Camp and Airshow Life

Thursday in the middle of the night (or more accurately Friday in the wee hours of the morning), our house lost power.  I don't know why, there were no storms rolling through, and I have no idea what happened, but the sudden deafening silence in the house along with the beeping from the UPS in the living room on the computer woke me up.  My head was not doing so well either, so I fumbled in and got some Tylenol while I was at it, and tried to sleep in the dead silence with far away beeping, with not much success.  Sometime around 6:15 a.m. the power came back on.  I set my alarm for my morning departure, and tried to sleep, but couldn't get back to sleep, until sometime much later.  Steve ended up coming in at 8:15 or so and saying "Aren't you supposed to be wheels up at 9?"  Um, yes.  I ran around like a crazy person, half put make up on, ran out the door, and made it to the airport at 8:50 a.m., and Nathan had beat me out there and gotten the plane ready, and made fun of my text that my alarm didn't go off because the power went off.  :P 

We took the Cheyenne down to Cullman, Alabama to pick up five MBros guys.  He let me left seat it both ways.  I'm still catching up to her, but it's getting there.  The weather was perfectly doable, a few buildups and such, but nothing too exciting.  The only part that got my attention a bit was when I was hand flying it through some of the buildups, and feeling the plane in turbulence, as heavy as it is, and the Attitude Indicator works backwards from every other AI I've flown off of, which messes me up because if you have to read it and think about which way to turn, you're already behind, so I fought that a bit until I was able to focus on the Flight Director bars and just obey those.  It was fine, but the thought crossed my mind that I was already pretty full up on managing stuff and if I had an emergency right then I'd have likely been behind the 8-ball so to speak.  More time will be good.  I don't care to be the kind of pilot who can only manage an airplane if all is going well, so, more experience in less than perfect conditions will be good.

When I landed at Kokomo, I arranged for a ride over to Muncie in the 172RG, and it was now after 1:30 p.m. and I hadn't had a bite of food since dinner the night before, so I went into the restaurant on field and got a burger.  I was looking at my iPad's weather in the restaurant when I saw a couple of really large and unpleasant cells heading for Muncie.  I got up and looked out the window and could see the darkness coming, so I rushed the check and got out to the 340.  Tower made me hold while they waited for my IFR release as I watched the cells get closer to MIE.  Finally they cleared me to take off and passed me to Center who told me to turn to a heading that put me directly into the closing cell and told me to ident at 3000'.  Well, full fuel on a hot day it takes the 340 a little bit to get to 3000', and I came back with "Okay, but I'm not going to be able to hold this heading for long as I'm aimed right at a cell I'm not going to penetrate."  They acknowledged.  Somewhere around 2,500', they told me to ident again and turned me asap, right before I called them up and told them I was turning with or without them.  The rest of the trip was uneventful.  There were cells here and there, but nothing in my way, nothing that caused me any problems at all.

When I arrived in Mansfield, my rental car was waiting, another grey chariot.  I had left early to beat those cells, so I was a tad early in Ohio, so I stopped at a couple places including a store.  When I came out of the doors, I couldn't remember for the life of me where I'd parked.  I started hunting for grey cars and found that a ton of cars out there were grey.  I hit my "lock" and "unlock" buttons, and couldn't see or hear a thing.  So finally I looked around, hit the panic button, and when it went off, found the car, then pretended to look around at everyone else, waited till the coast was clear, then went to "my" car.  I was already really tired.  Low sleep for multiple days in a row, non-stop busy, I was just kind of beat.

I got to Kaylee's camp on time, and was sitting through the end of the week program, when the director of the camp got up to present their "Director's Bead."  See, during the week the campers get various beads to go on a bracelet they wear, beads that signify something like patience, courage, persistence, kindness, getting along, humor, humility ;),  that kind of stuff.  Well, there's a special bead called the Director's Bead.  A counselor has to nominate a camper, via letter to the director, and the director has to then decide whether or not he agrees with the nomination.  They don't do them every week, and they're special.  So he started reading about a camper who was seeking to improve herself, who worked hard without complaining, who was always there to do the hard stuff too, etc., and then he said "In TILT", which perked my ears up, because in all the weeks she's been at camp I've never heard him issue that bead to a TILT member.  He said this person was nominated by a counselor who has worked for them for several years now and has never nominated anyone else for this bead before.  It was, as you probably guessed, Kaylee.  She got the Director's Bead, and we were all pretty proud of her.  I kept trying to text Steve that she won the bead, but there's no service up there, so it took forever to go out.  :)

When it was time for us to go home, the weather was less than ideal.  There were storms to the left of us, to the right of us, and right in front of us on the other side of Kokomo.  So I had to stop at a McDonald's in town where there was internet and pull out my iPad and do some figuring and make sure we were okay to come home.  It looked like I had a perfect corridor in which to travel, so we launched.  On the way home we had a great light show off of two sides, and you could see the nasty storms particularly the ones in front of us on the other side of Kokomo.  Kaylee asked me what I'd do if the storms moved in front of our airport and we couldn't get in.  She asked if we'd land in a field, and I said no, and I lowered my wing and pointed at an airport that was right there, and said "I have lots of these to turn to that are in the clear, and we'd just land and wait it out."  She likes knowing that there are plans, so I started telling her about them.  She was sort of impressed that I'd thought about it.  The part that made me laugh was when she nodded and said "It's just like mopping.  Never mop yourself into a corner."  EXACTLY!  :)  She also said that she wouldn't trust very many people to be in an airplane with them with radar that looked like that, but that she trusted me, that she knew that I knew what I was doing, and she was completely at ease with it.  I told her that's why pilots need to take it very seriously when they fly non-pilots, because they are putting their lives in your hands, and it's not just about what risks you're willing to take, but what risks you're willing to take for them.  She got that.  She said she felt bad that she didn't want to do what I did for a living, but I don't feel bad about it.  If you don't have the drive for it, you need to NOT do it for a living.  I want her to do what she wants to do, not what I do.  When we landed at Kokomo, it was dusk, so I lit up the plane to make it look nice and pretty, and came on in to land, in front of a storm that never materialized over the airport anyway. 

Today was Airshow Day.  We had a line up of some of the biggest names in aerobatics.  No warbirds to fly, but lots of wah-wahs.  :)  I went on a photo imaging flight this morning with Steve C, and we were gone until noon.  We landed then so we could get a sandwich and gas and Steve could get back out before the airport closed for the airshow at 1.  Kaylee was done with her airshow volunteer job, and I was no longer working, so I took her home, came back and walked around saying hi to everyone I could find that I knew.  It was 95 degrees outside with huge humidity and I don't know what the heat index was but it was miserable.  I was a big sweat ball.  You'd step outside from an air conditioned car and your glasses fogged over.  Two people fainted from heat, one an 80 something year old man who fell face first, which was not cool.  He had to be taken to the hospital.  After that, there were several golf carts going out to the audience handing out free waters to older folks.  I told Kaylee that, and she was impressed, said that it's not that common for people to be willing to help somebody out without making a profit out of it.  The show itself went fine.  There was a 20-30 minute delay at the start thanks to inexperienced jump pilot of the skydivers who were supposed to open the event.  The two big warbirds we did have there, the TBM and B-25 from Missouri, had to be cut from the show as we were running long and out of time and couldn't cut any of the remaining aerobatic performers.  But the rest of the event seemed to go fairly smoothly, no real problems, at least not noticeable ones.

The gent who brought in his L-39 today, I've known him for a few years, mostly on Facebook.  He asked about the T-6, I told him it was trapped behind a broken door for the last 10 months now, and he said "Huh, you should call me up, I'd put you on my T-6 insurance."  I won't take him up on that, he's in Michigan, etc., but that was really generous of him to say.  He said he likes to fly the L-39 more because he can fly it in any wind and not have to worry about every landing, like he does in the T-6.  I know what he means--I've had landing in every airplane where I was thinking about something besides the landing. Most times I'm thinking about "what's next".  But not the T-6.  Even on the 10th landing of the day while dehydrated, you can bet I'm thinking about the landing I'm about to make in there.  It's good for that.

Kaylee had a party tonight in Greentown, a meet-up of her Starlets singing group.  About 20 of the 30 girls were there, and she didn't know a lot of them, and was a bit nervous at first, but she said it was wonderful, she had a blast, they were super welcoming of her, and she is SO excited about this upcoming year in the group.  A little nervous too, as they said she'd have another singing test first thing in the year, on harmonizing.  But mostly excited.  The party ended at 11 p.m., so I went back out and got her then.  She has to know I like her, because I've run her around for 2 days.  Today after I dropped her off she informed me she forgot to tell me she needs a camp chair.  This morning after I got us to the airport she informed me she forgot something she needed at the house.  She's lucky I like her.  ;) 

My Mavrx flight hit a bit of a snag when the battery died before Steve could get the last two fields in, and when I tried to ship off the cards to them, driving into town, only to find them closed until Monday now.  Apparently they close at 5 on Saturdays, not 7:30 like normal.  Great.  I missed a lot of stuff yesterday flying to Alabama and Ohio, and missed a lot of stuff today running Kaylee back and forth in the afternoon and evening and doing the Mavrx stuff in the morning.  I missed being in the briefing and flying in the show.  It all felt weird, the whole season still feels weird, like it's not really happening much, even though in less than a month the kids will be back in school and it will be Fall again quickly, and that's depressing, because I may get to go into Winter without at least the pleasure of having had a fun Summer to look back on fondly, nothing accomplished, nothing experienced, just workin'.  I know, boo hoo, that's life, big girl pants and all that.

Speaking of workin', usually we do Oshkosh Thursday or Friday before, and stay until the next Sunday.  Because of the airshow, we can't go to Oshkosh until Sunday.  But now I have a 6:30 a.m. Monday MBros flight to Alabama, which means I also miss Sunday and Monday.  I'll fly everyone up Sunday, then come home by myself to do that.   Our 10 day vacation becomes half that for me, and hopefully it stays that way rather than another trip coming up.  I may like to get the job done where I can, but that doesn't mean I'm happy about taking our one traditional vacation and chopping it in half.   I think everyone else is looking forward to being there.  The trailers are in, several campers are already there, a nasty storm rolled through this morning and we missed it and didn't have a plane on the ramp, so that was good!  Soon enough...

And this is long enough.  It's midnight, I'm working on laundry for everyone to pack since they haven't had a chance until now, and I'll wait until I'm home Sunday by myself to worry about my packing.  That'll work...  I do have photos, but I'm tired, so they'll have to wait!