Sitting

I woke up with a scratchy throat and a headache, but I had an 8 a.m. flight in a Warrior today, and dragged out there.  We had a good flight, he picked it up pretty quickly.  I had a little time in the afternoon, and I wasn't feeling well, so I tried to lie down, but I couldn't sleep (too much caffeinated tea at lunch I suppose).  I was then supposed to fly 4-6, 6-9, 9-11 pm.  A long evening and I just wasn't feeling the best, but I had tomorrow off.   The 4-6 went great.  That guy is going to solo and fast.  Today was really the first day I had him in the pattern doing the level off and flare, and he GOT it.  So I started throwing engine outs and ballooning at him, and he managed that too.  We land, taxi in, and I have about 30 minutes before the next guy.  He gets there and he's not prepared, we were going to do a cross country but he hadn't planned it out all the way yet.  Now we're running late.  He'd only scheduled us until 8 pm, which isn't enough time for a cross-country, so I extended us through my dinner hour and into 9 pm.  The FBO was now closed, so if we had to get fuel, we'd have to do the self serve pump, add another half hour to our time, and probably run out of time.  He'd prepared a cross country to a tower controlled field, a busy one, for his first ever cross country, plus it was 75 miles away.  Way too complicated for a first (I hadn't met or flown with him before, I didn't tell him to do that).  So I calculate that we need no less than 25 gallons of gas to go.  The guy preflights, and sends his dad back to tell me we have 24.5 gallons of gas.  Okay, close enough, but I'd like more. Of course I can always stop and get more if need be. Then I walk up there and he says "I think the front tire is low".  I bend down, and it's not low, it's flat.  Like...totally flat.  Kapooot flat.   So another guy has the other 172, and he offers it to us.  It has 23 gallons of gas.   It's pushing me.  I'm coming home at night, I don't wanna be at my 1 hour reserve.  But it'll still work.  He does the preflight--again--we pull it out, and...it won't even crank.  The battery isn't dead, you can hear the gyros winding up.  But it will not even turn over.  Just "click".  I shut everything down, pull the prop through a few times on a hail mary where I don't know what I'm doing but it's worth a try, and it doesn't help.  So by now we're an hour late, he's flustered, I'm annoyed, and not feeling that well, and we push the second broken 172 away and call it a day.  I said if there was a third airplane option available, I probably wouldn't take it anyway.  I mean...how many things have to go wrong before you back away with your hands up and say "okay, okay!"  So I canceled that guy, and the next guy, and Steve and I went to dinner with a friend instead.  And I'm still not feeling that well, but I took a vitamin and did NOT work until 11 pm tonight, and I plan on getting some sleep and working on some stuff tomorrow at home.

Kaylee is playing at "Festival at the Fountain" (That is not the right name) in Tipton on Thursday, with the jazz band.  She is just learning the song tonight.  Steve helped her with the rhythm, and once she started focusing she picked it up really fast.  She's feeling a little better, herself, thankfully.

I need to update my logbook before I forget what I did today...it's getting harder when I now have two guys in their own planes and not ours, so no time sheets to go off of, just memory or notes.

Oh, for the BBQ Bash--Kaylee has enlisted the help of some of her friends, gotten the event passed around at a church newsletter, and has really been a big help to Steve.  She doesn't know it yet, but she'll be in charge of a fair amount of stuff at the food tent this year.  We think she can handle it.  She's a good kid.