Two Pilots & an LSW: 9/11

Wednesday, September 11, 2019

9/11

It's nice how sometimes things work out the way they need to on any given day. Today's plans were rearranged as usual. I met Amy, a Private Pilot working on her tailwheel endorsement, down in Westfield today. We were supposed to fly the Champ at Kokomo, but it went down for maintenance with an engine issue. So I met her at Westfield instead. We get down there, and there was a H-U-G-E spider who had made a web on the prop, and was sitting on the prop like a big blob. Every time you had to do something up there, check the oil, move the cowl plugs, etc., that thing was hunched over and would stare at you. It was big. I mean...Big. We got in the plane and shut the door, and when we started the engine, it was so big, I could see it fly off. I hope it died. Disgusting. We flew for about 1.7. We were going to do another takeoff and landing, when her brake cable/bar/thing broke, and she had no left brake. So we taxied back and put it away.

I got back to Kokomo, grabbed lunch, talked on the phone with the Perspective on an interview to talk about our BBQ Bash coming up, ran errands, then went back out to the airport where I flew 32L down to Westfield, picked up the Champ and flew it back to Kokomo to be repaired, flew the fixed Champ back to Westfield and put it away, then flew 32L back home and put it away. Bringing the Champ up to Kokomo, I didn't have a left brake. You shouldn't need it on landing, but the winds were a crosswind up to 60 degrees, swapping around, gusting to 18 knots because of some weather off the north end of the airport. The AWOS said Runway 23 was closer, but I always look at the wind sock, and it was closer to Runway 32, so that's what I did. The landing went fine, but turning off the runway and getting turned around at the hangar was a little more tricky. :)

It was 9/11. Kaylee asked me if I knew what I was doing that day. Of course I did. We talked about it a little bit. I appreciated spending 9/11 in the air today. They used airplanes against us, shut down our skies, and forever changed travel and much of our other lives. We now have annual inspections from an organization that didn't exist before then. People don't remember what it was like to walk up to the gate to say goodbye or hello to loved ones getting on or off a plane. Or to be able to bring along a bottle of water or a shampoo over 3.5 ounces. We've become slaves to our own government out of a false sense of security, when in fact the TSA has created way more of a cluster, stolen more, harmed more, than they've ever caught. The bad guys won this one, even if they "only" killed 3000 people that day. They effected permanent and negative change on our entire country and the people within it. And we let them. I can imagine what our founding fathers would think of all this.

Anyway. Home late and tired, as usual these days!