Post Two for today. When I got in last night, I stayed up for about an hour, and then I hit the bed and passed out pretty hard. I was really tired. The total for yesterday was 10 hours of flight time. Five legs. Frankfort to Athens, Athens to Punta Gorda, Punta Gorda to Bartow, Bartow to Athens, Athens to Frankfort. That's a lot of ups and downs, takeoffs and landings, instruction, refueling, all of it. A two-hour round trip drive from home to Frankfort to start and end with, and more than two hours combined on the ground at all those stops for fuel and such. So that was about a 15 hour day. Most of it sitting in one spot, which is also tiring. He got his money's worth out of me on this one. ;)
So when I woke up this morning at 7, it wasn't quite enough, at just over 6 hours of sleep, and I was groggy, and dehydrated (you have to stay dehydrated to fly for 10 hours and not have to pee all the time), and I'd only eaten once all day, and my muscles were stiff from so much sitting, and I needed to get the Cheyenne to Pennsylvania. It was supposed to be Monday, but Monday's weather wasn't looking good, and I didn't have a chase plane then either. So my friend John was willing to come get me today, but neither of us was moving very fast this morning.
I texted at 8 am that I was up and having coffee. He texted me at 8:30 that he was up and trying to convince himself to get in the shower. Finally he said he was ready, so I said I guessed I'd motivate and take a shower and get out there too. That's how excited we both were to fly this morning. lol
I got out there right as John was taking off. He's a bit slower in his Bonanza than I am in the Cheyenne, so he got a head start on me. I took awhile finding the logbooks, getting the plane out, getting filed and ready to go. Finally I fired up and headed out, and at 25,000' I was getting 433 kts groundspeed. That was kinda fun, actually. I kept an eye on my iPad and traffic, and soon I saw the Bonanza ahead of me. I took a few pictures of our separation, and then did a timelapse video of me blowing past him. He was doing good at 200 kts, and I was double that, and we were both enjoying the leg.
When I called into Washington County, he came on freq and said "You beat me". I parked, chocked the plane, walked up to the FBO, and waited on him. He got some gas, and their credit card machine wouldn't take our cards. The lady eventually rebooted the system and finally got us on our way.
We figured the trip home would be a bunch slower, but down low we mostly ended up with a crosswind, not a headwind, and we still did 160 kts, which isn't bad at all! Right when we got to Kokomo, it got rough and bumpy, with windshear around 2000'. We timed that just right.
I stopped at Long John Silver's for some chicken and a tea, the first time I'd eaten today too, and came on home to be tired. I did a couple loads of laundry, and chilled out on the couch writing these updates, putting my times into my logbook, surfing Facebook, you know, important stuff. I need the down time though. Time to chill out and relax for a day. Tomorrow is that day. Looking forward to it.
Today's photos are a lot whiter than yesterday's photos. No sand and palm trees here. Snow and mountains.
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