Envelopes

Kaylee got up early and had band practice.  Now that they are going to semi-state, they have more practices coming up.  She left practice a little early, and went on a canoeing/kayaking adventure with some friends.  She and a boy name Joe (side note she was in a playgroup with him when she was a baby up through about school age, but hadn't seen since until last year) shared a canoe, two more of her friends shared a 2-person kayak, and 4 others all had individual kayaks.  She went in the canoe to minimize her chances of capsizing.  lol  They went down the Wildcat, where Steve has spent a lot of time.  They had a great time, and then went back to Joe's house to play ping pong and other games, before I picked her up.  

I flew her to Akron, Ohio, and left her with a camp counselor friend for a few days.  She's got plans to go dumpster diving at Krispy Kreme, and go to her youth group, and hang out and spend a couple days on her Fall Break doing some fun things with a friend.   This is a little more grown-up stuff.  She's 16 off with an 18 year old college friend in her own apartment in Ohio.  The friend, we spent time with, and she's a Christian camp counselor and seems very nice.  I trust Kaylee more than the friend, and hope she has a good, safe, fun time.

Flying home alone from Akron

I started the morning flying with Steve.  I did quite a few takeoffs and landings from the back seat of the T-6.  I had some cushions set up, and it bumped me up to where I could actually see.  After the first few landings Steve could tell that it wasn't much of a challenge, so he started putting his arms up over his head.  It made me laugh because he looked like either a Prisoner of War or like he was surrendering in fear, but it also didn't make me laugh because now I couldn't see anything.  That was more of a challenge.  I never got super smooth at it, but it was always safe.  I usually couldn't see the runway until I was right over the threshold, and I'd be way off the centerline, a couple times not even on the runway, and have to scoot over and get straight at the last minute.  That poses a fun little challenge.  It would be even more so on a 50' wide runway.  But Steve didn't say or do anything, just sat there with his arms over his head and let me figure it out for good or bad.  That's pretty brave of him, actually!

By then the winds had picked up, and were down the runway at 15 knots.  I wanted to practice some crosswinds from back there.  I wanted to know how you'd know you were straight in a crosswind from back there when the front windshield was blocked.  I can't see the runway at all, so how can you know when you're getting blown off.  But a direct crosswind at 15 knots, while not making me blink in anything else, made me blink from the back of the Six.  So I did the takeoff and pattern, and coming down final I could see that as long as you had a strong enough crosswind, you were crabbing hard enough that you could actually see the runway from the back.  I straightened out over the runway, and felt like I could see that.  It was a little gusty and I was working it, but I'd been flying over an hour and a half, and was feeling fatigued. I didn't feel like I was as ahead of the plane as I needed to be, more reactionary than deliberate control, so I decided it wasn't worth it and went around, and came back in on the runway into the wind and called it a day.  Almost two hours of pattern work is a lot.  :)

So Kaylee is off, I don't have to get up in the morning, and I'm looking forward to tomorrow for some reason.  :)