Rainbows and Unicorns

Okay, there aren't any unicorns in this story.

I was up at 6 this morning to fly to Upshur County, West Virginia with D.  There was a big wad of rain and storms headed our way, so I told him not to delay, to let us get out of there.  I figured getting home might be a trick.  Right on takeoff we had a big fat rainbow right off the end of the runway.  About 5 minutes later I turn around and there is a HUGE, fully rounded, double rainbow right behind us.  Huge, and vivid.  And cellphones do not capture that.  I tried.  It was stunning.  I joked that I didn't care what ATC wanted, they were going to have to wait and keep their britches on while I took pictures of this thing.  Just gorgeous.

The airport in West Virginia was sitting on top of a mountain/butte.  There was a very big drop-off on three sides of it, and the fourth had a couple of small mountains off the end.  You would not want to miss.  Well, you WOULD want to miss the mountains.  You would not want to miss the runway.  We landed, D got a rental car, and I went into the terminal.  There was a bathroom (later labeled INOP but fortunately not until it was close to time for me to leave), and a small concrete room with one lounger chair and a dirty noisy refrigerator in it.  That's it.  No air conditioning.  No air FLOW.  No TV, no cell service, no vending machine or water fountain.  A concrete room, a chair, and a bathroom.  I did okay once I hunted him down to give me a password for the slow wifi, which at least worked slowly, vs cellular service which didn't exist out there.  Eventually I took the courtesy car into town to get brunch.  It was an old Chrysler, manual windows, old radio, and he felt the need to tell me how the key worked because it was old style.  He had to go start it up and get it running first for the day.  You know I like this.  Even though it was mega hot and the air conditioner only blew hot air, it was still a cool car.  But Google Maps wouldn't work out there to get me to food.  So I wandered around old school and just looked for a place to eat.  I ended up at a diner that served breakfast all day, and had bacon and eggs and tea and a pecan pancake.  I'm still full from that, for the record.  I loaded up the airport on my Google Maps before I left their wifi this time, and it took me to...nowhere.  The airport wasn't where the app said it was.  So I wandered back the way I came and found it again on my own anyway.  Gotta love no cell service and out of the way places without good georeferenced markers! 

The way home was super hot, and we had two lines of storms to go through, but they were so widely scattered around our path that we didn't even really have to deviate.  I could just see them over there.  I waved.  Hi.  Bye.  Yawn.  I like easy.

When I got to Kokomo, I had a flight student at 6 pm.  I'd been super hot all day long, and I wasn't really in the mood for a lesson, but I couldn't cancel the fella either.  So I got more in the mood after we started going, and we had a good flight.  Panera salad for dinner, something a little lighter, and tomorrow I don't have anything scheduled.  This is kind of neat.  I don't even have the pressure to take up the T-6 and practice anything any more.  I accomplished that, and did the best I could with the training I had, and I felt pretty good about it.  Next up is Marion's fly-in, which is always an exercise in not having a mid-air collision with the hoard of other airplanes buzzing around there.   Other than that, it's fine.  ;)

Nothing new on Kaylee today.  I haven't seen her and she's just been in school anyway, but nothing too interesting...

I did get photos but will put them up maybe tomorrow...