Two Pilots & an LSW: Marion & Bob

Our Saturday did not start off in stellar fashion. I was really tired and had a hard time waking up before 7 am, but once I did, Steve took a little extra time in the bathroom, so I was running a little bit late. I get out to the airport right about when I'm supposed to be there, get the plane and pull it out, and it's already muggy out. The plane hadn't gotten topped off with fuel the night before like I'd asked, and the airport wasn't open yet, but I had enough to get to Marion. Doing that was going to put us behind though, because I had to get gas when I got there instead of start rides. Fine, it'll work, we don't have much choice anyway. Justin gets there, and he'd had a hard time waking up too. Climbs in, and the headset I'd asked be put back there wasn't back there either. He had to climb back out and find/fetch that. Climbs back in, I go to start, and the plane is dead as a doorknob. Click. Click. Zzzzt. *sigh*. Unbuckle again and climb back out. Go to the large hangar and walk all around it looking for the APU. No luck. Walk next door and walk around the maintenance hangar looking for it. No luck. Oh, there it is in the back corner by the RG. Cool. Hike it out there, bring out an extension cord, get a screwdriver, hook up, jump in, second try she starts. Buckle back up, Justin has to lock up the hangars. He gets in. I say "I'm really sorry for not saying this earlier, but what if we get there and can't get it started again? We'd better bring that thing if we can fit it." He climbs out again, fetches it, loads it, climbs back in. We are now quite late, and sweaty, and flustered, and still need gas. As I'm taxiing out to take off, I start sing-songing "Fun, fun, we're having fun. This is fun, we're having fun." lol

From there on out it did get more enjoyable. We got to Marion, and there were only 7 or 8 airplanes in the pattern instead of the swarm it has been in the past. There were too many for me to reasonably make a "good morning" pass without getting in the way, but still, I could get in and land, and that's not normal for that place at this event.

I got gas, and then we waited, and we didn't have any riders. That's also not normal for this place. Usually I'm hopping. So after about an hour we took up a "filler" ride. One that looks like rides are going. That usually gets things going. Still nothing, which is also odd. Ray wanted to do an interview with Kaylee and me about the Sweetwater trip, so she came out in a flightsuit and her hair done, with her friend Meredith, and we did this interview. Skinny Elvis was there, and they interviewed him as well. After they were done with us, they queued in Elvis, who jumped in and put his arm around me and draped on me and said "I'll take a T-6 ride with you!" I just clapped and said "That's our cue to leave!" They took pictures with me and him. I'm way too awkward for this. WAY too awkward. Nothing about that came off right. It was bad.

Kaylee and Meredith left after the interview, and AE went to get me (and others) some breakfast, and then suddenly the rides kicked in. I hadn't eaten yet, but wasn't that hungry. When it's hot and I'm in a flight suit and doing rides, a full stomach doesn't feel good and it makes me sluggish, something I don't need. So I thought I'd do these two rides and then eat. The two rides turned into 7 in a row. :) So it suddenly decided to get busy, which is good!

During my second-to-last ride, I was running low on gas but still had enough to get the last two in. I look over and see little rain showers out there, zoom out my ADS-B (weather) on the GPS, which I'd had zoomed in just at the airport in order to see traffic, and see weather all over. I texted the guys to check the radar for me. We landed, and decided to top off so that I could take off with the last rider, and get away from the airport, and away from that cell moving in. The T-6 can't get dumped on that hard without frying the GPS. If the fuel truck had been any slower, I'd have been in trouble. As it was, they got right there, topped me off, we got the rider loaded in, and I took off out of there with my right eye staring at the storm and my left eye on the centerline of the runway on takeoff. lol I could feel the wind buffeting the plane as I lifted off, and I just turned off to the left asap and got away from there. Timing was perfect. My rider and I flew around and enjoyed ourselves, and I kept an eye on the storm. I turned down the radio because the rider and I were talking a lot, and the radio was distracting. Finally I see the storm is moving past where the airport should be, so I wander to the back side of it, and coming around the corner I turn my radio back up and hear someone calling me. I guess I'd made a couple folks nervous about me, because it dumped and rained like holy batmans down there while I was gone, and when they couldn't reach me on the radio, it was a little unnerving. But I was always well and in the sunshine. :) I came in and landed on the back side of the weather, unloaded the last passenger safely, and we were done with rides.

The ground flooded from that cell, and everything had to be put up and away. The grass had standing water in it, so they obviously put me on the pavement this time when I came back in. It was hot, but a good day once we got rolling.

Some people stories. Afterwards I had one guy come up and tell me that he'd ridden with me last year, and that it was his first time flying in 10-12 years. He'd started lessons and then drifted away. But he said after his flight last year, he's started back on lessons again and is almost ready for a checkride now. That it basically put the spark back in him. That was neat. Another guy said something similar, he hadn't flown for awhile, was a Private Pilot, but after flying with me last year, he got back into it. I'm always happy to provoke the aviation disorder in other people. ;) A woman rider was super excited to be in the plane. Her uncle was a P-51 pilot in WWII, and was shot down, captured, tortured and killed in Japan. She wanted to fly something he'd flown. She also wanted to do aerobatics and didn't know we weren't supposed to on these rides. She loved it when I yanked it around a little, so I told her if she promised not to tell, I'd roll her. So she got about the only illegal roll I've ever done on these rides. lol When we were coming in to land, she said "I will remember this 20 minutes for the rest of my life." A little later she said "Those were some of the best 20 minutes of my life." That's pretty impactful for an airplane ride. Another guy had driven from hundreds of miles away to be there, and when he got out he said "That right there makes the trip entirely worth it." One rider was a really old gentleman. When he climbed in, he said "Oh boy. I hope you don't drive like my wife!" Then he said "I'm old. Be nice to me!" I said "If you want me to be nice, you might not want to start with 'I hope you don't drive like my wife!'" He chuckled and said he'd been married for 55 years, but she scared him to death in the car. When we got in the air, I asked if he wanted anything more than what we were doing, and he said "Ten years I would've told you to show me what it's got. But today, I'm liking this view Juuuuust fine, as is." No problem. Works for me, too. :)

Next up, I flew home, put the airplane away, and waited for my pants, which I'd left in the trailer, to arrive. (This means I was sitting around in a flight suit, not that I didn't have any pants on, in case you're wondering). Meanwhile, Nathan had been working on the C-45, and said it's pretty close to being run. Jon and Justin P put things back together, and then we team efforted pulling all the planes out, including BOB, and Nathan attempted to start her. It wasn't too happy about it for awhile there, but eventually he got it running, right engine smoking a lot at first, left engine not, but both purring very nicely. It hasn't run in almost 2 years, and it was a big accomplishment. The CAF guys weren't there, and that will probably make them not very happy, but only two of them are ever there working on BOB anyway. The rest of the time it's mostly our guys, Nathan. So we ran it, and yay, it worked!

End of the day, filthy, sweaty, oily, dirty, hot, wiped out, we went to Outback for a becoming-a-tradition-end-of-work-day-steak. Except I had lobster tails because I still wasn't in the mood for anything super heavy. It was something like 10 pm before we got home, and then man were we tired. Crash.

It's Sunday now, and I'm sore. Feet hurt, arms hurt (not sure why), feel like I was outside in too much heat and not enough food and sweated to death for a day or something. ;)