Lon and Cathy have headed out. We all went to dinner last night at Pastarrific and that was good. I have some lemon berry marscapone cake in my fridge waiting for me.
Saturday morning was windy, and it was forecast to be windier. Like I said, I hadn't flown it in two months, I was going to be loading it up fully, the winds were higher than anything I'd flown it in by a large margin, and I was just not feeling it. I took it up with Andrew and did two takeoffs and landings at Kokomo where the winds were pretty close to right down the runway, gusting to 20 kts, up to about 20 degrees off. It felt weird, even though my landings were fine, I didn't feel fully...in charge. I felt like I was fortunate it was going well. We sat it out on the ramp and I paced around and stressed out hard. Finally Steve said "Just cancel it", and I just felt so relieved. I couldn't tell if I was stressed out because of the facts of the flight, or because of the last week, I was having a hard time deciding if I needed to just shut up and man up and go, or if I needed to stand down. Then I decided...if I'm that whacked out about it, whether it's for winds and currency or other reasons, whatever the reason, I didn't need to go. So we canceled, and I felt a weight lift off me even though I now had to tell the people down there we weren't coming. Which ended up being fine because they had a huge get-together and a highly successful show, thank heavens. They didn't need me anyway. :)
This morning the forecast for Indy was winds at a 60-70 degree crosswind gusting to 18 or so. I didn't want to do that, either, but this time had no problem with not wanting to do it. So we took the Aerostar down instead. First we had to wait for the clouds to lift. When they finally did, we launched, and Andrew flew us down there. We waited on the ramp in our lawn chairs for an hour, but the B-25 and the TBM never showed. Come to find out they claimed being weathered out, and headed for home. So I sent Jordan a photo of us all sitting on the ramp with mostly blue sky behind us and our hands up like "what the heck, man?!" :D It was past lunch time, so we got back in Gumby and flew to Muncie, and had lunch. Me, AE, Steve, Andrew. Flew back to Kokomo from there, put stuff away, and came on home.
I got home and took out my contacts and went to get comfy, when I contacted our newest CFI Zach and checked in on him. He said if I was around he wouldn't mind going up with me on a relaxing flight to try to get back into the swing of aviation things after everything this week. So I put my contacts back in and I'll head back out there after a bit. I don't want to leave him on his own after something like what we went through, especially since he watched it happen too, a little more up close, and ran up to try to help, and saw some bad things too. I'm not sure what we want to fly yet, but we'll find something good and relaxing to do that he'll enjoy. THEN I'll come home and eat my cake and relax. I'm guessing our Monday will get weathered out anyway, and I have some things to catch up on.
I slept until 6:30 this morning, the latest and longest I've slept in...weeks. It felt so good I woke up feeling almost like myself again. When we climbed into the Aerostar this morning, it was 11 am on Sunday...exactly one week to the day and time that I looked up and saw the Toga go down. Instead I didn't mention it and we all climbed into the Aerostar and went out and had a good morning together. And life goes on, ready or not.
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