Severe Clear

I left home this morning to fly VFR over to Aurora, to be there when they opened at 9 a.m., to get some work done on the 340.  I was to spend the day there, and then at 7 p.m. one of the guys was going to come to Aurora and I was to fly him down to Missouri and drop him off.  The plane itself was done with maintenance around 4 p.m., so they did a great job getting about everything done we'd asked them to do, and two things we didn't ask them to do but they saw and fixed on their own.  Works for me!

A couple of corporate guys were in the pilot lounge most of the day with me.  That's no fun.  For one thing they were there first, so they got the two comfy chairs and I just had the couch.  For another, one of them was watching about 8 hours in a row of Law & Order SVU while the other played some movie on his phone without headphones, so you were listening to two different shows at once, which I can't stand.  And last but not least, there's that whole "we're in a small room together but nobody feels like talking or has anything to say" thing.  They looked me up and down in my jeans and tennis shoes so I looked them up and down in their spiffy starched matching black and blue outfits and then we all promptly minded our own business. ;)

The day was so perfect for flying that I wasn't quite sure what to do with myself.  It was completely clear and glass smooth and cool, no IFR, no storms, no fog, no ice, no turbulence, nothing I had to watch and monitor and work around.  Just...go.  It was awesome.   I pretty much only filed IFR for the Missouri trips so I wouldn't have to watch quite so closely for traffic.  I watched the sun go down leaving Aurora at 7 pm, and the stars were so bright on the way home from Missouri that I turned down all the TV screens in the airplane and just looked outside, played some music, and relaxed. 

It was still a long day.  I got back to my house around 11:30 p.m., and by then everybody's tired or asleep, and you're still a little wound up and don't want to go RIGHT to bed.  That makes it almost a 15 hour day door to door.

Today was Kaylee's last tennis tournament, and she went out with a bang!  I had to miss it, but Steve texted me updates on the score and on how she was doing, and I would stare impatiently at my phone waiting to hear how it was going.  She and a new partner ended up playing the last game of the evening, and they were on center court, and it kept going back and forth so much that everyone was clapping and cheering them on, and the two coaches were there calling out help too (there is never cheering, clapping or coaching going on at any of the games I've been to.  Normally it's like Baptist church services out there!)  Kaylee was up 5 games to 1 at one point, and just needed one more game to win, but the other team caught back up.  They had to go for tie breakers over and over, until finally in the very end Kaylee and her partner lost, 9 games to 7.  But she didn't quit playing, didn't give up, down to the last point, and afterwards the coach came up to Steve and Kaylee and said that Kaylee was the most improved player of the year on the whole team, which was a neat thing to say.  It was also one of the two best games of the whole tournament, which is also pretty neat.  I didn't get to see her before she was asleep tonight, but I'm looking forward to telling her that I'm very proud of her fighting for a whole 16 matches.  Even though she lost the game, I think she won something more important with this loss than she has in any win she's gotten.

Well, now that it's 1:35 in the morning and I have a flight in the morning, I suppose I ought to get to bed.  I do have some photos from today but I'll get those up tomorrow...