Events

The problem with slow times is that you have nothing of interest to talk about.  The problem with busy times is that you have no time to talk about what all you've been doing, so you miss most of it and it just comes out a laundry list of things done.

This week is the latter, and I'm tired, and feel like going to bed, but if I do that, another day passes, so I'll list the laundry.  ;)

Friday I was up and at the airport as the sun was just rising.  It was a beautiful morning.  My job that early was to fly a C-150 with the Texas Taildragger conversion.  A tailwheel C-150, in other words.  I've never flown one before, but I figured, why not.  I was supposed to be giving a demo ride to a purchasing pilot who wasn't even a tailwheel pilot yet.  Instead, I got a guy who would be flying it home for the new pilot, who wanted to do the flying himself.  He hadn't flown tailwheel in over a decade, and was a jet corporate pilot, and he wanted to do it from the left seat.  This wasn't supposed to be an instructional flight, it was supposed to be a demo flight.  I decided to do it anyway, and let him.  We were pretty much all over the place.  It's actually a sort of squirrely little airplane, and he was definitely rusty.  I had to save a couple things.  We set up to take off for a 3rd landing, when the engine stumbled.  I said "Abort", and he pulled the power, and squirreled us around the runway a bit before coming to a stop.  I glanced at the gauges, and at some point between the last takeoff and this one, the oil pressure had dropped to zero.  So we taxiied back to the hangar (because the temps weren't going up yet and it was running okay) and shut down.  Fast forwarding, the stumble came from water in the fuel, and the oil pressure gauge just had a small blockage in the line.  They sumped the tanks a LOT before we took off, and got a lot of water out, but then had clean fuel samples.  After we landed from our engine stumble, they did more sumping, and got a lot more water out of the tanks.  C-150s are a little notorious for that if they sit outside. Glad it didn't get a slug of water at an inopportune time. 

From there, Nathan and I launched to go to Illinois to pick up Jamie for the holidays.  Uneventful flight, VFR for once.  Windy as usual.  lol.

When we got home, it was the night of our staff Christmas party.  Justin cooked up these beautiful 1 1/4" steaks, done perfectly.  The airplanes were all lit up, the tables were done up nicely, and Kaylee and Meredith joined us, even helped us out a bit.  There were about 40 people who came, and we had a nice evening.

Saturday was the viewing and funeral for Judy Rider.  Her services were standing room only, which is pretty fantastic. She was admired and respected and loved.  Kaylee, Ann and I went to the viewing a few minutes ahead of the service, and Steve went out earlier just for the viewing.  It was good to see so many people there in honor and support of Judy and family.

Saturday evening was our Club Christmas party.  There were close to 100 people there.  We ran out of brisket, but that's okay, because we had 4 tables full of food.  I mean FULL of food.  We had more food than we had places to put it.  What a great "problem" to have.  People like being able to bring dishes, I think, and we had an amazing selection of everything you can imagine.  It was a really neat night, and we all enjoyed ourselves a great deal.

I lost most of Sunday to a headache, but I did also go out to the hangar with Steve to help put away party stuff.  Food, utensils, pans, heaters, drinks, left-overs being packaged up, decorations coming down (minus the lights which we left for the guys), hours and hours worth of putting things back the way they belong.  So me, Steve and AE got all that done Sunday morning to early afternoon, then went to a late lunch, came home, and I crashed.

I can't remember what I did Monday, believe it or not.  It's sort of a blank.  I had a headache two days in a row.  One day I kicked it by the end, the next day I couldn't.  Maybe it was Sunday and Monday. I dunno. 

Tuesday Steve and I went down to Indy and had an appointment down there that lasted until about 2:30 pm.  Then Kaylee starts talking about Tucano's and how she wants to take us.  It's down by the Indy area.  So we drive back down there tonight (Tues) to eat there.  We pull up, and the place is closed up tight and shut down for good.  Kaylee's unhappy with that, but we eat at another nearby restaurant, Houdini's, and I have excellent stuffed chicken, excellent mashed potatoes, and excellent garlic green beans.  I took home a creme brulet for later.  ;)  So all in all, not wasted time, by George!

I have a lot of pictures of the party and such, but now it's almost 1 am so I really am going to go to bed.  I don't have anything in the morning at least, so I'm gonna sleep in, I do believe.

So yeah, we're still alive.  I'll try to get pics up soon.  :)