Spring

Wow did today ever feel like Spring.  It was 50 degrees by the end of the afternoon!  I took my coat off, the sun was shining, I just wore one shirt instead of two layers, it was a beautiful thing.  I spent the morning doing basic stuff like getting bills in the mail, getting deposits made, dropping something off at another bank, etc.  I had planned on trying to fly the PT-26 this morning since I had the morning off and it was supposed to be beautiful, but I was too busy doing other stuff, and it was still around freezing in the morning whereas it got to like 47 in the afternoon, so, I waited.

I was in the car finishing up some things and waiting to pick up Richard and Ann from an appointment, and I got a text from one of our guys that says "Ummm, so...I locked the keys in the vehicle and it's running.  Could you come out here soon?"  I needed to finish what I was doing first, but when I got home I went to look for the extra key to the Jeep, and I couldn't find it.  I looked in the garage, on the fridge, everywhere, and it wasn't here.  I thought "Oh Lord, Steve took it with him to California.  What are we going to do??"  I figured I'd go out there and hope there was another set on the hook above the computer.  For some unknown reason, I took with me the extra key to the Suburban.  I knew it was the Suburban, and I knew I needed the Jeep key, and I brought it anyway.

When I got to the airport, the Jeep key was not on the hook.  I'm thinking to myself, Self, the new airport manager was the former Fire Chief of Kokomo.  He either has to know how to get into cars, or know someone who does, a friendly police officer, something.  And then I went outside and heard the Suburban running.  Hmm.  The guy came out and that's when I learned that it was indeed the Suburban that got locked running, not the Jeep.  And I happened to have brought the key with me for no known reason.  Potential Real Problem Averted.

On to flying the PT-26.  What a perfect, gorgeous day for it.  I drive over to the hangar, and it's in one of the north facing hangars, which means it sees no sun, but I didn't figure that was that big of a deal...it's been above freezing several days, and today was, did I mention, 50!  I was wrong.  I got over there, and the whole front of the hangar was iced over, and the ice covered the base of the door, freezing the whole thing to the ground.  I grabbed a small metal shovel with a thick wooden handle, and started hacking and chopping at it, finally getting the ice away from the base of the door.  The door opened uneventfully, but as it went up, I saw a large lip of solid ice across the whole area that was 6-8" tall.  I figured I'd just hack out a path for the wheels and still be good to go.  Again, wrong.  That ice was rock solid, and I didn't get anywhere significant. I was already tired from chopping the door loose, and this required more than a little shovel.  A jackhammer or something would have been helpful.  I finally gave up.

I still had a little time before I had to pick up Kaylee from her after school activities, and I had the bug very strongly, and while I wanted the taildraggers, I didn't have one, so I took the twin up instead.  I decided to do some stalls, as I've only done about two stalls in there.  I looked inside at the end of one of them to see how close it came to the book number, and it was dead on.  For a clean stall, no bank, it broke right dead smack at the red stall line.  Then I decided to do a full RNAV approach into Kokomo, single engine.  I don't really do engine out work in that airplane in order to be careful with the engines.  The old engines and then brand new engines, but now they have some time on them, so I decided to practice one, very gently on the set-up.  The airplane obviously does fine on one engine with one person, but one difference between it and the other twins I'm used to is the weight and power is enough that you really need to utilize the rudder and aileron trim.  In the Senecas and Barons and so forth, I'd just hold it with my foot and hand (unless you were out and about on a cross country or something).  This is too heavy and with too much power on the other engine to muscle around for very long.  Trim is your friend.  :D  Anyway, shot the whole approach and all the way down to landing, and then put her away, feeling like I actually accomplished something good, even if it wasn't tailwheel currency or getting ready for doing some instructing in the PT.

Kaylee was ready for me to pick her up at 5:30, and needed me to take her to Goodwill to buy some clothes for her DI project that is due this Saturday, so we stopped there, then went to Meijer where I picked up a little birthday cake for myself.  I'm going to eat a piece of it tomorrow and take the rest to Glenndale's lunch on Friday.  Win/Win.  :D

We had been home for a few minutes when the alarm kept going off for the driveway.  Kaylee went out there and yelled "MOM!  There's a POSSUM in our yard dragging a dead SQUIRREL!"  So I went to look, and that possum wasn't scared in the least of us.  It came right up by our door, right by our deck.  The cats were staring, Kaylee and I were staring, it was right up against the deck, and it didn't care, even when we banged on the door, etc.  It started chewing on the squirrel, which was nasty.  Kaylee said "You should shoot it.  I don't like possums."  I contemplated it for a second.  Kaylee said "Dad would shoot it, he shot another one."  I contemplated it harder.  And then I decided that this had bad idea written all over it.  It's right up against our house, on concrete.  Kaylee said "If you don't miss it won't be a problem."  Well, unless you don't miss and it still passes through the critter and ricochets off of something else and goes who knows where, or something.  Or you do miss.  They can move quickly if they need to.  So I said no.  Kaylee got out her nerf gun and shot at it with that instead.  She missed, but not by much, and it ran off, leaving its dead prey under out little table outside by the deck.  I hope it comes back tonight and carries it off rather than leaving it for me to clean up.  I don't feel like scraping up dead, chewed on, bloody squirrel.  Gross.  Or maybe Dinner? Probably have to be stew to keep it from being too tough, I'd guess.  ;)