Today was the shortest day of the year, with the least amount of daylight. The only good news now is that it only starts getting better from here. Each day we gain a few more seconds, moments of sunlight. I'll take each moment.
Everything I tried to do aviation-wise has fallen through in the last few days. Sunday I was supposed to go on a fly-out with a small group of others, for lunch. Weather was IFR in the morning, and iffy after that. It was also a long flight, and I wasn't sure who all was going, and it ended up not happening. I had two students today, and it was windy--really windy--but one of them is just doing a cross country, and we could do that in the wind. She didn't want to though, wanted to wait for tomorrow instead, so she canceled, and so did the one after her. So, no flying today. Then I wanted to take an airplane up to see the "Christmas Star". Last time was 800 years ago, and it was partly cloudy, and I thought if I took a 172 up I could get on top of the clouds and see it. But then the cloud layer was up at 6000' overcast, then 7000' overcast, and by this time I'd have to go IFR and go way up there, not even sure what the tops are, and go somewhere, and now suddenly it's overly involved. So I stayed on the ground and looked up at the overcast sky at the right time, and saw nothin', but at least could see the pictures from everyone else, on Facebook. I was also contacted by a guy who wanted me to take a contract trip from Indy to Michigan, tomorrow morning, spend the night, and come home Wednesday. It's in their C-340. Which I've never seen. They were wanting to pay $200/day less than I charge. I told him what my daily rate is, plus expenses, and then didn't hear back from him. Finally he gets back to me at 4:30 and says he'd bump up the pay by another $100/day (so $100/day less than I normally get), and he'd pay for my hotel. Well I would HOPE you'd not make your pilot pay for their hotel. I notice food for two days wasn't included in there. I've also never met these people, never seen this plane. I asked him what equipment/avionics it had on board, did it have a RAM conversion, how many people were going/baggage/weight, did it have two, one or no wing locker tanks, didn't anyone need to see any paperwork on me, or check me out in the plane first, or anything? Where am I going, at what time, who arranges ground transportation, and oh yeah, this happens first thing in the morning. Talk about rushed. I wasn't super thrilled at the idea of my first trip in the plane being an IFR trip to northern Michigan in December. Hoping the maintenance is solid and everything important works. I'm not worried about the 340 in general, considering how comfortable I am in a 340, but the rest of it is all a crapshoot. So I politely declined the flight, even though I could have used the money. I just started feeling too pushed, rushed, and too many questions. But I'm still 10 hours away from breaking 600 for the year, with only 10 days to go in the year, the holidays, and bad weather coming. I'm gonna be out of luck. Phoo. ;)
Our deck. Again, the tree lights are not blue. It's funny how they look blue. Guys on the deck.
Roadie annoyed at me
From outside
Our planes on top of the TV
Ann's deck lights.
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