Rain Day

Steve, Kaylee and I loaded up the Beige Jeep with a bunch of stuff from her room.  Some furniture, games, clothes, lamp, books, stationary, backpacks and purses, stuffed animals, all sorts of stuff.  We threw away several bags of trash or broken things, donated two bags to a friend who has little girls, and took the rest to Goodwill. I've got more to take over, and a ton more books, but today was a good dent.  Kaylee's room is almost completely cleaned out.  I've saved a lot of my old classic books, got rid of a lot of the old paperback horror or Christian or whatever stories.  Looking forward to redoing her room.  It won't be purple for a lot longer, though I always did like her purple.  :)

A friend of ours, Tim S., groundlooped his T-6 yesterday at Huntington.  His company built Nathan's T-6, and he just bought a P-40. He got the new-to-him T-6 to get some current time in it before flying the P-40. I don't know what happened yet, but one of the gear is collapsed, and they had to shut down the airport and get a flatbed to haul it off.  I feel really bad for him.  It's one of my biggest fears that doesn't involve actual physical harm.  It's been amazingly quiet in the aviation world.  You get well enough known and things that can be hidden by all your friends, will be.  THEY'LL all know, but they won't report it or talk much about it.  I know several airshow pilots now who have had whoops that the general public never learned about.  I'm pretty sure I wouldn't get that lucky.  But I can all too well imagine how he is feeling today.  He's not hurt, but his airplane is totaled, so he takes a hit financially, but more painfully, his ego takes a hit, which doesn't sound that bad, but sometimes it is. Especially for a nice person.  I feel for him.

Kaylee and I went to J Edwards today and picked up some toffee, some chocolates, some turtles, and I picked up more olives, because I like slicing them up in my scrambled eggs on the weekends when I eat breakfast that way. ;) That was a nice treat.  I went to stop for gas by Glenndale where I was picking up packages, and the gas there was $4.21/gallon.  Two blocks away it had been $3.91/gallon. So I went two blocks away on the way to Panera to pick up some soup for Ann and a smoothie for Kaylee.  We did our running around, and got quite a bit done today, actually.

We got a thank you email from one of my riders.  It said "I can't thank you all enough. To fly an airplane my mom flew 79 years ago, at the same field, with her Avenger Field logbook was an epic moment in time for me. Having Laura up front made it easy to envision mom up there. Being immersed in the same sights, sounds and smells mom had all those years ago was incredible. Thank you all for keeping the WASP story alive and sharing this piece of history."  That was cool.

Here are a few more photos from Sweetwater.  I think the photog messed with the sky because I don't remember it looking like that.