Tailwheel Saturday

The winds were supposed to be pretty high today, but I had two guys from Lafayette who have been cancelled for two or three weeks in a row because of weather who wanted to get started on a tailwheel endorsement.  They came out 30 minutes earlier so we could hopefully get more in before the wind moved in, and when we started the winds were about a 40 degree crosswind at 12-13 knots.  I took the one guy first, and we flew for just under an hour, and then I could tell the winds were kicking up.  So I suggested we land and let the next guy go before it got too rough.  He and I took off, and it was already rough.  We did air work, then came in to land.  By now the winds were up to about 25 knots, at 40-50 degrees off the runway, so in the light Champ that's a workout, especially for someone's first tailwheel lesson.  We got two landings in, and he called Uncle.  All in all it went great, and the first guy loved it so much he talked it up to his roommate, who wants to come out and fly too, at least once.  This all came about from the talk I gave at Purdue to their flight club, about tailwheels.  So two new members getting their tailwheel endorsements and one guy coming out for a Discovery Flight, months later, and they're having a lot of fun with it, so that's great.  :)

The only bad thing was that somewhere at the end of the first flight, my head started hurting.  By the end of the second flight, it hurt enough that I felt sick to my stomach.  So I got some food, and caffeine, and tried to combat that, but it didn't work and I couldn't even finish the food.  I wanted to nap but Kaylee wanted to sit out here and talk with me, so we talked for a couple hours.  Then I told her I needed a nap...laid on the couch, just started to doze off, and someone came to my back door knocking.  I dealt with that, and then couldn't sleep again, and she had a birthday party to attend anyway.  I drove her to the store to get the gift, out to the party, and then she needed picked up in an hour anyway, then Steve was home, and...I am officially tired of feeling yucky!  The head got better, but I have these circles under my eyes and my eyes won't stop running and I'm not hungry, can't eat anything, and I'm almost done whining now.  ;)

Tomorrow Kaylee is playing the saxophone with some string instruments at the early morning church service for Easter.  She was practicing tonight, and wanted to speed up the song because it was hard to hold her breath that long.  I told her she could not jazz up and speed up the stately Easter song.  She promptly belted it out at double the speed, and it was really funny.  She wouldn't let me record her doing it, but I can just picture the folks at church and their faces if she did that during the service.  Heh.

Here are a couple photos from the back seat of the Champ today.  I hadn't been in that Champ since December of 2015, which really surprises me...but it has been down for quite awhile, so...

The purple flowers in the field next to us were really pretty, I enjoyed them.

Dandelions, purple weeds, grass runway, muddy wing, I like all of these things.