next week will be busy for all of us.  I'm especially looking forward to Wednesday morning when I get to rise at 3:30 a.m. for a trip to Mississippi.  ;)

Kick Back

Still woke up with a sore throat, but still doing okay.  Steve's still hacking a bit, but doing better.  Kaylee's fine, other than she kicked Steve's leg so hard today that he has a big goose egg on his shin and actually had to put an ice pack on it for awhile.  They were sparring again and he was getting in close to her to neutralize her ability to get to him, and she lashed out, sweeping his leg with her foot, and, well, it was indeed effective.  A while later she was still feeling feisty so she started kicking at me while Steve was grilling.  I knocked her foot out of the way and then said "Here's how this is going to go.  The next time you kick me, I'm going to grab your foot and flip your leg up and toss you on the floor.  You're probably going to land in a way that doesn't feel very good. It'll serve you right for kicking your dad so hard."  It's probably not nice as a mother that I meant it, but she could tell I did, so she decided to go do something else.  This is good, because I still don't feel that great, and I don't have a long or very physical fight in me right now.  Kaylee did learn today that the kicks she is learning are effective, and hopefully she'll also learn how not to hurt us all while she's practicing.  :)

Today was the 97th running of the Indy 500.  They don't show it in our viewing area until like 8 p.m.  But they show the pre-race stuff, and we were watching that when we heard, over the guy talking, the unmistakable sound of a bunch of T-6s.  They panned the camera up to show the fly-over, which was a B-25 and five T-6s.  The fly-over was pretty early on timing, but it sounded and looked good.  We don't need the military demo teams for that stuff.  The warbirds sound better anyway.  ;)

Steve grilled out some fillet and chicken breasts, I fixed some green beans, we had rolls and salad and sweet tea, and had Richard & Ann over for dinner.  Now, all that's left is dessert....hmmm....

Kick It

Woke up with a bad headache and my throat felt like it was on fire, so I texted the formation guys to cancel and crawled back into bed, not getting up until after 11 a.m.  Took some Advil and later some Aleve and am doing okay, just going to rest and chill out for a few days here.  Fortunately the hotel canceled my reservation for today without charging me, which was helpful...  Steve gets easily worn out, but he's slowly working his way back up to normal.

Kaylee has been practicing some of her kicks and blocks.  For awhile she tied a pillow to my feet as I sat on the couch and aimed kicks at that, until she kicked the underside of my chair and hurt her foot.  Then she had Steve hold the pillow while she attacked it, but he got tired.  They sparred a little for awhile, until two things in a row happened.  One, she kicked him really hard on accident, getting him with her shin bone, and hurt both his leg and her own.  And secondly, she surprised him, deviating from just practicing one kick to doing a combination of kicks and attempting to kick at his knee cap, and he reacted instinctively to protect himself, and got her.  They decided maybe they shouldn't spar until her pads came in.  ;)  He and I used to do a lot of that, and we'd end up with bruises all over the place. I know, not very lady-like, huh. I used to drive him nuts though because in the beginning I wouldn't admit if he got one of my limbs bent at an angle that hurt, I wouldn't say "ouch" or "uncle" or flinch or anything, and he hadn't trained to just do it halfway, so he didn't really know.  More than once it took me awhile to be able to regain the use of my arm or wrist again, and he'd get mad and tell me I had to tell him if it was too far.  But back then I'd rather have broken my arm than open my mouth and cave in.  I have some good stories from then.  lol  Devon hated it though, he'd cry every time we'd "fight", even if we were laughing, or tried to show him we were smiling and having fun, so we quit doing that around him.  He really was a sweet, sensitive boy, and he hated conflict of any kind, even faked.  Such a gentle soul.  And then there's his sister...  She got the "I know I don't actually know how to do this yet but I'm going to do my best to kick your butt anyway even if it hurts me, or you. So En Guard!"  :)

Tomorrow's big plan is to hopefully wake up not as sore and/or sick, and for Steve to make it back up over 80% health himself...

So...

Today was Steve and my 17th Anniversary.  He's still recuperating from his illness, hasn't left the house in days, which means he's about to go stir crazy, but was still too sick to be out and about.  He's on the upswing at least.  On the down side, this afternoon my throat started getting scratchy.  I'm supposed to get up at 6 a.m. and fly to Rantoul, Illinois for a formation thing.  I'm not sure I'm going to make it.  I'll get up at 6 a.m. and...see.  We said "Happy Anniversary" in passing a couple times today. Romantic, huh?  ;)  Hey, maybe we'll celebrate a bit better after everyone's healthy...

I got up and took Kaylee to the bus, and then went out to Kokomo for my 8 a.m. flight.  I was scheduled today from 8-10 a.m., 10 a.m. - noon, 1:30-4:00 p.m., 4:30-6:30 p.m., and 7-9 p.m.  One of my flights today said, "Hey, I wanted to schedule more often, but you're really busy.  Can I schedule you from 6-8 a.m. a few times a week?"  No.  No you may not.  Are you nuts?  Not just because it's 6 a.m., but look at my schedule.  Does it seem like a reasonable thing to expect someone to do?  Leave the house at 5:30 a.m. and get back home around 9:30-10 p.m., home for a whopping 7 hours total to sleep and relax and do anything else?  I just said no, and then said that they wouldn't want to be in an airplane with me at 6 a.m. anyway.  Which is true. I already found I had to watch myself by the end of today, when I was wearing a little thin after a very busy day at the end of a very busy week.  At some point doing repetitive pattern work, when you get tired you vacillate between letting too many things go because it's too much effort to pick on everything, and feeling snappy about somebody doing the same thing wrong every time no matter how many times you say it.  That's when you gotta watch it, because they deserve better than either one of those.  Anyway, I got almost to my 7-9 pm flight, running behind as it was at a different airport than where I started, and got a call that it was canceled due to a situation beyond their control. That was a bummer from the standpoint that it was a gorgeous evening, low winds and all, and you couldn't ask for a nicer time to take a flight lesson.  But the rest of me was grateful to go home.  Shhh.  :)  I spent all of yesterday and almost all of today in the pattern, have lots of new folks all at the same point in training, and today one of them 'got' it, started making landings without me having to say a word about when to level off, when to flare, how hard to pull, started feeling it down, doing a nice job.  That's always fun, to see the light bulb go off.  :)

Well, it's midnight, and if I'm going to get up at 6 a.m. and try to hit Rantoul, I'd better get to bed now...

I Flew

Steve is still sick, moved from his throat to his head/sinuses to his chest, and he's now coughing up a lung or two.  I got up and took Kaylee to the bus, then went out and flew at 8 a.m.; the ceilings were right at 1800' MSL, and the winds were gusting around 21-25 knots, but it was right down the runway.  I had three guys all at the stage of pattern work that were scheduled to fly, and I went ahead and flew with them all.   The visibility was decent, the clouds were just low, so we just stayed out of them and worked on takeoffs and landings.  First flight was at 8 a.m., last flights starting at 4:30 and ending at 9 p.m.  They were all kind of surprised that we'd go fly, and they all ended up glad we'd gone, found it interesting and productive.  Good.

Kaylee came home with a paper for cheerleading again.  Some of her friends are doing it, and asked her to do it with them. We talked about it and what kind of commitment it would be.  We'll see...

Awarded

My alarm went off at 5 a.m. so I could pull up the weather to find out whether I was staying home or flying to St. Louis today. St. Louis won. The rain and convective activity had broken up and weakened, making it a perfectly decent trip out.

This was a good thing as far as getting a paying trip in. It wasn't so good from a Mom standpoint. Today was Kaylee's Grandparents and Recognition Day at school, from 1-2:30 p.m. Grandma and Grandpa were going, so she had someone there for her, but Steve is deathly ill, he can't hardly get off the couch, and now I had to leave too. She was disappointed, because she is performing with the 6th grade band with her saxophone, something we've never gotten to see her do, and because they are handing out end of year awards. I wanted to go, she wanted me to go, and I'm not happy that I can't go. We both secretly hoped it would be stormy this morning. So instead I had a brief plan, to drop off these guys in St. Louis, turn around and I'd make it back to Kokomo in time to go to her event, then right after it ended head back to St. Louis to pick them up. I'd lose more money than I earned, but I was still kind of willing to do that. But then they said they'd be done at 1 p.m. our time, which is right when her thing starts, so they'd have to then do something else for a couple hours before I could attend her thing and get back over here? That's not cool. And then the weather shows that around 2-3 p.m. or so, some storms will start firing up again, and I could just see getting stuck in Kokomo for awhile as they were stranded in St. Louis where I left them. Plus it would cost a lot. So I sent Kaylee a message that I was sorry I couldn't make it, and told her that Grandma and Grandpa are supposed to record it for me, and a good luck. It kind of stinks, but that's the way it goes sometimes. As I'm sitting in St. Louis I can see the weather starting to pop up and build already and it's only noon...

So yes, Steve had a stuffy head yesterday afternoon, which turned into a massive sinus illness by late last night to early this morning. He's in pretty bad shape, can't even talk for long on the phone. As I was driving out to the airport this morning, I had a tickle in my throat and I started coughing, and thought "Great". We're waaaay too busy to be taken out with an illness right now.  As of tonight I'm still okay, him, not so much.

My flight home had a few buildups to go around, but we made it after one round of storms/rain hit Kokomo and before the next one.  I'd had two more students after I got back, canceled them both, but tomorrow I start with one of them for my first flight at 7:45 a.m. and end with the second one for my third flight at 9 p.m. Busy as usual.

Kaylee ended up with nine awards from school today.  Second place ribbon for the Science Fair, Best All-Around Language Arts Student, Word Master, Certificate of Completion of Sixth Grade, Math Excellence Award, Sixth Grade Band Award, Citizenship Award, Honor Roll Award, Presidential Education Award Program for Outstanding Academic Excellence, and a letter from the White House on it.  Of course we're proud of her.  But something that makes it even more special to us is that she mostly did this herself. She'd come home from school, she'd chill out for a few minutes, and then she'd start in on her homework.  She almost never needed help except with the occasional math, and when she had projects to do, she'd do them on her own, get them in on time, and do a really nice job on them.  The only one we ever helped with was Science Fair, and we all kind of fell down on that one, procrastinating and all.  She really has grown up a lot, has taken on a lot of personal responsibility and independence, and has done a great job.  She ended the year with straight As, even in the two advanced classes they offer, and, well, we're just proud of her.  :)

Now, if we can only get her to take consistent care of her cats.  ;)

Here she is with her awards from today.  You go girl!

Around and Around

Two students, both canceled for different reasons, on a day where it was possible but not pleasant.  The only bummer about the whole deal was that Steve had set up the house cleaners to come in at 8 a.m. to start.  So I had to waste a day where I could have slept in a little bit, and get up early and go out to the airport instead.  After the cleaners left, the carpet cleaners came in.  We are still sitting here with fans blowing on the carpeting to dry it, barefoot, but the house and carpet are both clean and fresh.  :)

I also took the 'free' day to run around and get a few other things done that needed done.  Sometimes when you get real busy it's hard to even fill your car up with gas, let alone do things that take a little time, or that aren't that important in the scheme of things, leaving a lot of little things you'd like to do undone.  Today was the day to take care of most of those.

Kaylee and I were in the car, when she grabbed my arm to arm wrestle me, but she kept bending it backwards, where I can't go well yet.  So finally I asked her what she was doing, and she said "I know I'm stronger than you are if I can get your arm back here first."  Bugger.  I'm getting stronger again even back there though, so one of these days I'll surprise her.  ;)

In a 24-hour period I have gotten three separate emails from three folks dealing with SMA in three different countries, all wanting something beyond my scope.  One woman is from Russia, and as soon as she turned 16, none of the country's hospitals would care for her, because there is no standard for care for SMA, no rehab centers that offer care for SMA adults, nothing.  Their national health-care system basically says people with SMA shouldn't live after age 16 anyway, and if they do, they won't for long, there's no cure for it, so they leave them to their own devices.  This woman is asking me if I can bring her to America and get her treatment in one of our hospitals or rehab centers.  Just swimming, Physical Therapy, stretching, basic needs, etc.  I am going to do my dead level best not to make a political statement here.  So, moving on, my next email came from a family in Saudi Arabia.  Their 4 year old with SMA can't get any assistance, as their country doesn't provide such things for this terminal disease.  The last one is a young lady looking for someone to be a live-in caregiver and help her, as she's too old to be in government assisted care and yet too weak to be able to care for herself, and has no family to help.  I can't bring a woman from Russia to America, I can't pay for someone to live with and care for another woman full time, and I can't even send much of any help to Saudi Arabia, as they have no good way to maintain some of the machines. Nothing like feeling helpless.  Here is what the one woman wrote: "I repeatedly addressed my complaints to the President, to the national health-care system, to Moscow rehabilitation centers, to non-government organizations. I made speeches at specialized conferences, including a conference in the Presidential Executive Office. But nobody can help me here in Russia. So you are my only hope. "  She's an obviously intelligent, articulate woman who is just trying to...live.  There is no organization here that can do what she needs, not that I know of.  But it doesn't feel very good to have to write back to someone who is writing you as their only hope and having to tell them that there's nothing you can do, either...

Hi-Ya

I flew with another brand new guy this morning, making it number six or seven of 16 year old guys all pre-solo that I'm flying with.  This is really stretching my memory as an instructor!

I got one more flight in after lunch, IFR stuff in the RG, and then a line of storms and high winds moved in and my last guy, learning to land, canceled.  I ended up having a bit of hassle before I could get home, having to do with an airplane with a missing tow bar, hiking to the plane, hiking back from the plane to Nathan's hangar, four times in total, and getting rained on while I tried to put away a plane without a tow bar, alone.  That was...fun.  But eventually I got it taken care of, stopped for some household supplies, and finished my airport day a bit early.

Tomorrow we have a house cleaner and carpet cleaner both coming in to do a thorough job on our house.  Sometimes when we get busier in the Spring/Summer, it's nice to have a little help for the deeper cleaning stuff.  I keep it picked up and the dishes and laundry caught up all over Sundays most of the time, but like I said, it'll be nice to have a bit of deep-cleaning assistance.  :)

Today was Kaylee's 3rd Tae Kwan Do lesson.  This time I was finally around to be able to go see her a bit, and afterwards the instructor came out to talk to us.  He asked us if Kaylee usually picked up things pretty quickly.  I guess on her first lesson they showed her a "form".  They didn't do it on her second lesson, and today they did it again for her third lesson, and she had it memorized and down pretty cold.  He said several times that that's very unusual for students to pick up the whole 'form' that fast, said she's doing very well.  Kaylee's funny--this will sound braggy, but since it's mostly grandparents reading this, that's okay.  ;)  But she got a little bit of both of us, and if she had decent discipline, that wouldn't be too bad.  She got my (mostly former now) ability to memorize and mimic about anything, do fairly well at about anything if shown how.  Except golf and bowling.  I always have stunk at those no matter who showed me what.  ;)  Steve can't do that, but she also got what he can do, which is get good at something by digging in to it and understanding something on a deeper level, something that's important, and that doesn't come as easily for me.  Unfortunately for her, she also got a distinct lack of interest in pursuing much of anything any deeper than figuring it out lightly.  Once she hits a certain point on it and it's more work, she doesn't care to become actually great at it.  Gymnastics was different-she was never a natural at that.  But the rest of the stuff she picked up pretty fast, and then lost interest.  We've let her...wander, let her try out stuff, but I think Tae Kwan Do is one we'll have her stick with, for awhile at least, for a few reasons.  It's good for her.  What will be interesting for me to see in the future is what exactly it is that does catch her interest, that does light her interest to dig deeper and really try.  I wonder what it will be, that thing that catches her fancy.  Home, family, career of some kind...guess we'll find out.

Kaylee had a good day at school today.  She'd thought it out, and she made the first move, deliberately sitting by a friend at lunch that she cares about with whom she's been struggling, and when she did that, some of the other friends she's been spending time with when her friend was rejecting her came over and joined them there, and the friend that has been a real problem, wasn't today.  So she was pleased, had a good day, and that makes us have a good day too.  :)

The homework for tonight included her having to write a paper on animal testing for products like make-up, etc..  She was horrified, and angry, and said "I CRIED looking at some of that.  WHY would anybody DO that to those poor animals?!"  In a little burst of historical irony, I was pretty close to her age when I had to do a report on that too, and I remember the shock and horror I felt looking at pictures of bunnies and cats and dogs and monkeys and mice in all sorts of desperate conditions, having various products tested on them for toxicity, and so forth. There really are better ways to test for some things--I kind of thought that stuff had faded out and was replaced with more computer/lab testing these days.  I guess not all the way yet...

The storms in Oklahoma took out my cousin Cheryl's sister-in-law's house, but as far as I know, with the rest of the family in Oklahoma, everybody else is okay, thankfully.  That line of storms has moved over to here, but I think it's supposed to fade some before it hits us.  I'm sure it'll keep  me grounded tomorrow, but I haven't heard of any tornadic fears thus far...

Not Much

Steve stayed up too late last night sitting in a chair in the front room watching out the window for a group of punks who have been getting so out of hand outside that they'll wake up Kaylee with their screaming and swearing.  The police have been called a few times from various neighbors, and Steve has chased them off a time or two too.  The police have been helpful in communicating with us in finding a decent way to take care of the problem as of this week, so hopefully we'll be seeing the end of that soon.  None of us care if they want to be drunk and disorderly in their own home, but when they wake up our daughter with their loud cursing and fighting in the middle of the night, in the middle of the street, always out of the same house, NOW we have a problem, and we will not just sit in here and let it happen over and over.  Something will change.

Steve woke up at 5 a.m. not feeling well with a headache.  I didn't know that, but I also woke up at 5:20 a.m. with a headache aiming towards a bad headache.  I took some medicine but it wasn't getting any better, so by 9:30 I just got up, took an allergy pill, tried to eat some protein and drink some caffeine, and eventually we both started feeling a little better, but it took most of the day.  We had plans to get a lot done today around the house.  Instead I got in a last-ditch effort of dishes and three loads of laundry, but other than that I sat on the couch all day long.  I fell asleep sitting on the couch once, I caught up on a few TV shows on my iPad, and I mostly just spent the whole day recuperating, and I hadn't even known I needed to recuperate, or what exactly I was recuperating from.  Same with Steve.  It's unusual for him to sit on a couch and do nothing all day on a Sunday, but like I said, we were just feeling puny all day.  Kaylee on the other hand is doing great.  She's recovered from whatever spazzy pill she took yesterday, and is back to her normal, happy, listening self.  We've been talking about school friends and friendships again, and again I say this friendship stuff is rough, particularly probably for junior high age girls.  I'm proud of her for wanting to do the right thing for the right reasons, for admitting when she's doing something wrong too, for asking for advice, for...trying.  I'm hoping tomorrow goes okay for her...

I have students every day next week from 9-9:30 a.m. through to 7-9 p.m., which puts me home anywhere from 8-10 p.m. each night.  Maybe I was pre-recuperating.  ;)

Poker Run

Today's weather wasn't supposed to be very nice, but it ended up holding off all day long, giving us a perfectly good day to hold our annual club Poker Run.  I was supposed to get out to the airport early enough to get the T-6 out and ready to go on a fly-over of an event being held at Grissom ARB.  I had left the house and was halfway down my street when I got a call from a number I didn't recognize.  I don't answer if I don't know who it is (and sometimes when I do know who it is), so I let it go to voicemail, and then had to turn around and drive back home when I listened to the message, from Steve, telling me he'd left his phone at home and needed me to pick up and pay for coffee from Starbucks for the breakfast group.  It took me awhile to find his phone, then finally I was on my way to pick up orange juice and then on to grab the coffee, and still out there in time...

Nathan flew, and I rode in the back--that's the most relaxed I've been in the plane in awhile. lol  Normally I'm...doing something.  Practicing formation, giving a ride, working on getting better at something, etc, all of which is great fun and very rewarding, none of which is what I'd define as super relaxing.  So just riding around, snapping a photo or two, and not being responsible for a single thing, that was pretty nice! So we flew over the museum at Grissom, two passes, there were something like 30 cars out there and I could see some folks standing outside.  We flew around the tower, which brought to mind Top Gun and a guy in a tower holding his cup of coffee, but like Nathan said, we were probably one of the slowest things to go by that tower in recent history.  :)   We got a little lost on our way back to Kokomo, but finally we found the place again and came in to do some takeoffs and landings.  It had been a good while since I'd been in the back, so a good time to practice a takeoff and landing from the more blind back is when the owner of the airplane is up front for added insurance.  ;)  It was hazy, but it was a really still, smooth day to fly.  I enjoyed that.

I took a few photos from the back seat, and I had my canopy open most of the time, enjoying the fresh air.  At one point I was trying to get a photo, and the shot was going below me, so I leaned my head out along with my camera to get the shot.  I was fine for a bit, but as soon as my face got in the windstream, the air shot into my helmet from the front and snapped my head backwards before I even knew what was happening.  My finger tightened on the camera 'trigger' out of reflex, and I ended up with a photo of a big blur of grass and an unidentifiable part of the T-6.  At least my helmet wasn't able to blow off my head, or my head off my body, although it felt like it tried for a second there.  ;)Whoops.

The Poker Run is one of those events that is fairly quiet most of the time, because all the airplanes that are out doing it are, well, OUT doing it.  There were lots of airplanes flying around to any of the participating 10 airports to get their cards.  One of my Facebook 'friends' is a guy who works at the airport in Marion, and he sent me a message that I must have sent over all of my airport friends his way today, as their airport was hopping with Poker Run people.  Cool!  Most people ended up back at Kokomo around lunch, stopped in and had a burger or hot dog and side items, and hung out for a bit before heading back out.

Kaylee had slept in and stayed home today, but she called me around noon, saying she'd been up since 8:30 and she wanted to come out to the Poker Run with us.  So I ran home to get her, and she spent the rest of the day out there with us, running around on the golf cart and doing whatever else it was they did out there today.  Eating too many donuts, all that good stuff.  ;)

For my logbook, which is behind again, I flew for an hour in the 172 with our fine chef, and we had a good time with that.

We ended the evening going out to Half Moon, then coming home and half crashing.  I've been yawning since I got home, Steve already took a nap, and Kaylee disappeared to her room too.  It was a good Saturday...

Back seating it...

 

Coming around the museum

 

 

Some folks at the museum

 

 

AE collecting cards in the hangar.

That's Life

Kaylee sent in an application to do a camp program called TILT.  It stands for "Teens in Leadership Training", and it's a training week for the kids from 7-12th grade to be camp counselors, cabin leaders, assistants, etc.  She had to write an essay and explain why she wanted to be part of this program, and be selected, it's not just something you sign up to do.  The next day she got an email back from them saying that it was one of the best essays they'd gotten, and that usually the 12-year-old going into 7th graders are still a little too young for the program, but because of her essay, they were going to select her, and were looking forward to having her there.  She was pretty excited by that.  The best part was that I didn't proof read or even see her essay until she'd already been accepted--she did it completely on her own.  One line from her essay went like this: "I would be very pleased if you would consider me for your TILT program. I think it is a wonderful opportunity for kids to learn how to handle responsibility and to help out, while also being able to have fun and enjoy themselves in the process!"  She went on to talk about the areas in which she is often given responsibility at events, and what she looked forward to learning from them.  Seriously, she did really well.  We're proud of her!  :)

Kaylee is currently having a bit of friend trouble. Friend "A" is not a very nice person nor a good friend, but once Kaylee decides to be someone's friend she has a hard time letting go of that.  Friend "B" was a good friend...until Friend A started poisoning B against Kaylee.  Kaylee was pretty hurt by B's desertion and subsequent repeated rejection.  I want to corner A against a wall and tell her exactly what I think of her and scare her into backing off and leaving my daughter alone and stop telling lies and such about her.  But she's 12 and I'm 41 and that would be inappropriate, I suppose.  So instead we told Kaylee to talk to B, the one she cares most about, ask her point blank to talk about the problem, and if there isn't a good way to resolve it, then shut the door and move on.  There are lots of people out there who will care about you for who you are, you don't need to waste your time on people who are using you, or treating you poorly.  You teach people how to treat you by what you accept.  Don't accept this.  She's working on it.  The nice thing is that she gets along really well and has several other friends too, and she'll be okay.  You have to learn how to deal with jerks and bad 'friends' sooner or later, but you just wish you could protect them from some of the ickies for awhile longer...it probably bothers me and Steve more than it does Kaylee.  I hope.  ;)

This morning I had a flight in the Cub for 2 hours.  I don't have anyone else left in there-most everybody's off on Ty or Jerry now.  It's a nice airplane to fly from the back seat with the door open.  I didn't do too bad getting in and out for once, either.  It had been a long time, last year sometime.  We started off landing on three wheels, got that down and went on to two wheels, got that down and went on to one wheel, did okay on that and went over to concrete for a couple.  It was kind of busy over at Kokomo, so after two we just left and came back to Glenndale.  Found out later an FAA guy (ILS worker, not enforcement guy) was hot and bothered that the Cub was in the pattern with the other airplanes and dared to do it without a radio on board.  At one point two of us were landing on Runway 5 (one at a time, of course), and somebody came in straight in on the downwind and opposing runway, 23.  The FAA guy was mad at ME for landing on 5, taking off and cutting out low and quickly with a guy coming in on 23, because I didn't have the radio.  I think he should be just as bothered at the guy coming head on to established traffic in the pattern, downwind none-the-less.  But none of us pilots were bothered.  I saw the guy on 23, the other airplane in front of me warned the guy on 23 that we were NORDO, the other guy was fine with the whole thing, we were fine with the whole thing, it was just the FAA guy that wasn't fine with the whole thing.  So Steve was over there debating the whole thing with him until he had nowhere to go but back up and admit nothing done was illegal, unsafe, immoral, unethical, or a problem for anyone involved in the first place.  ;)

This afternoon was another flight, in the 172, doing pattern work, 1.1, and then I ran up the 340 and talked to a new guy who is joining the club.  He'd grabbed a card for an instructor, not me, Steve or Ty, and whoever was in the office up front at the airport told him he really needed to go with Laura, not the other guy, pointed me out across the tarmac and told him to go talk to me instead.  So I printed off the club paperwork and we talked for an hour and he wants to finish his license.  Meantime I just scheduled another new guy with me for 3-5 times a week for the next two weeks, as he wants to finish his Private by August...just like about 5 other people now.  Ack.

Well, best get to bed.  Tomorrow...I should quit writing about tomorrow the day before it happens, otherwise there's nothing new to read tomorrow.  So forget it.  Good night.  ;)

Base to final Runway 18

 

Takeoff...

 

Crossing the wires, Runway 18

May Day

So today is Devon's 15th birthday. We've gotten some sweet notes, which I always appreciate. I say it every year and I'll keep saying it every year. He was here, and loved; we remember, and we appreciate those who remember with us. Fifteen--don't you get your driver permit at 15? Yikes. :) Kaylee is creeping up on us fast enough!

My plans for the day changed when I got a text that there had been a company incident in Illinois and the weather was iffy with some storms in between here and there so he was hoping I was free to run him out there asap. Fortunately one of my students could go by herself and Ty took the other one for me, while Steve was able to take care of getting Kaylee to her Tae Kwan Do, so it worked out, and about 40 minutes later we were in the air on our way to Benton, IL. There was a line of storms in between, but it was easy enough to work around. I'm still glad he has the judgement to not just go for it on his own though. Thinking about it, what seems pretty easy still has a lot of factors and decisions that go into making it easy...

When we landed in Benton I thought we were pulling up to a deserted shack. From the outside it looked completely abandoned. A row of hangars had a collapsed roof, the fuel pump wasn't self serve, there was nobody there, and the courtesy car, the only thing around, was locked, with a hunt through everything failing to find a key. Going inside the building, it at least had chairs, a table, air conditioning, and a fridge with a few dented Diet Cokes in it. There was a number to call, Bubba (no joke), to come out if you need gas, but nobody answered when I called. So I hung out for awhile here, no wifi, but at least the 3G worked. :) I had a dead mouse or two to keep me company, at least! 

The company sent a guy over to me with a hamburger, which worked, but I still needed gas, so I pulled up Garmin Pilot, turned on "Fuel Prices", and found an airport 20 miles away from me that had $1 a gallon cheaper fuel than where I was anyway. It was $6.50/gallon here!! Unreal! So I fired back up the 340 and flew there for gas. They're a small place too, but they were well populated by the usual small airport suspects. I was immediately surrounded by four guys, one of whom filled my plane up for me even though it was self-serve only, and the rest of them started asking me questions. It was here I ran into That Guy. He's been flying "twice as long as you've been alive" (Not really, he'd been flying for 42 years), "how many hours you got? Oh, I got triple your hours", had flown and done everything, had a death-defying story for everything, but there are two types of those folks. The ones that you can't stop listening to and the ones you can't get to stop talking and get away from. He was the second. No matter who said what, he topped it. Reminded me of someone, and I was dying to say I ended up inverted just 10' over the runway and flew under the powerlines and saved the day, on one engine with a load full of people out of the grass strip, but I stopped myself. At one point he brought up warbirds, so I told him we had a couple on the field, a T-6 and formerly a P-51. Of course he'd flown in better airplanes than those, including doing run-ups and such in a Sea Fury. He said "Oh, the P-51 never intimidated me, I'd fly it in a heartbeat, I never have, just rode in one once, but it wouldn't scare me any to just hop right into it and fly it--it's just a glorified T-6." Maybe, maybe not, but of the folks that it's okay to say that, he's not on the list. ;) He also mentioned how he'd bought a Super Viking at an auction and rolled it and took it into grass strips and then sold it and on the pre-buy they found the rear spar on the right wing had completely eaten through, and here he'd been rolling it, etc. I think that story was supposed to impress me, and it did. You'd do aerobatics in a very old airplane you just bought at an auction without knowing anything about it? Yep, I'm impressed that Darwin didn't catch up to ya on that one! About an hour of that and I decided the deserted but quiet strip back at Benton sounded like a better plan. I landed back in Benton and figured out I'd used 8 gallons each direction to save $1/gallon on 65 gallons of fuel. Doesn't really wash out in the end, but it was worth it to me to have something to do.

The rest of the day I spent with my iPhone over there playing music in the little room, charging up the GDL-39, which I actually remembered to bring along on this flight, and alternatingly charging up my iPhone and my iPad. At one point a gentleman came wandering into here and asked when my pilot was going to come back, because he needed to lock up. I said I wasn't sure when my passengers were going to be back, that they didn't know either, they were working on a problem and when it was resolved we'd go. He peered at me over his glasses and said "Can you handle that big ole twin out there?" I said "Well, so far so good." :) He gave me a number to call and decided he wouldn't lock me out on the tarmac, which is good, because I didn't want to go back to the other place...it's too tiring watching all that ego struggle against its boundaries.

We finally were ready to leave shortly after 8 p.m.  The runway there wasn't real long, and with the higher density altitude, no headwind help, rising terrain off the end, and a couple other factors, I actually had to pull out the POH twice today for two different scenarios to make sure we were good to go.  I even had to interpolate.  In my head.  Like a real pilot, or something.  ;)  The margin wasn't great.  I had previously told him what size runway below which I wouldn't go in and out of in the 340...I'm going to revise that number up more conservatively.  There's only a narrow window in which I'd have been in trouble if I had trouble, and I know in a single engine you'd just be out of luck, and nobody thinks twice about that...but that's part of the point of a twin.  Anyway, my calculations ended up being quite close to the money, the weather was perfectly fine for the trip home, and I was back at Kokomo by 10 and back in my house by 11 p.m.  It's really late now, but I don't feel like going to bed because I'm not ready for tomorrow yet.  :)

Here are a few more photos:

This was the microwave in the shack.  How many of you are old enough to have seen something like this beauty?

 

A crop-dusting helicopter...this guy was GOOD.  He came swooping in, spun that thing up and around, and fitted it in a very small slot in between the 340 and the shack on a little pad, dead smack on the money, no hesitation or slowing down.  He stepped out of the helicopter wearing baggy khakis and a peach shirt with long brown hair braided all the way down his back and a Ted Nugent khaki hat on.  He was impressive.

 

A close-up of my abandoned shack that I spent 8 hours or so in today.  :)

Kicking

I canceled my first student of the day when the winds were a 40-50 degree crosswind gusting up to 35 knots, as it was a bit much for doing pattern work and learning to land for where he was in training.  The next two flights were able to go okay, and I flew for 2.2, then 2.0 back to back, getting home around 8 p.m.  Again the evening was lovely and reasonable, and again I was too tired to do anything about it by then.  One of these days.

We did Kaylee's mouthguard for Tae Kwan Do tonight.  You boil water, put this mouth guard into it, pull it out of the boiling water, run cool water over it for a second or two, then pop it in her mouth, bite down and form it around her teeth.  Then it works as a good, protective mouth guard in case anyone mis-judges while they are sparring and kicks her in the face too hard.  Tomorrow is her first night of sparring, and I know she'll just be doing light moves with the instructor, not another student.  Tonight we were in the kitchen and she attacked me.  We were doing our own fighting, and of course I was beating her (for now), and finally she stopped and said "Hey.  Did you take lessons too?"  I said no, and she asked "Then how do you know this stuff?"  A mom has to keep some mystery.  ;)  I won't tell her this, but she's getting taller, faster and stronger, and quickly, and I'm weaker than I used to be, and fatter, and slower.  I'm working on it a bit, and still not doing too bad, but if she keeps going...I'm going to hate as much as she's going to enjoy the day she can take me out.  ;)

Verbal Gusts

It was a windy one.  My first pilot of the day got out to the airport, but once the winds got up to around 27 knots or so, even though it was only a 15 knot crosswind component, they didn't want to go, so I turned around and did some errands instead until lunch.  The next student, today was one of his first times working on the pattern.  It was not a great day for someone trying to learn to land, but he'd been canceled a lot for weather and such, and he wanted to go, so we did, and we ended up working for 1.4 on some pretty gusty pattern work.  I didn't have him try landing until an hour had gone by and his approach was stable and centered up.  We'd just do go-arounds every time, which was good practice anyway.  The next time he goes up on a normal day he'll probably find a lot of that a whole lot easier than it was before.  :)

Originally I thought I'd go do my own workout afterwards, in the T-6.  The winds had died down by the end of the last flight to 16 gusting 20 at a 30 degree crosswind, and that seemed a good middle ground to jump back into and get some practice in, and if it was feeling good I could swap to the more direct crosswind runway.  The only problem was that after spending about an hour and a half bouncing around the pattern in a fairly high focus scenario, late in the afternoon, after several busy days, I was already mentally and physically fatigued.  So I picked up dinner and went home instead.

Kaylee had her first archery lesson this afternoon.  She was telling me about her first arrow that missed the whole target and skidded across the floor, and another that went too high and stuck somewhere else.  I guess a lady there said "Don't worry about it--look at the holes in the ceiling!"  I guess there were holes everywhere.  The instructor is a "master", competes in tournaments, etc., and he went over to Steve and said "I could teach her."  He said every pointer he gave her, she'd listen and follow and remember, and she improved rapidly.  She said her arm hurt from all the pulling, and she's not sure if she wants to keep up lessons or not-she'd rather just practice on her own.  We suggested she keep taking pointers from this guy until she was good enough to then be able to just go practice on her own and be productive.  We'll see.

Today Kaylee also got to go to a "Junior High Introduction" day.  The school took all the sixth graders over to the middle school building, set each kid up with a buddy or two (Kaylee had two), and let them follow them around.  They buddies showed them the lockers, how things worked, took them into the cafeteria and showed them how the lunches worked, how the bells worked for you to change classes, all of it.  Kaylee loved it.  She said she ended up with two great buddies, who were protective, friendly, helpful and informative.  She said that some of the sixth graders had a buddy who would ditch them, but hers stuck with her the whole time.  At one point I guess a couple of 8th grade boys came over and started cursing around Kaylee, and one of her buddies piped up and said "Hey, knock off the swearing, we've got a guest, she doesn't need to hear that."  She appreciated that.  So do I.  She said that nothing is the same.  The lunch doesn't work the same, classes are different, lockers have locks on them, and it's kind of dark and gloomy in parts of it, but she's excited to start next year, really looking forward to it.  If I haven't mentioned it lately, I really love her school.  They do such a great job with the kids.  Whoever thought of the idea to take a day and send all the sixth graders over to the seventh graders to see what the new building, new procedures, etc. would be like and pair them up with a helpful kid to show them the ropes was a genius.  Now that it's not The Great Unknown, now that she's seen it, she's ready to rock and roll.  And in just a few weeks, my Elementary/Grade School kid is moving into Junior High.  Good Heavens.

There's a bit of hubbubub about Disney making over their newest princess, Merida.  I took Kaylee to see the movie "Brave" when it came out, and honestly, I thought it was good.  She's a feisty, sarcastic, strong-willed young woman who is above all, brave.  Her hair is frizzy, messy and out of control, she's a banshee with a bow and arrow, she's a smart-aleck with a quick wit, she's physically strong and active, and instead of letting a bunch of princes shoot for her hand, she outshot them all and refused them.  She saved her mother, mostly alone, against evil and strength, and she fought back with courage.  When Disney unveiled her May 11th to crown her as the 11th princess, they had given her a makeover.  They got rid of the bow and arrow she had slung over her shoulder and put her in a slinkier dress.  They made her waist half the size it was before, thinned out and elongated her face, and turned her hair into a beautiful smooth red waterfall.  Her eyes were turned up and her neck line was dropped down, exposing cleavage.  The look on her face went from impertinent and sarcastic to...doe-eyed.  The whole point of the movie was that she was different, and then they turned around and turned her right back into Cinderella, or Snow White and so forth, only a lot sexier, and if you watch any of those, those ladies may be sweet and gentle, but they are also total air heads who have to be rescued by and kept forever after by a man who is actually smart and capable, since they themselves aren't. It's fine to be whoever you are, and if you are sweet and gentle, then you have your heroines who live happily ever after.  If you're more like Merida,  there's nothing wrong with having that role model available too.  So does this makeover really matter? Nah, most kids won't notice the difference or care, I don't think some girl is suddenly going to decide she's unworthy because a Disney princess got sleeker and sexier.  I do think it's kind of sad that they felt the need to do that though.  The movie was very popular as it was, as she was.  Why not leave her alone to be who she was, an imperfect and more 'real' heroine with bad hair, a round face, and excellent marksmanship? It worked for her.  :)

The other day I posted Rachel Maddow getting on Obama.  Today I saw a Jon Stewart clip that has too many swear words for me to post here, but past the bad language, his point was quite valid, and he too started ripping into President Obama's recent constitutional foibles, from the IRS targeting right wingers to the Justice Department snagging AP reporters' phone records illegally, and so forth.  He went from anger all the way to weary disgust, worry and disapointment.  It's kind of nice when people who are typically leaned pretty hard one way can admit when something is a problem for "their side" rather than just staunchly defending, deflecting, pretending or ignoring, even knowing that what they say will then be used as fodder by the other side gloating. I know why he was swearing so much--it made his point a bit more emphatically--but I wish he'd made a more PG version so I could post it places like Facebook, because I otherwise thought it was well done.

More winds coming tomorrow, with a day full of scheduled flying.  Two of the students are just starting pattern work, again, not the best time for gusty winds, but we'll see how they handle it and just go from there.

Summer Run

Sorry folks, this one's mostly flying with a couple Kaylee stories.  So, Mom, you'll have to skim the flying to find the kid.  ;)

Nathan and I left around 9 this morning to head over to Ohio in the Cheyenne, and it was a pretty day to go.  A bit bumpy down lower, but that's the nice thing about the Cheyenne--you don't spend much down down lower!  We got home at 1-1:15, which got me there in time to fly with my first student of the day.  I've got several new students all at once, and I'm having a hard time keeping track of who each is.  All these new ones are close to the same spot in training, so I have to do the same things with each of them, but they are all different people, of course, so you need to remember what needs work and when to move on, etc.  This is one occasion where I haven't been forgetting to write down what I did with who so I can try to keep up.  My first student wanted to bring someone along in the back seat even though we were going to be working on stalls and steep turns.  On a bumpy day.  The backseater was warned, and wanted to go anyway, so off we went.  In a bit of irony, the first full stall that we did, he entered it aggressively, and it dropped more aggressively than I've seen this particular 172 ever drop, even when I was deliberately trying to make it be exciting.  The recovery was also a bit aggressive, so we had a windshield full of farm field for a bit there.  I was kind of impressed.  I'd had us up pretty high, as we were also heavy and had weight in the back, so as the student was recovering, which he was doing properly albeit aggressively, my next concern was the back seater.  We're pointed at the ground at a nice angle for a 172, but I'm twisted around looking at the back seat.  lol  Fortunately the gent in the back was true to his word and was not throwing up or crying either one.  Just because the laugh from the back seat was a little nervous, well, I won't fault him.  ;)  We continued on to do some smoother, less exciting stalls and recoveries.  Next up was someone's first flight with me and first flight in the 180, which went really well, we landed from that and I had ten minutes to walk back over to the 172 and fly with another student, for another first-timer with me.  Like I said, I have more new students than my memory can retain right now.  ;)  But we had several good flights today, good weather for it, and I ended up done around 8:45 p.m.  That makes for a bit of a long day, but at least the sun was still up.  Gotta love Spring/Summer for that one.  It's also not as long of a day when the students themselves pick it up pretty quickly, when things flow smoothly, when the communication is easy. This whole day was like that, which was great.

So while I was off flying the friendly skies, I got a text that said Kaylee was at her first Tae Kwan Do lesson.  Huh?!  She'd expressed an interest in it to me, but apparently when she got off the bus today she asked her dad if he'd called and gotten info yet or not.  He hadn't, so he did, and they had a lesson tonight, and Kaylee's like "Can I go tonight?"  So they did.  Come to find out, the 15 year old young lady who befriended and helped Kaylee at the play is a black belt, first degree, who trains at this same place.  She was there, and she took Kaylee under her wing and helped her out for her first lesson there.  Kaylee loved it.  She came home talking non-stop about it, and showing me the moves she'd learned tonight.  What surprised me is that there is a lot of exercise that goes into this, and she came out sweating, and she didn't complain about it.  Whoa.  She actually has pretty decent form on several things.  Anyway, she's officially signed up, twice a week lessons, and the place is small, friendly, focused, able to give her one-on-one attention, she has a lot more experienced folks in there to work with, which I think is better than working with a large group of all newbies and one teacher, because you tend to...rise to the level. Know what I mean? They're also not the kind of place that pushes an 8 year old through to black belt in no time.  They are accredited and do things the slow, proper way, and when it's time for her to earn a belt she'll have to go down to Indy to a Grand Master down there, etc.  This is outside my knowledge base, but some of you probably know what I'm talking about.  Steve does, so that's good enough. :)  But she's excited, and we're happy about it too. The discipline will be really good for her.

Kaylee also wants to take archery lessons.  We can thank "Brave" and "Hunger Games" for this one.  But it's been almost a year and she is still talking about wanting to do it, so Steve's taking her to an archery place tomorrow afternoon while I'm flying again, to check it out and give it a whirl.  I don't see quite as much use for this one, but hey, learning a new skill is never a bad thing, so...

Curtain Call

Mother's Day dawned bright and sunny and windy.  My morning flight was canceled, and we took it easy until it was time to take Kaylee to her final play preparation of this production.  We sneaked in for the last half of the play again, and I took a few more photos, and then the 2013 Curtain Call Spring Production of Finn McCool and His Fearless Wife was complete.  There was an after-party at the UAW building, where they handed out certificates, had pizza and soft drinks and cookies, gave the director his gifts, and people cried and hugged because this was the end of the play and they wouldn't all be together again like this.  Even Kayle felt a let down, because the next auditions aren't for three more months, and she's ready to go again.  The next play is a Musical, and she's going to go ahead and try out for it, even though she's scared to sing in public.  She wants to be in the play more than she's scared of having to sing at an audition and in front of a crowd.  All in all it's been a great experience for her.

Every year Kaylee and I take our photo in front of the flowering tree in our front yard when it blooms, right around Mother's Day.  I did it with Devon, too.  This is the first year we've missed it.  The tree was flowering for four days solid, but Kaylee and I would never be home in daylight hours at the same time to take a picture together.  So, this year I missed it, first time in 15 years.  It was getting harder to get a good picture anyway, as the tree is so much taller that most of the flowers are over our heads, not behind us all pretty-like any more.  I could take a photo in front of the dead looking tree and photoshop last year's blossoms onto it.  ;)

And here is something I never thought I'd see. Normally the sound of this woman's voice is enough to make me change the channel. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I heard what she was saying here, and the content of what she is saying is more scary yet. Color me surprised for the first time in awhile.

Mother's Day was pretty uneventful as far as that goes.  Kaylee hand made me a lovely card on her own.  She is very good at that, a very thoughtful young lady on special occasions.  :)  The rest of the day we spent mostly on Play stuff.  Normally on Mother's Day I usually go do something like ride my motorcycle out to the airport and go fly the T-6 or something else just for fun, not for a purpose for once.  I had time after I brought Kaylee back from the after party, about 2 hours before dark or so, but I was pretty tired, the motorcycle's not up and running anyway, and the thought of the effort involved of the flying was...off-putting this evening.  Mostly 'cause I'm just tired already.  So instead I got comfortable and sat down to work on my pictures with a little OJ and Peach drink and half a Caramello candy bar. I wish tomorrow was Sunday, not Monday, but I guess that's how it goes...

Here are a few more of my illicit photos:

Goodness, what kind of look is that?!  ;)

Playing

I woke up at 6:45 this morning, only to find ceilings of 800' overcast, canceling both my students.  At 12:15 we took Kaylee to the play and dropped her off, and the first performance was at 2 p.m.  We had seats up front, and we watched the play for a second time. Afterwards the kids signed autographs again, and a group of them/us went to Fazoli's for a very late lunch, still in their play make-up.  They had enough time to eat and get back to the auditorium, get dressed again, fix any hair/make-up that needed fixed, and the next performance started at 7 p.m.  In between, Steve and I ran out to the airport for awhile, and then came home so I could pick up my good camera.

See, they had a rule they told us at the beginning of every performance.  NO photography, no video.  They have a professional photographer who takes candid shots during the performances and then sells them back to the parents for $2 a pop.  After the first performance there were a few photos of Kaylee cut in half, the bottom half of Kaylee's dress, the back of Kaylee's head, or Kaylee hidden by other kids, but that was about it.  After the second performance there was one close-up of Kaylee on the stage, looking grim.  There were tons of pictures of a lot of the kids, but even the pictures that had the fairies in them more focused on the big Banshee Queen and the little fairies.  So I decided that was enough, and that this was my daughter's first play, and that if they weren't going to take good photos of her, *I* was.  I'm okay with following the rules, but not if they're dumb and affect me having photos of my daughter's first play. ;) So for the third performance, Steve and I came late.  Kaylee's not in it until after the intermission, which is about an hour into it.  When intermission came, we went on in, and sat in the back on the side where Kaylee stands.  I promptly dropped my lens cap down into a grate that was on the floor right by my seat.  I'm not sure who puts grates in an auditorium or what they were for, but it ate my lens cap.  Anyway.  Since photography is not allowed, I half hid my camera under my coat, but I had on my big lens on my big Canon camera, so it wasn't exactly incognito.  When the director came in and sat too close to me, I moved back several rows and more directly behind him so he wouldn't see me lifting my camera.  Flash off, zoom in, and I snapped about 35 photos of her up on stage.  Steve stayed in a different seat, and kept telling me not to get HIM in trouble.  :)

Several of the photos are blurry. I was in the back of the room, using a zoom lens, no flash, and the kids were moving, so there wasn't a whole lot I could do about that with my existing equipment, but I did get some decent ones where she'd hold still for a bit too.  One of my favorite photos of her is a blurry one, which is a bummer, but her character is not a happy flighty fairy, it's a serious, grim fairy, so most of the time her facial expressions are grim.  I got her smiling, and I thought she looked lovely, even if it was blurry.

 

After the second play, the cast members went out to Steak-n-Shake as a tradition.  Kaylee went with a couple of her friends, and they dropped her off at the house after they were all done--at 10:45 p.m.  Long day for the actors and the parents both.  We figured she'd be exhausted afterwards, but she came in the door ramped up, wired up, and talking a mile a minute.  She's still in her room at 11:45 p.m. playing a cups game over and over and over.  She will crash sooner or later here.  ;)  Here are a few of the photos. More on her site later.  :) 

 

Finn McCool and His Fearless Wife

I started the morning flying with another new guy, and Saturday at 8 a.m. I'm flying with yet another new guy.  That's a lotta new guys!  Anyway, we got out there and the blue skies went overcast on us in the time it took us to get to the airport.  We went anyway.  After awhile I found a hole and we went on top of the clouds to do some stuff, then came back down to finish up.  The rest of the day I did things like get something laminated, mail off stuff, get a check out for SMA Support, figure out my Health Savings Account problem, hit lunch at Glenndale, go back to the store and buy cookies for Kaylee's play tonight, and a few other things I don't remember that aren't any more exciting.

But then it was Play Time.  We took Kaylee to her play, the title of which is the subject of the post, and I delivered my 3-4 dozen cookies, delivered the kid, and Steve and I sat and sold tickets by the front door.  People would come up and have to decide where they wanted to sit, and we'd have the chart and look up what was available, how much it cost, and the hard part was finding the proper tickets.  Instead of putting them in alpha numeric order, which seems logical to me, they put the tickets in order of sections of the auditorium, and then divided those sections up by even and odd seats.  So if you were looking for Seat A115, it wouldn't be next to A114, it would be in the second half of the stack, and would go A115, A117, A119, A121, and then the next tickets would be B115, etc., and then you'd get A211, A213, after that, for example.  It was kind of a mess, but once I figured it out I did okay.

The play lasted about an hour and a half, and Kaylee was a lovely fairy in blue.  We thought she delivered her line most excellently, and she didn't seem nervous at all.  She later said she was pretty nervous, but she tries to make it so you can't tell.  That's the point of acting, huh?  :) All the kids did a great job, actually, which means the director ought to get some kudos for taking some 30 kids and not one of them goofed up or had a problem tonight.  Richard and Ann came with us to see the opening night, and afterwards there was a party, with cookies and punch, and all the cast was downstairs, signing autographs and just having fun with their opening night.   Last time we went to one of these, Kaylee got the cast to autograph her program, and tonight folks were coming up to her to get her autograph.  She was feeling pretty good about it all, had a great time, did a nice job.  Now we have three more shows to go.  The only bummer is that we saw the pre-sold tickets for tomorrow and Sunday, and it's really thin.  Tonight was full enough, but both of tomorrow's performances are not well-populated.  So I'm glad at least they had tonight.  If it wouldn't cost me $6 per ticket, I'd see if any random homeless people wanted to come see the play to fill some seats.  :D   But I'm sure they'll be fine, especially after tonight's success.  She'll be worn out by the end of Sunday's performance, I'm sure.  ;)

Tomorrow may be Saturday, but Steve has to be at Glenndale by 7:30 and I have to be at Kokomo by 8 a.m., and neither of us is very happy about it.  Tomorrow's going to be a long day...two flights, followed by TWO play performances, followed by the after play dining experience en-masse in town, and home late.  Yowza...

Workin' It

Poor Kaylee, that girl gets SO stuffed up a couple times a year, allergies bad enough that nothing I give her has helped.  I even doubled an adult dosage once on her, and it didn't help at all.  Right now she's on Zyrtec and has Vicks Vapor Rub in her nose to try to help her breathe, and I can hear her in her room blowing her nose.  She props herself up in bed to try to breathe.  I hate that, the poor kid.  I have tried every single possible allergy med, and even the nasal strips you wear, and the Vicks, and...  I'm going to try the stuff you have to get at the pharmacy next, but those are huge pills, which means I'll have to chop them up or something.  She needs something.  :(

Since nobody was scheduled to fly for today because of the bad weather, I took the day to do everything else that needed done.  I got the billing invoices stuffed, licked, stamped and sent out, went down to the County Treasurer to take care of property taxes, renewed a membership at an organization, worked on four things for SMA Support, equipment stuff, made some banking moves, got to the store finally to pick up some food and supplies that we were completely out of, did some of the laundry that had piled up to "I don't hardly have any clean clothes" status, walked for a little exercise, dealt with a lot of communications I was behind on, basically got everything done I intended on doing today except getting a check out that I need to send, because my online banking failed and I need to go in tomorrow and fix it, and getting my gun carry permit card laminated before I accidentally tear it up or lose it.  AND I got to eat lunch.  A productive day.

I contacted someone I met at a formation fly-in weekend once last year and asked if he'd be interested in bringing his plane to the Kokomo Airshow.  I'd gone flying with him once, and he said he remembered me (fondly, for you smart alecks ;)), and that he'd be happy to come and do an act as long as his plane was ready to go, which he felt it should be.  Sometimes sticking out in a group has its advantages. That was great news, and I hope it works out, because we could use more airplanes.   Now we need more confirmed warbirds...

Looks like Kaylee finally fell asleep.  Good.  Now it's our turn...

Fast Track

It sure was a pretty day to fly.  Our airplanes and CFIs were busy most of the day, which is a good thing.  I think I explained, but if not, I had a student who drove down from Michigan to fly for three days solid and try to get as close to finishing his Private as possible.  Tomorrow's weather stinks, so he went ahead and drove back after we finished this evening, but in these two days I worked his butt off and we got done everything we needed to for this round-the next step is his.  I wore him out.  That was actually kind of fun.  ;)

So that's what I did today--worked a fellow through the paces in an airplane and on ground school.  I at least did have time today to hit the bank and post office too, and drive through Subway for lunch.  I was done early, in fact, around 4:30, so Steve and I took Kaylee to her play practice and went to the Japanese place again.  Craving fulfilled.

Happy Birthday to my Mom--she's still a young chick, even if she is passing another big number.  ;) Love you Mom.  You're the best.

The Week Begins

I haven't been making it to many of our lunches lately; I've missed Glenndale's Friday lunch for what, 1-2 months straight, and I've missed most of our daily lunches too.  Trips, busy, etc.  Today was no exception to that, nor will tomorrow be.

I flew this morning at 9:30, then flew from 10-11:15 in something else, flew the first plane back to where it came from from 11:15-11:40 or so, got in my car and ran back to the other airport, grabbing Taco Bell in a drive-thru on my way there, then flew from 12:20 - 4:30 p.m. with one stop in there to get more gas.  After that I flew from 4:30 - 6 p.m.  I did get to go to the bathroom and drink some more water/Diet Coke in between the flights.  ;)

The flights today were all students.  Another asked me to go up and do twin emergency procedures, but I was just flat out of time.  I hadn't ever flown with any of the students before, so that actually makes it harder on my end.  You play a part as you figure out their personalities, figure out what they need, and try to match/meet that, and it's almost kind of a game, but it's a little exhausting too.  One was having fun, one was dead serious, one was hesitant/scared but didn't want to admit it, one was an engineer/math type, one was a feel/art type, one was on a mission, one was over confident, one was under confident.  And you adapt and adjust and pour a lot of energy into each flight and the needs therein, and afterwards, I'm kind of drained.  Not in a bad way, I'm not complaining.  In fact, it's a pretty good feeling to feel everything clicking, to know that you're getting through and have found the right combination for the particular individual.  The flights where everything is a half bubble off, when you can tell that you're not reaching the person, that there's a conflict all the time, that the communication isn't there, they're frustrated, you're frustrated, you spend the whole flight feeling like you're banging your head into a wall...now THOSE are exhausting.  None of those today.  ;)

Not too long ago I had a nice almost direct crosswind on concrete in a taildragger with someone that had never flown one before, and people who haven't flown tailwheels before will make big oscillations with their rudder, aileron and elevator all at the same time, leaving you careening around on the runway in all sorts of messed up attitudes and scenarios.  I've saved some pretty bad situations before (and one pretty bad one this day.)  I've out-wrestled people who froze on the controls in the wrong position.  I've had a guy with giant feet who stomped a rudder and left it in as we headed for the weeds.  Had several folks who shove the stick the wrong way at the wrong time, or do something random and frightening.  The one that stomped a brake on me on concrete in a crosswind when he let it get crooked and when I didn't have brakes on my side which took me most of the 150' wide runway to recover from. (This did prompt a new pre-flight briefing topic for the future.)  And I didn't save one once, too, that wasn't nearly as exciting as anything above, but still got away.  Ty does a lot of that instruction, and he's talked about his trips into the weeds and how he was aimed at a tree once and got stopped just before it, along with the usual stuff I mentioned above.  Tailwheel instruction is either good for or bad for your heart, depending, but it keeps you awake.  I've heard "old-timers" in flying say they'd rather be lucky than good.  I always said I'd rather be both, but if I had to pick, I'd pick good.  Now I don't know so much.  I'd still rather be both, but having been lucky (or not) more than a few times...it's hard to dismiss it.

Kaylee's play is gaining momentum.  She had practice tonight, make up and all, and this weekend is the play itself.  Just like dance recitals, we get to go Friday night, twice on Saturday, and add once on Sunday, and it's a lot of work.  Wish you all come come and join us. The girl has one line in the Second Act, but I'm looking forward to seeing it.  Once, anyway.  I don't know about four times in three days.  ;)

Well, tomorrow looks as busy as today, and I'm worn out and ready for bed.  The End...