The Day

Kaylee is just a good kid.  She got up early this morning for a band thing she didn't want to do but is too smart to complain to us about right now. She's crazy busy, but she's still got all A's almost a month into it, which is great.  Anyway, I went back to bed this morning, and suddenly she came speed walking into my room making this high-pitched keening noise.  I figured the word "Spider" was coming, and it did, but not in a way I expected.  She was sitting on the toilet, felt her hair tickling her face, brushed her hair aside, and yes, it wasn't hair, it was a SPIDER on her FACE.  A black one, decent sized, which plopped on the floor from her FACE.  She said she didn't even get her underwear pulled up, she just ran out of there and pulled her yoga pants up with one hand.  That is AWFUL.  I am YELLING because that's GROSS.  I'd have been squealing too.  Poor kid.  Steve said something like "Oh great, she moved out of her room because of a spider, now she's going to try to move into my bathroom too.  There aren't many more places for her to move out of and still live here!"

One kind of funny thing about today.  One of my students emailed me tonight with a picture taken at sunset in the Cub, and said "One year ago today you signed me off in the Cub."  It was his first tailwheel solo.  On Facebook, I got one of those "Three Years Ago Today" posts and it said that 3 years ago today I soloed another one of my students, this one her first solo ever, in the Cub.  That's kind of wild, really.

Steve stayed behind to take Kaylee to and from her band thing.  I wanted to leave early-ish this morning to go to N. Vernon for their air show and fly-in, because they were paying for our gas, so I wanted to make it worth their while.  Originally I was going in the PT and Nathan in the T-6, but the earlier leaving time made it hard for him to get everyone out there.  So I was going to just take the PT and he could come later if he wanted in the Six, but when I got out to the airport Steve had already pulled the T-6 out, and told me to just get out and go, so...I did.

When I got in the T-6 today, I realized something that made me feel better.  See, the other day I went up and did some takeoffs and landings, and they felt weirder and slightly off, not even as good as the first two I did right after it came out of the hangar did.  So today I'm sitting in the T-6, and I realized...the seat was down.  You wouldn't think the seat being down should affect an experienced pilot that much, and in most things I can't say it does, but in that, you're using your peripheral anyway, and you get used to the sight picture, and once that changed and I didn't know it, I was trying for the same sight picture I was used to, but it wasn't working out quite right.  Now I know why.  So I fixed that, and my first landing was at North Vernon today, in front of a group of folks, and I was back to normal and feeling good about that.  :D

It took me about an hour to get down to North Vernon, with a bit of a head wind.  I brought along an iPad and a chair so I could sit and read a book since I was by myself this time and wasn't sure I'd have anything to do.  I didn't need it, I stayed busy.  When I arrived there, they parked me up front and had me pointed into the food tent, which I thought was sort of bad planning, but they wanted me up front and center.  Two Stearman were there already, and I knew the pilots, and we chatted for awhile.  Then some folks started coming up, and I put kids up on the wing and in the cockpit and answered quite a few questions.  I had quite a few kids interested in taking a look.  Lunch time arrived and I got a free tenderloin lunch out of it, and it was good.  I was planning on leaving before the airshow, like the Stearmans did, but then the Air Boss of the show asked me if I'd be willing to stay and fly a few passes in the show.  I asked if the FAA was there, and he said no, and I said sure.  Why not, they bought my gas to get there, I can do that.

So on a funny side story, a woman came up to me on the ramp and said "You bought my lunch today!" I asked what she meant, and she said "When you were coming in to land, I pointed at you and said 'There's a LADY driving that airplane!' and the guy next to me said 'No, that's just a guy with long hair.' and I said 'No, that's a lady!' and he said 'No way, it's gotta be a guy, bet ya $5.' and then you got out of the plane and I won $5 and you bought my lunch!"  Hey, I'm always glad to be of assistance!  :D  Really, Nathan has long hair, and the odds were definitely in that guy's favor to be correct one way or the other, he just happened to lose that particular bet this time.  ;)

I had a little trouble gassing up, it was a self-serve pump only so I had to taxi over to it to get fueled up, along with a line-up of other airplanes too. Then we couldn't find the guy with the credit card to fuel me.  Finally we got it done though, and I was to open up the show and leave from there.  So I took off, swung around behind the crowd, came down in a tight pass, broke off 45 to the left, dog-boned around and swung back down the other direction, went by them in a turn, then came back for a slow and dirty (gear and flaps down) pass, before Air Boss said thanks and see ya.  It was fun though, quick but enjoyable yanking and banking.

The rest of the day was at Kokomo.  I tried out the PT tailwheel again after Nathan lowered the air pressure in it (still shimmies), Steve got the tug sort of working, Nathan got Gumby repaired and put back together, they checked over the 172 and made sure it was good to go back online, and all in all it was a fairly productive day interspersed with periods of sitting and doing nothing.  We ended the night by going to dinner at Outback, where I got fish tacos, only ate two of them, didn't eat any of the appetizer, had two slices of bread but veggies for a side, and I still feel like I ate too much.  Whew.

There wasn't anything interesting as far as scenery on the way down to N. Vernon, so I figured it was time to do a bobble-head selfie...maybe there will have been a decent photo or two taken there at the show I'll see.  So far I just found one of me standing in front of the plane in my flight suit.  Still not fond of me in flight suit photos, but better than it was this time last year.  ;)