Sweats

Kaylee stayed home from school yesterday with gastrointestinal distress.  We all concurred that going to school in such a condition is no fun for the person experiencing it, not conducive to learning anything, difficult to deal with in public restrooms, and not something anyone else there wants to be exposed to, either.  So she hung out at home and sent me texts off on an throughout the day about her miserable experience.  She seems to be okay today.  Don't know if it's something she ate, or a quick 24 hour bug, but at least she's doing better.  :)

My alarm was set for 4:30 a.m., but I woke up at 4 a.m. on my own.  (yay)  Since I hadn't gotten to sleep until midnight or so, that made for a very short night.  The first leg was to Brooksville, Florida.  I dropped off Dustin, Ted and his parents.  I got some gas there to avoid the landing fee, and then took their courtesy truck to lunch.  They only have one courtesy car, and it's a giant Ford diesel dually.  Dooley?  Dually?  I don't know how to spell that. I don't even know what it is.  But the guy said "You'd have to drive a large diesel dually with a big drum strapped down in the back of it."  I said I don't care, I'm just happy to have food.  I kind of got a charge out of driving that big thing (extended cab, too) around.  Biggest pickup I've ever driven.  Or do they call them "truck" and not "pick-ups".  Seems like I saw a rant about that somewhere.  ;)

A line guy at the airport told me where I needed to go, a local place called the Breakfast Station, so I did, and he was not wrong.  They never are!  That's why you ask.  :)  After I ate, I took off from Brooksville and flew over to Tampa Executive Airport.  I did it IFR, and it was only 30 miles away, in the middle of Tampa's busy airspace.  I hand flew it in order to get the practice in, and it was a good one.  They were changing my heading, altitude and frequencies constantly.  I didn't have time to look up the weather for my destination airport which in that airplane was like 8 minutes away.   It was fun.  ;)

Tampa Exec was a really nice little airport, actually.  I got more gas there, to avoid paying a landing fee, and only had about an hour to wait before everyone came back to head to Kokomo.  I went for a small walk, but it was 86 degrees out and I was actually sweating.  We left right around 1:30 pm.  We had some weather to go around on climb-out in Florida, and the rest of the flight we were on top of all the weather.  They Cheyenne sure wins for making trips so much more manageable.  By the time I landed back at Kokomo, I felt good in the airplane again.  When you go for long periods of time without doing something, ya get rusty.  Hand flying all the way up, all the way down, and on the low level transfer, helped me get back in the game on it.

That night Steve and I went out to eat.  I did find this ironic: I fly to Florida and have french toast and bacon.  I get home and have a shrimp cocktail and breaded shrimp for dinner.  That's just not right.

The early morning and being up about 20 hours makes it hard on me the next day though.  It's Friday and I'm not getting out and about...

Here are some photos from the trip to FL

And as I post these, I am watching snow fall.  We had pretty Fall leaves for a day or two before the winds took them away.  Now we have spitting snowflakes out of a dead, flat, grey sky.  So here is a photo of a pretty sky to remind me that it exists.  :)

Sunrise at FL280

Cheyenne on the ramp in Tampa Exec.

Palm Trees for the win.