More Gloom

More grey, more gloom.  I guess winter has decided to settle in.  Ugh.  I had three students today, none of which could fly, of course.  Tomorrow's not looking promising either.  Thursday I need to go to Pennsylvania, and that doesn't look so good either. 

We learned tonight that Jim Hartlage died this morning.  He was out west with his new Filipino wife, who doesn't speak English.  She woke up, fixed breakfast, went to find him, and found him slumped over and gone in the bathroom.  Because she doesn't speak English, it took her awhile to figure out what to do, but she used his phone and ended up reaching his brother, who got the ball rolling.  Meanwhile she's waiting out there for the brother to come pick her and the trailer up.  Jim owns Indian Hills Airport, two hangars/home, a couple airplanes.  I'm not sure how this is going to work with a new wife.  Did he have a prenup?  Or a will?  I dunno.  Kind of shocking news.

Steve and I drove down to Noblesville today to pick up a couple of new carry guns, one for each of us.  I'm getting a Sig Sauer P365.  He's getting a Kimber Micro 9.  So we drive down there, get one mile away, I pull up the directions in order to find the exact spot, and it says they are closed on Mondays.  Doh.  So instead we went over to "The Church".  The church is a literal church building in the middle of town, owned by one of our instructors, Nick.  The inside of the building has been cleaned out, and they have airplane projects in there.  They get the bodies of the airplanes inside, and the wings separately, and they are rebuilding a Citabria and formerly had a Kitfox and a Champ in there.  It's heated, well lit, has a great paint booth, and is totally set up.  So on Facebook the guys always say "Headed to church", and that's what they're doing--working on airplanes.  Kind of fun, and a neat set up.  We enjoyed our tour of it and hung out for a bit with Chuck, Nick and Ty.

Why was the Democratic portion of the Senate trial on every channel during the day all day every day they were "up", and today I saw nothing on any channel on the Republican side?  So one side gets to broadcast to the world, force fed, and the other side can only be seen if someone seeks it out deliberately.  Got it.

Two of the flying B-17 rides programs are shutting down, since the B-17 "909" accident last year.  The Collins foundation is grounding itself while the FAA investigates its accident.  But the "Movie the Memphis Belle" B-17 is shutting down its rides program permanently.  Insurance costs, etc.  It's a bad deal.  :(

On to tomorrow.  Getting my house cleaned, my hair done, probably not flying with my student, then possibly going to dinner with Matt Jackson and our friends.  We'll see how it goes.