Memorial Day

A lot of places have flag programs, which I think is pretty cool.  They bring little flags to every doorstep, or mailbox, or sidewalk edge, for example. Not in Kokomo, but friends of mine in other areas have that.  A nice way to remember, I think.  There's a group of people getting mad on social media about people saying "Happy Memorial Day" because it's supposed to be solemn, and another group of people telling that group of people that there's nothing wrong with celebrating the day even if it's solemn.  So people always gotta pick fights about everything, even holidays. Especially holidays, maybe.

Yesterday Steve and Kenny went out to AE's place, and then Chuck and I came out for a little while too.  I couldn't stay.  I had a wedding shower to attend at 2 pm, and then I came home and took care of Ann at 5, and then I headed over, and had to leave again by 7 to get home by 8 to put Ann to bed.  But I was there long enough to enjoy a delicious steak.  Steve took out my birthday steaks and cooked them up for the two of us to enjoy out there, and they were excellent!  Just had to wait for the right atmosphere and time to enjoy, and that was it.  :)  He stayed out there and had a fire until pretty late, and had a nice day.

Today, Steve and I made it out to see Top Gun: Maverick.  It was a good movie.  I liked it, I enjoyed it, and it made me want to go out and do piloty shit, as they say.  I have thus far controlled myself because I have three guys coming to do T-6 transition training in the next week and a half, so I will get plenty of time doing scary things, and get paid for it instead of having to pay for it. 

On the movie, I like the part where they bring in an old school person to teach the new hot shots how to think outside the box and get the job done outside of computerized and by the book parameters. How it wasn't about the equipment but the brain behind it--not just about the plane, but about the pilot. Old school craftiness beat modern technology.  I also like that they have a woman fighter pilot in this round, but they don't make any kind of deal about it, no virtue signaling or woke speeches, she's just one of the pilots. That's how it should go. No big thing, just a group of pilots. It was nice.  Seeing the tie-ins from the first movie was bittersweet, like Val Kilmer who can't even speak right now from his own throat cancer issues.  Everyone else looked old except for Tom Cruise.  The guy still has six-pack abs. It's weird seeing the first one as teenage me and the second as middle aged pilot me.  But it was good.  All in all it was high action, great visuals, fun flying, good story-line, and I liked it.  I may go watch it again on an IMAX theater just for the full visual experience.  :D 

AEs baby raccoon named "Critter" hiding in the shower

Firing range

Couldn't do a huge one because of the winds

Yes, ma'am.

Weekend Coming

Nothing much exciting. Steve's getting ready for our Young Eagles event tomorrow. We got Kaylee's room halfway put back together. Her new day bed is in there, the black bookshelf, her new black and glass desk. Tonight we picked out flooring to replace the carpeting in her room from Lowe's.  Her room is looking nice!

Steve and I went to Indy this morning for a biopsy.  He'll get results in two weeks, but the doctor didn't think anything looked sketchy visibly anyway.  Then he was out at the airport, I went to the bank, and we just caught up on some things.  We hit dinner with Chuck and AE at Pastarrific, and now Steve's asleep on the couch, and I'm about to be, at 9 pm.  Sad.  ;)

Hump Day

I was supposed to have two trips, one today and one tomorrow.  The main MBros guy is going, though, and he doesn't like turbulent or rough days, and we have thunderstorms, wind and clouds both days, so he drove today and probably will tomorrow, too.  So there goes some income, unfortunately, but for the good news, at least I don't have to work my way around a bunch of weather.

We had the painters come in today and paint Kaylee's room.  It is now a light tan color, two coats, they were done by like 3 pm, and it looks great!  The room is brighter and bigger looking.  The last thing to paint is my bookshelf. Most everything else in there will be black furniture--she has a black and glass desk, for example, so we're painting it black to match.  We're pleased with it thus far, the black and tan.  I think the floor guy is coming in next week to rip out the old carpet and put in wood flooring.  It's going to look nice in there!

Kaylee's internship has only lasted for like 4 days here.  This morning on her first meeting, they said they wanted to keep her, and basically offered her a full-time job in the future, contingent on her getting into the Master's program for Social Work (she will), and on her being interested in doing it.  She was excited, she'd felt like she wasn't doing enough, but they said she was articulate, had intelligent and constructive feedback, and even this early in, they wanted to keep her.  So THAT'S cool.  I also saw the class of people who were hired for these internships.  1300 people applied, 28 were hired, and they made a big deal about their diversity hires.  You look at the pictures and names of everyone they hired, and Kaylee is one of the only non-minority people there.  So in this case, the odds weren't in her favor to be picked anyway, considering they really wanted to hire various other ethnicities other than pale red-head.  :)  So she got hired, and then in a few days, she impressed them enough for them to offer her a full time position in the future.  Very cool!!  

We've had some issues.  Our 172 has a bum engine with bad "lifters" that we can't find anywhere in the country.  Our second 172 ended up having a flap failure that actually tore up and mangled the flaps.  Also down.   Bad timing, as we get busy, to have both our main trainers down and stuck.  Steve was not having a good day trying to figure everything out.  I think today is a little better, at least.  Just a lot of money going out. :o

Yesterday Kaylee and I went out to Olive Garden for dinner. She was supposed to be go out with a friend who had to cancel, she still had the craving, so she asked if I'd go with her.  I still have leftovers. Good stuff, and we had a nice chat.

Kaylee's meds that were $886, after insurance, in case I didn't mention it, she went online to their website and applied for relief.  I took a code back to the pharmacist, and when she started to ring it up, I said "Well, before you do that, what does it bring the cost down to?" I was trying to decide what price tag would still be worth it to go ahead and pick it up. She leaned in and whispered "zero".  "ZERO?" I replied in shock.  Yep, zero.  So she's going to give it a shot and see if it helps. I'm not sure if I hope it does or does not.  

Friday morning Steve has a doctor appointment in Indy to run a test after his PSA numbers doubled in a short time frame.  I'm going with him.  Afterwards depending on how he's feeling, we're looking for a good time to go see "Top Gun: Maverick".  I want to see it in the theater. I like airplanes on big screens and loud speakers.  ;)

It's interesting listening to Kaylee talk in all these meetings.  Our little professional on her laptop, with people using words like "let's circle back to that" and my favorite that made me eyeroll at her, "Watch out for microaggressions like telling someone they sounded really sharp and articulate on that presentation".  Because telling someone that is a micro-aggression and not a compliment.  Ah, corporate America, how Woke Thou Art. 

Ann has on multiple pairs of socks at once sometimes, instead of changing them, and takes her dirty clothes and folds them up without washing them sometimes. I'm going to try to go get her to do a "Happy Birthday" for Cathy, and I don't know which Ann I'm going to get when I go try it.  We shall see...

TBM Avenger Gathering

Well, I'm home!

By the time I would get back to the hotel at night, I was so exhausted I'd just fall in bed, stare at my phone to try to catch up a bit, and fall asleep quickly. 

I'd say it was a successful weekend event even though it wasn't a fully successful weekend event.

Thursday morning I was up early and out at the airport, waiting for the fog to lift.  It was foggy at Kokomo and foggy in Terre Haute.  Finally around 10 am, when I was supposed to be there, it sort of started clearing up, and I took off, got on top of the cloud deck, and winged my way to the HUF.  When I got there, I was supposed to fly the C-47 with Jordan.  It had cleared up in Terre Haute faster than Kokomo, so he was already up flying with Elliot.  They landed, left it running, and after I landed, I hopped in and joined them on the flight while Elliot practiced. When he finished up, we were out of time and needed to head to Peru, IL for the Avenger Field TBM Gathering, which was good.  I hopped in the T-6, JP hopped in his T-6, Jordan took the C-47, and Ray took the C-45, and we went off as a four-ship formation to Peru.  Then Thursday night at 8 pm, at sunset, Greg Moorehead went up in the back seat of Lead, Tim G, I was #2, JP was #3, and some guy named Mike or Matt was #4. It was a beautiful evening, my first time doing formation work since last August, so I had some rust to knock off.  I had a guy in my back seat, and he took video, and enjoyed that ride, even though it got really, really rough below 800'.  Like heavy chop and turbulence.

Friday was supposed to rain all day, and didn't.  Jon and Spencer arrived on Friday, and I got to fly in the airshow in a 3-ship formation with the 4th as a "stinger".  The stinger is an experienced T-6 pilot who just doesn't have a FAST card, so HE got to be tail-end Charlie, which amused me.  Except he was also a bit of a cocky jerk.  But the winds on Friday were brutal.  Super gusty, wind shear, Sigmet for turbulence, swappy, and gusting up over 30 knots at times, at a crosswind from 30-50 degrees, moving around.  That flight was rough, and I was not in position several times, which really irritated the snot out of me.  I couldn't stay with Lead. And at one point, we hit wind shear and Lead dropped way down and #3 and I shot way up high.  Like WAY up high.  Boom.  It was just...not the best.  After the show we had a rider in the T-6 who wanted to go.  I didn't want to. The winds, the turbulence, and making repeated takeoffs and landings in that seemed pretty unnecessary.  But this world is a little different than even the corporate world where you hate to say 'no', because now you have other pilots, and THEY'RE getting the job done, so if you don't, then you're the weakest link.  Can't have that. But after that show flight, while my landing was quite nice, thankfully, doing multiples of them in a row seemed like a bad plan.  So I told them no, I was standing down on the ride.  After I did that, the TBM guys said they didn't think it was a good idea to do the TBM rides either and that one guy already threw up.  Jordan said he wouldn't want to be doing rides in the T-6 in this.  Suddenly everyone else decided it was a good idea to stand down too.  We all hate to be the one that says "You all are okay with this but I'm not". I can do it too.  Did do it.  But that doesn't mean it's a good idea to keep pushing it.  In fact, I hate being the person to stand down more than about anybody, because I still feel like I have something to prove to some of those people. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. And that happened twice this weekend, when I said no to something that nobody else was standing up to, and then once I did, so did they. Since when am *I* the voice of reason? ;)

We told my rider to come back Saturday. Saturday it rained like crazy, and the show was canceled. Jordan and Ray and JP all left and ran for home, because they could all take their planes IFR.  I can not, so I stayed behind with Jon and Spencer, and we ate food and hung out.  For awhile we went back to the hotel, and then I got the urge to be back there, but I was too late, and a 3-ship of T-6s were already up flying around.  So I took Spencer and Jon both up for quick flights, did some fly-bys, and Brad said "The price of free gas is you have to do a pass over the top of the hangar, about 6" up."  So I blew over his hangar, higher than 6" but low enough that I had to maneuver around a crane.  

We had incredible food, a beautiful sunset that evening, and I enjoyed talking to and hanging out with several people.  Also ran into someone we don't like, who was always hanging around. Moocher, not a volunteer, didn't fly anything in, just hung out in the pilot hangar eating and drinking for free and mooching.  Well, for your drama of the week, he asked me to do T-6 stuff with him. I mentioned that to the wife of one of the pilots, who then went up to him and said "Nobody who knows you will ever do a T-6 checkout for you because you're not a good person".  Well, this moocher's wife unfriended me, this other lady, her husband, and Jordan, all of us, on FB, even though we didn't say that.  She's not wrong though, I never have liked him.  This is the guy who turns in people to the FAA. The guy who agreed to work for a friend and got a free type rating on a jet and then ditched the guy and the job within a month or two for a better offer now that he had a type rating.  The guy who threw Doug under the bus with the CAF on a flight.  THAT guy.  So, while normally I'd feel weird and bad about the whole thing, the truth is, I DON'T like the guy, I didn't plan on flying with him anyway, and, well, this other lady just said what most of us were thinking anyway.  But still, I'm not a fan of drama.  I like even keels and lack of controversy when possible.  Unless I'm in a bad mood, I guess. ;)

Sunday morning was getting breezy but sunny thankfully, but everyone had gone home but me, really.  I waited around to do that one ride with the young lady who wanted to go Friday and I canceled for wind and turbulence, wanted to go Saturday and got canceled for rain, so I took her today.  When we'd hit a little bump, she'd gasp. She absolutely would have hated Friday's weather.  Instead, today, she had a blast, and an hour later her mom texted me that she wouldn't stop smiling and talking about it.  That was a win/win, and what it's all about.

I took off, with Spencer and Jon in the RG, and we flew formation back to Kokomo.  I followed them for awhile, then I had him follow me and get some practice in. When we landed, we rearranged all the planes, since I'd have a MBros trip before the T-6 would be going out again.  I had woken up at 2 am in the hotel and never got back to sleep, so I was exhausted by this time.  When I got home, my eyes were burning and I couldn't stay awake for anything, and I passed out on the couch with Steve and Kaylee and the cat and everything all around, and I slept for awhile, too! A couple hours I think!  SO now it's midnight and everyone else is asleep, and me...not so much.  ;)

It's good to be home.  The event was successful in that I got to do some networking and talking and flying too, and they paid for all my gas except the gas to get home and the one rider I took.  My car was free.  My hotel was twice what it was supposed to be, but at least Jon & Spencer's room was only $89/night.  Not bad. 

Here are some photos from the event. I'll keep them all smaller. 

Kaylee has to get up at 6:45 am to work, bummer for her, and I don't.  ;)

On the way to Terre Haute above the clouds

Observing in the back of the C-47

Me and Matt in the back

Jordan and half my head

The T-6 looks like a baby next to this thing

I spread out so I could take a photo of the 4 of us on the way to Peru

C-47 formation practice

Placid Lassie the C-47

Windsock still stuck out pretty far

First time getting the cover on

Four T-6s in a row

Spencer, Jon, Matt, Niki in the back of the C-47

Aeroshell, duh

The guys putting the cover on the C-45 in the Aeroshell smoke screen

When you run low on chairs but not beer

King of Beer

Read the smaller title.
(These are not TBMs doing "Acrobats", this is Aeroshell)

The four of us arriving over the TBM

The night four-ship

Flying home. Spencer and Jon in the RG

What my track looked like at the actual airshow.

Tennessee

Kaylee is home.  She had her last day of training, and drove home today with her laptop and some work to do at home. She got new sheets for her bed, been working on her, well, work, and settling back in.  I'd say it's good to have her home except she takes over my chair when I'm not here, and makes a mess everywhere, and I just got her stuff out of our back room.  She's going to have to contain her mess to the front half of the house, man.  ;)

I woke up coughing my head off at 3 am for no good reason, and then got up at 6 am for my trip to Tri-State, TN.  There was a little area of weather to go through, picked up a little ice, but nothing exciting.  On the ground there, I mostly answered emails and did a little work on my iPad, and listened to a couple of complaining corporate pilots.  I went into town and got brunch at "Dolly's Diner", a hole in the wall place that served real breakfasts.  A little bacon, eggs and toast later, and coffee, and I was mostly awake again. Beautiful area, rolling hills, mountains in the not-too-far distance, everything green, and just a pretty day down there.  Not as pretty up here, where it rained off and on, and was overcast.  On the way home we had more weather to go through and a bit around, at 20,000', but nothing traumatizing.  I listened to music, D and I talked, and it was a good flight.  I hadn't seen him in awhile!  One ILS 23 back in, and we were home for the day, where I learned that our 172 is going to have to have some engine work done.  We'd had a few random losses of power briefly that we looked into a mag, a carb, all sorts of things, and it ended up being a bad lifter/cam, which isn't great to start with, but the fact that there is a shortage on lifters and the guy said we can't find them anywhere in the world right now, well, that's GREAT.  So we'll start the busy summer months off being an airplane down while we wait for magical lifters to appear.  

I'm supposed to leave tomorrow to go to Peru, IL for the TBM Avenger Gathering.  It's supposed to be lovely tomorrow, but Fri and Sat it's going to be...you guessed it...windy and rainy.  Those are their two main days.  EVERY year we get rained out on at least one of the days.  Some years I've come home early because of bad storms.  I don't have a cover for the airplane right now so I may just have to take out the radios and chutes and put towels down inside.  Grr.

On the fun front, though, tomorrow morning I go to Terre Haute, and I'm going to hop in the C-47 with Jordan, while he lets his friend Elliot and his son Ray practice flying it.  Then he'll let me up front to do some flying in it too.  I've never flown anything that big before. It feels like you're sitting in an apartment 2nd story building, so I can't imagine landing it, but they keep telling me it's not too hard.  I'll believe it when I see it.  I'm looking forward to giving it a try.  And then we're going to all get in our airplanes...me in the T-6, Jordan in the C-47, Ray in the C-45, and  JP in his T-6, and we're going to go to Peru in formation and arrive in style.  That night I'm supposed to go up with Greg M, the air to air photographer, and take pictures of something or other.  I'm looking forward to all that.  I just wish it wouldn't rain the next two days when I'm supposed to be doing rides and they're supposed to be able to have a fun, big event.  Every year, I swear...

Well, I need to finish packing and clean up some stuff for tomorrow when the cleaning crew is coming.  So I'll keep this short.  Oh, some young fella posted a code on his wall on FB.  He'd been writing that code at the airport the other day, so I kind of recognized it when he posted it.  I used to do those code breaker things, so I decided to see if I could figure it out.  I could, even with his bad spelling.  He wrote: "I HATE WOMEN DEY ARE NARCATIST HYPOCRITAL BITCHES".  I was pleased with my code breaking skills. I am considering creating my own new fake FB account and writing in his own code back on that post "NOT AS CLEVER AS YOU THINK." Except I don't know what V is so I may have to say "SMART".  ;)  

I need to clean up here, so will head off and get some stuff done.  It's gonna be a busy weekend, may not have time to do much writing.  We shall see!

Blue Skies

Lots of flying today.  The Citabria with Chuck right after lunch, then the 172RG over to Metro, then the PT-26 with Nick, first me flying then him, then the 172RG back to Kokomo to pick up Steve, then he and I went back to Metro for the CAF meeting, then home at dusk.  Lots of flying. Took most of the day, was all good.  Nice day, and I enjoyed all of it.

Citabria

Me & Chuck

172RG

PT-26

Me and Nick B.

Me & Steve in the RG

The cover of the magazine

My little piece at the end of the magazine

The first page of the article.