Traveling In Style

After not enough sleep, I woke up early and flew six folks to Atlantic City, NJ. Two of them had never been on an airplane, any airplane, before in their life.  One of those was nervous and the other was downright terrified.  Another is a nervous flier who gets sick most any flight where it's not dead smooth. So I did some extra preparation to try to find the smoothest ride possible for them.  We left at 8:20 am, so it was still early enough to be quiet across the countryside.  The one woman who was terrified to fly looked me up and down and said "So how long have you been flying?"  I answered her, and she said "Oh, wow."  Then she said "My daughter told me not to talk to the pilot and ask her a bunch of questions about her health history."  I laughed and told her that as she could see, I was still young enough to not have health problems, and I'd be happy to answer any questions she had.  I talked to her a little about what to expect, about the redundancies in the airplane, etc.  She leaned over to  her daughter and said "I like this lady." 

The flight was smooth and calm and relaxing, and she did great.  So did the other one.  And the guy who always gets sick sat up front with me, and asked questions the whole time and didn't get sick a bit.  However, we had 30 knot winds over there.  So I warned everyone it would going to be a bumpy ride in, and right at 4,300' the turbulence hit, and I said "Heeeeere we go."  They did fine though.  The folks in the back who aren't nervous made it a game type of thing and laughed at the bumps and kept her mind off of it.  When we landed she said it was a wonderful flight, she loved it, and she can't imagine having had a more perfect first flight.  So that was nice.  :)

I bought gas there, and their Jet A was over $7/gallon.  At Kokomo it's $3/gallon.  Wow, man.  On the way home I was trying to take photos of the Atlantic City Boardwalk, but it's such busy airspace they kept talking to me and making me do stuff, and I didn't end up getting anything decent.   But I had the flight home to myself, so you know what that means.  I turned on the tunes, ate my breakfast of rice crispy treat and water bottle, read a book, hand flew for awhile until I got to FL300, I mean FL280 when I'm required to have on the autopilot, of course, took a tongue-in-cheek selfie wearing the oxygen mask incorrectly like the Southwest passengers did the other day, and enjoyed the flight.

When I got back to Kokomo, I hung out for few minutes and then caught a ride in the 172 down to Westfield airport, where I was to bring the Champ down here back to Kokomo.  It wasn't kept in very good shape down there.  The tires needed air, the plane was filthy with dirt, mud, dust, oil and bird crap.  The battery tender wasn't on it.  And it was out of gas.  So I had to start it up and taxi it over to the fuel pump...it wasn't running right.  One of the cylinders wasn't firing yet.  Eventually it did smooth out, and I took off and ran it home for maintenance.  I enjoyed that flight, with the window open and the wind in my face and the stick and the blue skies and bright sun. I'd gone from 30,000' in Class B airspace in NJ to 1500' and no radio.

I hadn't really eaten, so I left and picked up some Wendy's for Steve and a little for me, then ordered some Japanese delivery.  I had a $5 off coupon that expired in a week, so hey.  ;)

The only sort of shot I got of Atlantic City's boardwalk

The Atlantic Ocean

Bad Mask Protocol

Blue skies out the front, all day.

The panel of the 172

From the wing of the Champ. See all the dirt balls on the window before I opened it?

Enjoying the Champ.