Two Pilots & an LSW: Back Home in Alabama

The lady behind the desk in Mobile, Alabama today was named "Laura", and her birthday was today. I said "My name is Laura too, and my birthday is in two days." She gave me a discount on fuel. I will pretend that's why. :D

Soooo, I went to bed at 10, fell asleep at 11, woke up at 1:30, woke up at 3:30, woke up at 4:30 and just got up for the day. It's now 1 am and I am still awake, probably a little over-tired at this point.

The flight down was fine, we had nice winds and got there in 3 hours. D went to his meeting, I got a courtesy car and had breakfast. When I got back I sat in a chair and tried to rest for awhile, but another guy came in, fell promptly asleep, and started snoring, after opening the door wide so that I could hear the manager talking loudly on the phone and to everyone else. So, no rest. Instead I got up and went for a walk. A good long one. It was sunny and 60 degrees down there, while it was 30 degrees with a 25 knot wind up here. So I really soaked up a little warmth and sunshine and got my exercise in for the day. For lunch I took a courtesy van to a place on the water and had an alligator po boy sammich. I don't think I've had an alligator po boy before, so I wanted to try it. It was between that and a salad with king crab meat on it. The waiter said they're known for their po boy, I hadn't had alligator, and I'd just had really good crab legs in Vegas, so... He was right, it was really good. Probably not low cal, so I went for another short walk. ;)

Back in the pilot's lounge, there were four of us sitting in there, they all had headphones in, but I still couldn't sleep in a room with three other strangers. I paid the fuel bill, and D let me know we'd be leaving soon, around 4:10 or so. We get out to the plane, and he flips on the master, and they hadn't gotten the tanks topped off properly. I was short about 3-4 gallons each on the mains, and I was short a good 10 gallons on the right aux. We had fierce headwinds. In fact, I had to file for 9,000' (we went over at 18,000') to try to make it without a fuel stop. We needed every gallon of fuel. So we shut down, I got back out, asked them to top me off properly, and waited. It took an HOUR for them to do it, and I had to explain to the line guy why we needed more fuel. I took the time to explain that he needed to not just dump the fuel in and walk away, but it needs to settle on the aux tank. And on Twin Cessna main tanks, you have to fill it to almost running out to be full. They put in 13 gallons. I go to pay for it, and they're charging me all their fees again. Landing, ramp, useage, etc. I say "Hey, I already paid all these once." They took them off. Then they discounted the fuel because I was now really getting irritated. We get back out there, flip on the master, and they still were down a couple gallons on the mains, but fine. Whatever. Time to go.

Halfway home we went down to 7,000' because the winds were so strong we weren't going to make it. A bit later we come down to 5,000'. I lean it out some more. We made it, but it took us 4 hours and 11 minutes. Our butts are tired of sitting, and we were at minimum reserve fuel. The winds were supposed to calm down halfway home. They didn't. They were supposed to swap direction to more of a crosswind. They didn't. As we'd go lower they'd slow down for awhile and we'd pick up speed, and then they'd pick back up. We couldn't get a break. We were, of course, prepared to stop if we had to, we just didn't have to, barely. It was kind of tiring.

My biggest problem was that I'd had several glasses of iced tea thinking we would be later. When he texted me, I went to the flight planning software, plugged in 19,000' for the trip home, and my jaw dropped when it said 4 hours and 45 minutes and that I didn't have enough fuel. I could only get it down to 3 hours 45 minutes (which ended up being a Lie), and here I'd just had all this iced tea. That's a looooong time to hold it, man. So I did what I could, then we had an hour delay for fuel, and then the whole way home I didn't drink anything, and once I hit the ground I drank a bottle and a half of water in one sitting. I was actually dehydrated. It had been 8 hours since I'd actually had a drink of water...

It was good to see Kaylee and Steve. I missed the family, and haven't seen a lot of Kaylee lately, so she sat and chatted with me until she realized it was 11:30 and she had to submit homework by midnight online. :)

Kaylee had a little driving scare. She fishtailed turning a corner a little too fast where it was a little slick. She thinks she came close to a mailbox, and was looking at a car coming at her, and a car stopped, and she was afraid she looked like an "idiot", etc. She texted both Steve and I, but separately so we didn't know she was talking to the other. Steve wrote back a great thing to her, he sent it to me later. He was spelling out some of the things he's done in a car, including when she was with him. She got some confidence back and drove around after that, got gas by herself for the first time today, and all in all had a good learning day. I'm always glad if you can learn a lesson without actually getting yourself in legit trouble. :)