Weather Monster

I was up at 5 am for a trip to Alabama today.  I got up, and the weather was not good.  Strong headwinds, pushing us to the edge of our fuel limits.  A line of thunderstorms down there that would be hitting right when we got there.  A line of precip along the entire route of flight that caused icing issues the whole route.  And coming home, dropping temps, mixed precip, and complete uncertainty.  I could have gotten down there.  If we'd have delayed by 30 minutes, we'd have just dealt with moderate rain instead of storms.  We could have shot approaches in both directions; it was at to slightly above minimums most of the day.  I could have flown down at 7000' or below, and stayed out of most of the ice on the way down.  But Dustin said this wasn't that important of a meeting, he had a guy down there, and he could video conference in.  So we decided to call it off.   All day, looking around at the weather, I was glad.  By this afternoon, it started sleeting, and by this evening the roads were a sheet of ice.  A jet ran off the end of a runway, across a road and into a field in Portland, IN, sliding on the icy runway.  Another jet based out of Indy messaged that he was stuck down in FL because of the weather this evening.  It was a good day to not be flying, and so we didn't.

Tomorrow I was supposed to fly with someone else down to Kentucky then Alabama.  That was just called off tonight, too.  So I went from making a decent amount of money this week, to making no money this week.  And such is life in aviation.  ;)

At lunch, Steve asked me if I'd run the dishwasher or washing machine while he was in the shower right before I left.  I said no, why?  He said in the middle of his shower, he suddenly lost a bunch of water pressure, it went down to like half, then after a minute or two it came back up and he was done.  We get back from lunch, and Ann texts that she has no water.  I check ours, and ditto.  I look up our bill just to be sure a mistake wasn't made, and nope, it's not me.  So next I call the water company, and they inform me that a water main has broken, and we should get water back sometime around 5 pm.  Yikes.  We actually got it back around 3:30, so they hedged their bets, which is fine by me.  I was just glad to have water back.  Things made weird noises the first time you used them, especially the toilet and washing machine, but they worked.  Yay!

I had a little conversation today. I think I told you that to fly the WASP T-6, I had to do their 6 hours of groundschool.  I was told it would be the end of Feb. in Dallas.  I asked very specific questions and needed more info, none of which I got.  I poked them again, asked for an update.  Today, Richard-head got back to me that I'd have to join another Wing (the B-29 wing, for another $75/year), and go to their groundschool for T-6, in April, and if I wanted to go to a different Wing's T-6 groundschool instead, it would have to be for a G model, and he would have to review and approve of their groundschool ahead of time to make sure it was good enough.  There is so much wrong with this.  He is such a richard-head.  I could teach these ground schools, and I have way more T-6 time than he does.  Luckily I had cc'd another lady on this, who emailed me off-conversation and said that he was playing hardball (she doesn't know this, but it's because he doesn't like me), and that she was going to email someone else and get a better picture.  She came back that he was wrong, it could be any T-6 ground, and she told me that he was a bit of a mess and that he was off the Air Power Tour, which made me feel better, that at least maybe some other people have seen through his baloney.  She then invited me to join them in the Minnesota Wing's T-6 ground, if they're doing T-6 there as well (she was going to double check), in March.  So some good things came from it.  Mostly that I don't have to listen to Richard-head 'teach' a ground school on T-6, when he knows less about them than I do, and is puffing out and trying to assert authority to make my life more difficult just because I see through him and he knows it.  I hope the Minnesota thing does work out.  At least I'll be with someone I know and like.  That would be a nice change for CAF stuff.  ;)

I got a doctor's appointment made for myself today, I just wanted to do labs, but they insist on seeing you first, so fine.  They can see me, and then do labs.  Check that box off.   I got my four boxes of books off to Goodwill today, and caught up on a lot of correspondence that I was behind on.  I'm feeling pretty darned productive these days!  It's one nice thing about having a slow flying time frame--you get other stuff done.  Steve has been doing the same thing at the hangars.  Organizing, cleaning, getting stuff done.  Still would have been nice to have two trips this week, but hey...

Kaylee is doing laundry and packing for Disney. She leaves in two days!