The day started a little rough. I got the Buick back from the shop after spending almost $800 on it. I got it from the shop, through the car wash, through Panera, and home last night. This morning I got it about 3 blocks away, and the check engine light came on. I'd normally ignore that, but this time it was flashing, which is weird. Then I smelled something funny and it started running poorly. So I immediately pulled over into a parking lot. I used the tow card I had in my wallet, which had every vehicle listed on the app except the Buick. So I entered that data into the app. Later I found out Steve has that car on its own tow plan bundled with a house thing in Ann's name, so that tow cost us $100 anyway. Lovely.
Meanwhile I was late for my student, so I called her and asked her to come get me, because Steve was busy. She drove from the airport and picked me up at my abandoned car, and we went back to the airport, where we did a dual cross country to Goshen. We ran 30 minutes late for the next guy who had the plane plus for my 11 am flight with a brand new person, which stressed me out. The weather was great though, so when we got back, and I realized that my 11 am had no-showed and made a mistake, I pressured the first girl into doing her first solo cross country. She was so terrified that she bawled at the end of the runway trying to work up her courage to just go. When she got back, she said she felt like halfway back home she felt calmer and better, but she was absolutely terrified the whole way there and half the way home. That's a tough hill to climb. It's one thing to be nervous, but to cry in fear and hyperventilate when you have to go by yourself? That makes it hard to cross the finish line. If you don't overcome it, you can only gut it out so far and for so long. I hope she can overcome it. Her skills are fine. It's her confidence that needs the work.
Next up I had a family of three people stop by. The one's dad flew our Champ back in 1947 when it was almost brand new. He was 7 years old the last time he was in that Champ. They hunted it down and came out, and I gave rides to two of the three of them. The lady barely fit in the seatbelt, and the largest man couldn't get in at all. But I got the two of them up, and they loved it. I took a picture of them, signed the one guy's logbook, sat and chatted with them for awhile, and we didn't charge them anything for it. It meant a lot to them.
My student made it back from her cross country, and Morgan and I met her at the plane, helped her put it away, congratulated her, made sure she was still okay, etc. She said "GUESS WHAT? I DIDN'T DIE!" Apparently she worries about that. Then Mo and I went up in the Champ and practiced some tailwheel stuff. Three point landings are great. Crosswind landings pretty good. Wheel landings...the first one was good, then it went downhill from there. One went so sideways that I grabbed it and wrestled it and our door popped open. I burst out laughing at that one. Another, we were bobbing along, boinging, and I said "Time to pin it". The tailwheel that is, stop trying to force the wheel landing and just pin the tailwheel. What she heard me say was "Time to panic". She, however, did not panic. Thankfully. HAhahahaha.
Then I got a text that while we were up flying, Indiana had been hit with a 3.8 earthquake! How weird is that? I don't know any more about it, I just thought that was interesting, and I didn't feel it because I was up in the air. I wonder who did feel it.
I finished up with Morgan, stopped home to do Ann's dinner and meds, then went out to our EAA Meeting tonight. VMC club, IMC club, and regular chapter meeting. Our hotdog man didn't show up, so I put them on, and had no idea what to set them on with this roller machine. They didn't look very appetizing, but they tasted okay. Then we had blackberry cobbler and homemade ice cream, and all was well.
Ann was talking about the people climbing in the trees again tonight, and no matter what you say, you can tell it's not getting through, so I just quit.
Tomorrow I have to get up at 5 am and see if the weather is good enough to go to Peoria for MBros. Then get back in time to test fly BOB and see about moving planes or people to Exec. All this depends on the weather, which does not look great right now. Even Saturday is less promising than it was. I don't need big gnarly crosswinds and ran chances. We've pre-sold about 40 rides and we worked our butts off and we need this event to go. *sigh*
So my car broke down, I pushed a terrorized girl into flying by herself, whose big goal for the day was "don't die", I made a family's day by flying them in their grandpa's/dad's old airplane, with his logbook in hand, and I made one girl think I said "Time to panic". Oh, and I put ice cream on the blackberry cobbler where it got all melty and sent a pic to Ty who hates desserts on top of each other and said he was going to have nightmares. All in all an interesting day... ;) Wish us luck tomorrow and Saturday. We really need it.
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