Briefly

I've been in a bad mood all day.  I'm hot, tired, grumpy, sweaty, sticky.  I flew with the Squirrels this morning, in 32L.  We're on the runway doing a stop and go when one of my other instructors gets on the radio and makes a snotty call about how he's on short final, with this tone of voice that just sets me off so much I get on the radio and fire right back at him in the exact same tone of voice and inflection he had used.   Then the airplane didn't want to start for me.  Battery felt down. Jumped it and it fired right up. Discharging on amps. Took it over to the maintenance hangar, they fired it up, it started fine, it was charging fine.  No idea what the problem was. I don't believe it's magically fixed, which means it'll act up again some day.  

I've been using Steve's back up headset because mine had a cord issue.  Today his ear piece broke.  So I broke an airplane, then didn't, broke a headset, was hot and sweaty and irritated with just about everybody I came in contact with, which isn't great as an instructor.  Then I had a Champ guy, and he drove over 2 hours round trip to get here, and storms blew up while we were in the pattern, so we cut it short, because the winds got very aggressive, gusty, direct crosswind, and it was at the edge of what *I'M* comfortable with, and it's his 2nd Champ lesson.  He did great, but still, I didn't want to get caught up there with it getting any worse.  So we ended early, after .8, and the weather never really reached us and the winds never got worse.  *sigh*  Wasted trip and time, other than he got two pretty aggressive crosswind landings in on concrete before I called it, apparently prematurely.  

The day felt like a "pushing a boulder uphill" kind of day.  One thing after the other after the other, nothing terrible, all just very irritating.  After the last trip next door, I hope to relax the rest of tonight, and be in a better mood for tomorrow. I'm supposed to do PT-26 training tomorrow if the weather holds out, and then a night flight at 10 pm.  That's late.  I'm already grumpy thinking about it, actually.  lol

I haven't heard from Kaylee today. That's probably good news, it probably means she's feeling better and getting busier.  Ann seems to be okay, still not eating quite enough, but we're working on it.  I've got an aerobatic T-6 flight set up for Thursday, again if the weather holds out.  And...now you're caught up on my irritable day.

Champ

Okay, better news today.

Kaylee texts me first thing this morning that she has lost her sense of taste.  I'm like WHAT?!?  The kid not only already had Covid, she'd been fully vaccinated.  How is this even a thing.  I'm like...No.  Then I thought, Crap, she was all over us. So I avoided other people.  She went into town to the doc office, they made her go alone in case she was contagious, and they did a Covid test, a rapid version, which came back negative.  WHEW.  Thank goodness. I now did not avoid other people.  The doctor diagnosed her with a sinus infection, and got her some antibiotics, and she says as of tonight she's already feeling a hint better.  Thank goodness. 

Her first week was so rough because for 6 of the 7 days she felt overwhelmed with 11 7-8 year olds including two who were permanently attached to her hip and had a lot of emotional issues.  She didn't know until mid day 6 why that was.  She wasn't getting enough sleep, wasn't getting enough food, the activities were disorganized, two kids would have freak out meltdowns multiple times a day, and she was getting sick by the end of the week too.  A hard way to go.  But in the end, the camp director had a lot of positive things to say about her, how she interacted with the kids, how she handled the challenges, apparently better than she felt at the time. She also did a great job not just being frustrated with the kids but keeping that in check enough and doing a good enough job that they trusted her, and her seeing signs that led her to asking them questions privately at the end of the week, that hopefully ends up being a positive in their lives.  They were both afraid of the dark, too, and they would be locked into their room with the light taken out of the lamp sometimes.  Kaylee got them a battery powered night light they could hide and take home with them, along with some extra batteries. Trying to help where you can how you can with what you've got at the time...

My whole day was spent sweating in the Champ. It started at 10 am with an airline pilot getting his tailwheel endorsement. We had a good flight, and he said "I really enjoy flying with you--you're not condescending at all."  I'm like...gosh...thanks, but you're the airline pilot, those are usually more condescending than us little piston pounders.  ;)  I didn't say that, I just thought it.  lol  He did well, we were together for about 3-4 hours, and he's coming back tomorrow for some more.  Next up I ran up BOB several times while we tried to fix some leaks.  Sweated in there for an hour.  Flew with a student from 4-6 pm, did x-wind takeoffs and landings, some grass, some concrete.  She's close, just needs confidence.  Then my last guy was 6-9.  New guy, needing his sport pilot. Engineer, talked and asked lots of questions, is building his own tailwheel aircraft.  Diabetic so not going for Private.   We flew and did a Discovery Flight, as the sun was getting low, and he said out of the blue "Okay, you got me. I'm hooked".  I laughed and told him this is why we called it the Aviation Addiction, or Aviation Disorder.  And welcome to it.  ;)  He did a good job with it too, especially for a brand new non-pilot. He said he'll be back. I believe it. He got the bug.

It was now 9 pm, and I needed to get home to give Ann her night meds while Steve finished talking to him.  She didn't realize it was night or bedtime, thought I was messing with her about what time it was.  But she was in good spirits.  Didn't eat enough today, but hopefully we can get her to eat more tomorrow...

Okay, I'm tired.  Going to finish this up and head in.

Mr. Bones chillin'.

Hangar door going down on the Champ.

P.S.

Poor Kaylee.  She tried to call me but it won't go through. She got even sicker, so they put her in an isolation cabin, by herself. It has no wifi or internet connectivity at all. No TV, no radio, no nothing.  So she can't do anything but lie there and feel like crap and think.  She has a fever, chills, muscle aches, sinus congestion, migraine, no appetite, fatigue. She can text if she moves to one corner of the cabin and lifts her arms over her head, and that's about it.  I asked her why they didn't take her to the doctor. If I have to go back over there and do it myself I'm going to kick someone's ass.  And yes, I said ass.  She's sick, alone, only cold meds, and nothing to distract herself with.  She said she'd make them take her in tomorrow. She's had such a horrible week before this, and now this. She didn't need this.  I'm kind of mad.  I mean, c'mon, give the kid a break, would ya?

And I sure hope we don't catch it. Ann doesn't need this, and frankly, neither do I, neither does Steve.  We have way too much going on to be sick. 

I have a T-6 rider later this week who isn't a pilot, but he wants to go for an "adrenaline ride".  He says he'd like to challenge me to knock the Go Pro off his head.  I'm more about gentleman's aerobatics than slam 'em aerobatics, and the T-6, well, I prefer to treat it like a T-6 and not a Pitts.  But if he wants it rough, I can make it jerky and hard and slam it around too.  I'll make sure he has a barf bag back there, too...

Poor Kaylee...

Ohio

Friday morning we started getting ready to leave for Ohio.  Steve had some stuff to do, and Cathy was on her way up in the car so she could be here while we were gone overnight.  The weather was not great, and the Aerostar is not great for weather trips. I've never, in all the years the airplane has been here, years now, ever been able to connect my iPad to it and get the weather on the iPad. The XM weather doesn't work up top any more, so you have a screen of ADS-B weather which only reaches out so far and takes awhile to upload and download some days.  No onboard radar, either.  And you can't go above 12,500' in it, not pressurized. So just not the best weather plane as is.  Every time I say that, Steve or Nathan inform me of how I should be able to hook up my iPad, and I've even gotten it hooked up via wifi to get traffic on there, but no weather has ever, ever gone over to my iPad, and I've given up on mentioning it any more.  I don't even bother having my iPad out.  But that makes days like this weekend difficult when I've got weather to deal with.

Thursday in New York, Kaylee calls me right after I landed out there, so her timing was good, and she was sobbing.  She was almost distraught, saying she was going to get in her car and come home Right Now, that she couldn't do this any more, she was exhausted, and it was terrible.  She had a cabin of mostly 7-8 year olds, 11 of them, and two of them were special needs, developmentally delayed, and had attached themselves to her so hard that she couldn't even get one of them to stop crying and get out of her bed (not with her in it).  She wanted to sleep with Kaylee in bed, which is not cool or appropriate, and Kaylee ended up bribing her with a stuffed animal to get her in her own bed. Kaylee said she had to basically leave most of the other girls to the other counselor, that she was full time with these kids, and she'd get overwhelmed, and leave, and go cry somewhere herself.  She wasn't getting enough sleep, they weren't getting enough food because the kitchen staff person had a seizure and didn't get everything ordered, the activities were disorganized and the kids missed out on fun things because leadership goofed up there (because they are short staffed and had one guy running it all instead of the 4 people they had in the past).  She says "I am DONE."  I told her that she cannot leave those kids with just Thursday and Friday to go before the end of the week. She said they have other counselors who can step in. She was seriously at the end of her rope and it took me 30 minutes of talking on the phone to calm her down enough to breathe, stop crying, and agree to make it to Friday, when we would be there, and see her.  I told her she'd regret that, that it would be a poor decision, not a good thing to do to the camp, to the kids, or for herself. She agreed to wait for Friday, then said she was probably leaving camp for the rest of the summer.  

I'm watching weather Friday, and I see we have a window, but we need to leave NOW.  So I'm shoving Steve out the door, racing to the airport, loading up the plane, preflighting, it's raining, there's another wall coming, we get folks over to help us pull out the Aerostar, I fire up and get my clearance and get an immediate deviation away from the weather, and the first 20 minutes or so are going around cells.  Then Grissom says "Looks like you're all clear!" and we high five.  Until 10 minutes later when we see another wall of weather that didn't show up on the ADS-B that far out.  Worked around that too, and got into Mansfield visually. They have a new FBO there, but they asked us if we were familiar with the old one, and we said yes, and they wanted us to go back there to be put in the hangar for the weekend.  Cool.  We are met by the former owner of the old FBO, who remembers us, and Kaylee, remembers her as a little kid going to camp and us coming in in one of several different airplanes. He parked us, we chatted, he thought it was cool she was a counselor now, he put us in the hangar and got us our rental car, and we left for our cabin.

We got to the cabin and got settled in.  It was a little different than it looked online, as they often are, older, damp-ish, kind of felt like camping or Oshkosh a little bit even, lots of daddy longleg spiders in the corners.  Jacuzzi tub in the bathroom, no deck like Steve thought there was. The rooms next to us on each side had a deck but ours didn't, and he thinks maybe it's because we had the extra room instead. Sort of room, it was separated by a portable divider, these two beds.  It wasn't bad, it wasn't awesome, it got the job done.  :)

Kaylee joined us at the cabin, and filled us in on the rest of the story.  She'd noticed that the girls would melt down and shut down every time someone yelled or things got loud. So she asked them about it alone from everyone else, and they are sisters.  They started opening up to her, told her that it was loud at their house, their step dad yells and screams and throws things, their 11-year-old brother comes after them with a hammer and locks them in their room when their parents are both gone, a neighbor held one of them underwater until she passed out, a variety of things with the basic "step dad isn't a good guy".  Kaylee wrote it all up and gave it to camp leadership, who took it seriously, and interviewed the girls, who clammed up on a lot of it around other adults, but did admit to some of it.  Meanwhile in another cabin, another little girl was telling her counselor about sexual abuse at the hands of a neighbor.  Come to find out, the little girl lived in the same building as these sisters, they were friends, and she was talking about their step-dad.  So the camp called in Child Protective Services, who filled out reports, Kaylee had to talk to them a couple times about what the girls said, so did the other counselor.  When the parents came to pick up the kids at the end of the week, Kaylee had to let the girls go home with them, and she has felt sick ever since. She hunted down the guy and looked him up, and knows his name and address, and has considered going to jail over it.  But she feels like she wasn't a good counselor, that she didn't do a good job all week, that she shouldn't be there. I tried to tell her that those girls came to trust her, and talk to her, and there was no previous report, so they hadn't told anyone else.  She did the best she could with what she could do, and it was a tough week, and the first one with campers.  On top of it all, most of the counselors including Kaylee got sick.  Looks like a cold or cold virus of some sort.  Runny nose, cough, bleh, congestion.  (It's not covid.)  I hated that she wanted to hug all over me and I was like...I am too busy to get sick, I cannot get sick right now.  I probably will anyway because we were in the same space touching the same things and we did hug.  But...I can hope.  

So Kaylee apparently decided to try to stick it out, but she's sick as a dog. She didn't get out of bed much, she feels terrible, couldn't sleep without drugging up, can't breathe, just...yuck.  And now they're getting a new batch of kids.  She is in the 10-12 year old range this time.  She said the camp director is putting her with a cabin of girls he knows that are all friends that are "good kids".  She's like...what if he thinks they are but they aren't? What if they gang up on me because they're all friends?  I told her to try to relax and assume the best and do what you gotta do.  

We went to The Cabin for dinner, and they were out of fillet and crème brulet.  But the salmon I had was really good.  Saturday we went to Malabar Farms for dinner, and they didn't have wine, but they did have the special iced tea, fillet and crème brulet, so it worked out.  ;)  Kaylee slept most of Sunday until we had to go. I stopped in at Walmart and bought her more drugs, and we parted ways there and I haven't heard from her since.  I'm hoping she's okay. She could use the prayers. On a few fronts.

Steve and I tried to get good breakfast at a place we found yesterday, but they were packed out and nowhere to park. So we circled the block a few times, no go, went on to Cracker Barrel. They had people backed up out on the porch. We left and went to Subway at the airport. Not nearly as much fun, but food, and then headed back for Kokomo.  Found a line of weather in the way that showed up on the ADS-B at the last minute.  Went around some and through some rain, and then I shot the ILS 23 into Kokomo.  

Home again, Cathy left, Steve went next door, I unpacked and am doing laundry, catching up here, and ready for a nap.  And hoping Kaylee is okay.

The cabin room. You can see Kaylee's bed there, the kitchen table, and behind that little partition, the second bed.

Wet Stain just seems wrong. Only to me, apparently.

She's alive back there.

Some of the scenery where we drove around

The hike we decided not to do.

Flying home...

New Yawk

Thursday's trip was super smooth and easy.  We left on time at 9 am, there wasn't a cloud in the sky, Kevin slept in the back all the way there, which was like an hour and 45 minutes, approach was busy but not insane, just two full clearance re-routes, ;), and we got in and out, no problem.  If you're going to have a trip, that's the nicest kind to have. Interesting, good views of New York City, music to listen to, no weather to plan around, good company, and just...a nice day.  We dropped off Kevin, got gas, I talked on the phone to Kaylee who needed talked down as she was quite upset (more on that later), and then we turned around and came right home, and we were back in time for a late lunch.  New York and back by lunch.  Not. Shabby, folks.  

The rest of the day other than stops next door, I think I mostly packed and prepared for the weekend.  I can't remember what else I did that day.  Too much time has passed and I have slept since then.  ;)

Kevin passed out. A photo I wouldn't post on Facebook.  lol

Ever-Changing

This is how it works in flying.  :)  Originally I was supposed to do T-6 training today and tomorrow with a gent from Wisconsin.  Kevin said he needed to go to New York tomorrow, so I shortened it to today only for training, and New York tomorrow.  Then today the winds were gusting up into the 20's, and for much of the day a direct crosswind because one of our runways is closed for resurfacing.  So the T-6 training was canceled for today, and instead I scheduled two students to fly with.  Got the first one in, the second one was winded out.  

Tomorrow we were originally going to leave at noon, just me dropping off Kevin.  So I scheduled a student from 8-10 who I had canceled for Friday because we were going out of town.  The airport wanted to do a jet fuel training thing and the Cheyenne is the only airplane on field that takes Jet A, so I arranged to have the airport folks come out in the morning to do that, around 10 am.  I had an empty seat so I invited someone who had never done anything like that to go right seat, and he was excited.  All set.  Then at lunch I learned that we were leaving at 9 am, not noon, and Nathan was able to go.  So I canceled the flight lesson I'd just scheduled, canceled the fuel training thing and had them do it today instead, and canceled the right-seater.  Now we'll see what changes tomorrow.  ;)

At least the weather looks nice for tomorrow!

Ann is rapidly declining mentally.  When I saw her eating Cheerios out of a container, I reminded her that she could put them in a bowl and add milk, and she seemed amazed, and then said "I think I used to do that."  She did it every day for years as recently as two weeks ago.  Hitting a button doesn't connect with what it does.  Looking at a bowl of pills and having to be told to take them repeatedly after just staring at them. She's bright-eyed and in good spirits, and extremely child-like. You talk to her and see that it's not connecting a lot, reality and fantasy.  It's...scary and sad and hard.  Physically she's okay, but she won't sleep in her own bed or do most of her own past normal routine.  Steve mentioned today something I'd never thought of. I wonder if she's brushing her teeth. Stuff like that.  I don't know...

Kaylee says she's having a hard time this week with kids there for the first time this season. I don't know anything about it, what age group she's got, what's going on, she doesn't usually answer texts because they don't really have a lot of down time and aren't really supposed to have cell phones around most of the time either.  Plus spotty connections.  But we're going to see her Friday, hopefully, we're going to go over and visit and hope she's doing okay okay, even if not great.

I feel a little stressed, but am trying not to feel that way on things I can't control.  Easier said than done sometimes.  I'm going to go pay some bills and check the weather for tomorrow's trip and try to relax.  :p

What?

I was trying to remember what I did yesterday, and I came up a complete blank. I said to Steve "Hey, what did we do yesterday?"  He didn't remember. Finally we pieced a few things together. Lunch with Nathan and Chuck and AE, taking the Jeep out to Mark's, going to bed at 10:55 pm because we were exhausted.  I wrote up a few important emails that took a lot of thought and time. Drawing boundaries.  Drawing boundaries is important, for everyone.  Getting ready for my flight today, staring at not so great weather.  

Because we went to bed so early, I woke up at 4:30, I sort of dozed for another hour, half asleep, half awake, and then I was just up at 5:30.  Boo.  The weather was troublesome. It was thick, red, and wide, and it covered the southern part of Georgia and the northern part of Florida, and it was aiming for our destination, too.  It stretched across the entire country, to Texas, and actually shut down Houston's airport for awhile.  Usually I have a plan before I leave. This time my plan was to go up fairly high, and see what I got when I got there and what my options were.  I'm cruising along, on high alert, at FL340, and there aren't a lot of actual buildups.  It's a lot of "moderate, heavy and severe precip", and some moderate turbulence just below me, but...no real convection that I could see.  So I just kept going. It was smooth.  I deviated around one area that I just got a gut feeling about, and right after I requested it, the controller said "Another airplane 2000' below you on your previous path had to deviate due to moderate turbulence with inability to hold altitude".  Well, glad I went around that.  Landed in Florida no problem, shot the ILS 15 in, but saw the runway pretty far out.  Picked up Kevin and family, got gas, stared at the weather, and now the convective area looked like it had moved right into our path.  So I deviated pretty far this time, went out to the ocean a ways until I could get around the worst of it, and turn back on course.  A few moments of bumps then, and when we were coming back in to land at Kokomo, and other than that, uneventful.  Just how I like it.  You just never know. If that had all been convective, it would have been a problem, as there wasn't a super clear area clear across the US down there.  So I'm glad it worked out the way it did, for all of us, and made my life easier.

We have all our broken down vehicle fixed and home again.  They better stay fixed and home now, too.

Haven't heard from Kaylee in a couple days. I asked if she was alive, but no response to that yet either.  I'll assume so.  ;)

Cathy is coming up this weekend to spend time with Ann, so Steve and I can go to Ohio and visit Kaylee for one day.  Ann didn't take her night pill last night, so she didn't have a good night's sleep.  We've been having her do more independent things again, setting out what she needs, and she's been doing it.  But she put the pill next to her, and then just didn't take it. No harm in the long run, but I'll make sure she takes that one tonight. A lot of her meds are vitamins. She has a vitamin for her eyes, Vitamin D, Iron, and Vitamin C to help the iron absorb better. She has very few critical meds, and we make sure she gets them... 

It was a beautiful weather day here. Tomorrow I was supposed to T-6 fly with someone for training, but we're looking at 20 knot wind gusts with a 50 degree crosswind because Runway14/32 is closed.  I was sketchy on that for him, and fortunately he was too, so we are rescheduled for next month.  I feel better about that.  So instead I have a couple of my students who haven't been able to get in lately.

Devon's been gone 23 years. Weird.

And on to tomorrow.

Some of today's weather encompassing several states here, and the green line is where I went.

End of Weekend

We normally would have had today off, but we weren't done yet. Steve had to go help AE unpack a trailer/truck, and I had two airplanes to fetch. So I called up Spencer, and he flew me down in the RG. I started with BOB, and got it back first.  It was mega hot and muggy today, and I was once again covered in sweat after being outside for an hour.  Flew back down in the RG with Spencer, took the T-6 home.  I flew BOB over Nathan's house, and Glenndale.  I flew the T-6 over his house but not Glenndale.  Back at Kokomo, everything put away, we came home, and that took most of the day.  Steve mowed the lawn, I went next door a couple times and shopped for supplies.  And of course the required load of laundry after two days of being outdoors.

Kaylee texted that her first group of campers was coming, and she sounded excited.  Then late tonight she said "This is really stressful, please pray for me."  No other details, so the prayers she has, and I hope things settle in for her, whatever is causing the stress.

And now I'm caught up.  I put the previous days' entries below this, so you can catch up as you have time.  ;)

Hot and sweaty in BOB

Flying home...

I got a blue carpet for the T6. I suggested they move it before I fired up and taxied out or that mat would be splattered on the hangar behind me.  

Wild hair under the helmet in the T-6 on the way home.  lol

Wings Over Indy

This day just started off in a pretty bad way.  We woke up very early, at 5:30 am, to thunder and storms, so we could leave at 7 am to head down to the briefing at Indy. We postponed all the volunteers and told them to wait two hours to come out, considering it was dumping rain and there would be no show at the moment.  The forecast was marginal to bad for winds and weather.  We'd set up Ann with breakfast and medicine for the morning and a note to remind her what to do, and a hope that she would.  It was dumping rain.  We got over halfway down to Indy, and I'm driving the red Jeep.  Suddenly I'm pushing on the accelerator, and not accelerating.  I messed around with it some, but then it became obvious that the vehicle was in trouble. I couldn't get up a hill.  We turned around. Our only other working vehicle was at Kokomo Airport, since the Buick was back at Mark's.  We are driving home slowly, barely accelerating, and suddenly the left windshield wiper flips off in the rain.  I burst out laughing, like a crazy person, laughing so hard I snorted, because it was like the last straw.  We were an hour late to the briefing, none of the small tailwheels that were supposed to come, came.  Most of the warbirds who were supposed to come canceled.  Jordan was going to come in the C-45, and he called to tell me that there was ugly weather down there. I told him to do what he needed to do, no pressure from me.  The Stearman formation group canceled. We had pre-sold over 40 seats, and now we were looking at losing all that revenue, at calling 40 people and canceling them and refunding them. This day was looking...lost.

And then the weather broke. The skies cleared.  Jordan and his son took a risk, and came anyway, and it paid off.  The winds were higher than we'd like but not a show stopper for anyone but the light tailwheel guys. Well, not all of them, just the ones we'd hoped would set up shop on the ramp.  The real pilots made it in.  ;)  

JP and I went up in the Twin Beech to do his currency flight. He did the flying, I was right seat, it was his first time flying it in 7 months, and his first landing had us both on edge.  Next two were much better.  Next up we ran to the briefing, where we were late, which isn't great for airshows.  As we went in, Jordan arrived in the C-45, and Ray in the Swift, and we were really happy to see them.  After the briefing, I did the first riders, in BOB.  It was the first official paid rides in our Twin Beech, and my front-seater was a Korean Veteran.  It was a really good flight.  When I landed, it was a greaser, and he commented that it was one of the smoothest landings he'd ever ridden through.  Of course he was stationed on a ship and all their landings were arrivals, too.  ;)  I thought it was cool that I got to do the first paying rides in BOB, and that it was one year to the day to the first official flight I'd had in it after restoration.  Kind of neat!  We were behind on rides because we'd had to postpone for several hours due to weather. People had been pre-sold rides at specific times, and now we were having to text them and hunt them down to come back and go after all.  A good problem to have.

After that, we did an "Honor Flight". This was me in the T-6, JP in his T-6, Jordan in BOB, and Ray in their C-45. Tom M was also out in the P-51.  So we took off together, flew over the field in a 4-ship diamond, came around for a couple passes, then did a Missing Man formation, with JP who has smoke on his T-6, doing the "pull".  It was in honor of the two CAF guys we've lost in this last year.  Jerry Long to an airplane accident in front of my eyes, and Jim Schwartz, who committed suicide via gunshot, two weeks before the event.  I think the fly-over went pretty well. I haven't seen a ton of photos of it, but I hope it went well.  

When the fly-over was done, the rides began, and we were non-stop catching up.  JP and I started running T-6 rides while Jordan took over rides in the Twin Beech for us, so we could catch up.  JP's wife told me he didn't want to do T-6 rides, he wanted to do C-45 rides, that's why he was there. I told her that Jordan couldn't do T-6 rides and he could do C-45 rides, so we needed Jordan to do them, and us to do these.  JP  was there because he needed the airshow for his card, in waivered airspace. Maybe I wouldn't have minded doing BOB rides either, myself, for its first event, but at least I got to do the first ever ride.  So I texted the rides guy and told him that JP wanted to do some, and he did the rest of them, while I did non-stop T-6 rides. And I do mean non-stop.  Fred threw me a sandwich after a couple hours, the first thing I'd eaten all day.  Chuck told AE to keep an eye out for me because I didn't take care of myself and water. He was right. AE brought me water and kept me in water the rest of the day.  The winds started picking up and shifting to a more direct crosswind again.  I got several compliments on my landings, which was nice.  I had a paratrooper for a passenger.  He kept calling me "Sweetie".  He said when he saw my hair flying around in the T-6, he HAD to go fly with me.  I asked if he wanted me to yank it around a little or just go smooth like we were. He said "go for it."  I always test with a 75-80 degree bank turn first.  He bursts out laughing and says "YES, Honey. Let's DO this."  When he climbed out of the plane, he turned to Spencer and said "She's the best, man. She's a total pro."  Then he looked over at me and said "You take care of yourself sweetie.  I'll see you again."  He was a hoot. The rest of my riders were more normal, many were dads whose sons bought them a ride for Father's Day.  One said he wanted to try "one small move".  I got a vibe, so I only did a 45 degree bank turn.  That was it, that's all he needed, he was done.  So gentle and easy, wandering over the fields, smooth turns to look at stuff, and conversation, and he was quite happy.  

At the end of the day, I was getting pretty worn down.  I was hot, had been drinking water but was still dehydrated, because I hadn't been to the bathroom one time, all day, since I woke up early.  Not once.  I was really tired, and getting mentally tired too.  I'm not sure how many flights I did that day yet. Not a record, but a lot, and the formation flights are high stress and high workload too.  At the end of the day, when I finally climbed out and took off the flight suit and walked over to the beer garden, my muscles were weak and I was walking funny.  lol  I walked in, and one of the performers said "Man, girl, you flew your ass off today. Don't you ever get tired?"  Yes, yes I do.  lol  I had about five different people say the same thing to me. They'd been watching all day.  Good thing I didn't have any visibly bad landings.  ;)  

We did rides until like 6:30 pm, maybe 7, ate dinner there at the event, hung out for a few minutes, then left the planes there and drove home to get Ann taken care of.  We were wiped out, happy, drained, sunburnt, wind burnt, and...pleased.  The event came off.  We got all the rides caught up, and a few on top of the pre-registered ones too.  Jordan and Ray helped save the day. The little tailwheel guys stood us up, but they're mostly fair weather flyers, so I can't blame them too much.  The Aerobatic guys did a great job. Oh, and this airshow was different.  We had general aviation stuff going in and out even while the acts were live and in the box. The waivered airspace went off and on throughout the day, Air Boss came off and on throughout the day.  The candy drop from the helicopter went off well, and there was a herd of kids running out on the field.  A herd.  All in all, like I said, it was a really good event, a good day, and raised money for both Down Syndrome and the CAF.  Win/Win.

Breakfast crowd

Far away shot of the four of us lined up 

Lining up on the runway

Kids stuff

Four of us overhead

Fryman, Bruce, me & Steve

On the ramp

Our line guys "helping".  :D

In the briefing

Too far away to see all the people.  lol

Packed away for the night.

Lined up on the runway

Crowd shot

Coming over to land

Peoria Yee Haw

Friday morning I was awake at 4:45 a.m. for what I thought was a 6:30 am wheels up departure for Peoria. There was some weather out there, but it wasn't terrible.  I get out to Kokomo at 6:15 am, get everything ready, and now the weather is not looking so great, so I'm glad we'll be leaving at 6:30.  D doesn't actually come until 7 am, and by now there is a big, mean, ugly, nasty storm cell five miles away from us and headed right for us.  A bunch of other cells had popped up, the line was fierce. We still had a path, but it wasn't clear, and we needed to GO.  We called for our clearance, and Grissom was like "There's a line of weather at blah blah blah" and we're like "Yeah, we know."  Then he asked if we had the NOTAMS.  What?! They ask you that when you land, not before you take off.  YES we had the notams.  Then he asked if we could still get out ahead of the weather.  I was like "IF YOU'D STOP TALKING AND GIVE ME MY CLEARANCE SO I CAN GET OUT OF HERE, YES."  Finally he let us go, and we took off and headed away from the weather poste haste.  The trip out, we encountered moderate icing, Turbulence.  Rain.  The storms were super bad to the north of us. There wasn't a plane in the sky north of us. We arrived at Peoria and were glad to be there.  A T-6 came in and parked next to us.  I heard a guy say "That's the Pilot Maker. If you can land that, you can land anything."  Well, hey, thankyouverymuch.  ;)  Not really true, but hey.  lol  I wanted to take it for a spin while I was there, but they never got far enough away from it for me to steal it.  When it was time to come home, guess what popped up?  Another line of storms.  We took off right n front of one wad, went around another, and then were finally clear for the rest of the way home, minus gusty winds.  It was a long, tiring, hard-working kind of flight, where I actually earned my money, starting early and going hard.  

As soon as I got back to Kokomo, it was time to move the planes to Exec. The only problem was, it was windier than heck.  The winds at Exec were basically a direct crosswind, gusting up to 25 knots, Indy was gusting up to 28 knots.  I was *not* ready to take the Beech in with that kind of crosswind. I don't even like taking the T-6 in with a 90 degree crosswind on concrete with the winds that high up.  It's no joke.  I generally choose not to.  Now here I am, everybody's down there waiting for the planes to get there.  JP takes off from Terre  Haute in his T-6 to get into Exec.  *sigh*  I load up in the T-6, and off I go.  As I get closer, the winds have shifted a bit.  It's about a 70 degree crosswind, still stiff but not full on, and it's gusting anywhere from 21 to 23 knots depending on when you listen to AWOS.  Well, that's something more manageable.  I'm still a little nervous, because something has changed on my seat and I'm down lower than I used to be. Not a problem if that's what you're used to, but my sight picture has changed and it's messing up my landings.  And two, all the performers, friends, some photographers, volunteers, a ton of people are out there watching closely.  No freaking pressure there.  I brought it in, landed, was nervous, but it went just fine, I made a good landing, and was down safe.  People complimented me on the landing, and I wanted to laugh. I was just glad to be there with the airplane.

Next up was the Beech.  There was no good reason I shouldn't be able to handle it. But not having dealt with it in strong gusty crosswinds, and having poor brakes, and all the above factors, I was a lot more nervous than the T-6.  When I came in to land, I used the throttles for differential power to help out, made sure the tailwheel was locked, shot up a prayer, and went for it.  I touched down smooth, fed the aileron in, power out, flew it like that for awhile until the tail started coming down, got it down and stopped and felt my heart just thudding in my chest in relief.  It's not often you'll find me that tense or nervous.  I just know that the airplane has a reputation of biting people, and I'm low time in it, and I already know stuff can go wrong, and I really don't want to have to learn any more lessons like that.  I don't think it'll kill me, don't get me wrong, I just don't want to bend it and have to deal with that.  But the reality was that the Twin Beech felt more stable and easier to land in that crosswind than the T-6 did.  I think once I get some time in it I'll enjoy it a lot more.  The Six is just unstable-ish, fast, and...tippy.  The Beech is heavier, more stable, and the differential power is nice.  

We spent Friday evening down there at Exec. We watched the airshow performers go up and practice their acts as the winds calmed down, set up, got everything ready.  When everyone was done, we were going to go out to eat dinner together with the performers. It was like 8:30, it was late, and we still couldn't get in anywhere. Every place had like an hour wait. I'm calling around, trying to get reservations for 12 people.  Yeah.  I made reservations at one place and it was 9:45 pm before we could get in, but  made the reservations anyway. Then we tried another place, and found out it was a road kill place.  Tried another place and walked in, and it was a loud bar with small tables that had said they could put tables together for us, until we got there and they said no. By then it was time to just give up and go back to the other restaurant. I had had it.  I'd been up at 4:45 am. I'd had a stressful IFR flight around storms. I'd had two stressful flights in the warbirds. I'd been around people all day, and loud people for the last couple hours.  And we weren't going to be able to get home in time to take care of Ann if one of us didn't leave right away.  So I left Steve there, and I drove home to take care of Ann.  I saw a Culver's, so I turned down a road to get to it, only to find no way to access it from there, just the highway home.  Fine.  I drove home at 9:30 pm without having had food most of the day either.  I stopped at a McDonald's most of the way home, and got a text asking if we were coming home soon.  It was a long day.

The weather.  Not cool.

And this was us running away from the weather when we left Peoria, too.

According to this, we're in the middle of something ugly.

This is what I actually see. There is no big ugly cell anywhere we could see.

On the ramp.

With a T-6

A super nice compliment I got from the family who I took up in the Champ.

Weather off to the right

On the ramp Friday evening

Bob the airshow performer flying over BOB the airplane

Most of our crew watching a remote control tug move BOB into the hangar.

We totally need one of those tugs. That is too cool.