Kevin and I left in the Cheyenne and headed to Lafayette around 3:20 pm. We waited there until Coach Painter arrived, and then I flew him down to the Atlanta area. We all went in a rental car to the game. Keep in mind this is a highschool basketball game, right? You can't bring in purses or bags. You have to show ID to get in. The music is all Defcon 7 level hard rap. The most interesting thing about the whole experience was the cheerleaders. These girls weren't your Indiana cheerleaders. Going to the games with Coach in Kentucky and other places, are a complete cultural difference from Atlanta, 180°. Back to the cheerleaders. There were about 25 girls on each team. They were loud, angry, stompy. They would battle each other. The two groups were stomping and yelling so loud that my watch went off with a decibel alert. And we were sitting in the top row of the bleachers. They also were doing like...stripper dancing. If you've ever seen "The Replacements" with Keanu Reeves, the cheerleaders for their rag-tag football team are actually strippers. These guys did some of the same moves. Bending way down, hips, twerking, all of it. They're 16-17 years old and I was like... :o It was definitely entertaining, but damn. The other interesting thing was that during the actual game, there were 5 white faces. One cheerleader, one player, and me, Kevin and Coach. After the game was over and everyone left, an entire crew of about 10 people came out onto the floor and up into the stands to do all the janitorial work. The interesting thing to me is that every single one of the janitorial people were white. It was just a shift from the 'norm' around here, an interesting study in cultural differences in the areas.
On the way home, I'm at 26,000', and Indy comes on and warns me that there are reports of moderate to occasional severe turbulence from FL200 to FL250, and cleared me down to FL240. I was surprised because it was pretty smooth. But I powered back and started coming down, and sure enough, we hit it, and hit it hard. My head hit the ceiling, the airplane got slammed around enough I had a hard time talking on the radio. It was really rough up there. They couldn't let me down sooner because all the airlines going into Chicago were being dumped down below the altitudes so the pax wouldn't freak out. When I got below FL210, it was calm again. It was wild.
We got back to Kokomo after 11. I put the plane away and didn't get home till around 11:45 or so. Long evening, but interesting, and I enjoyed most of the flying, too.
Great views at FL260
Coach driving us to the game
The game
Takeoff in the Atlanta area
Cheyenne at night by Indy
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