Yawn

I’m wiped out after Day One, though I’m not going to tell them that, and I hope I can make it through the two weeks.  It is hotter than hell down here, and muggy, and I am sweating to death, rivers of sweat running into my eyes sitting in the airplane. I drank water and Gatorade non-stop today and still dehydrated.  And it’s gross.  I wore the flight suit without clothes under it except for a tank top and underclothes so I could have fewer layers, and I don’t think it helps much.  We only had one ride, too, which isn’t great.  Prepping the C-45 is a ton of work, oily, climbing up and down a ladder and balancing on the top while putting in large 2 gallon containers of oil into a funnel while trying not to slide off the wing. It’s actually pretty funny to watch me, I’m sure.  I’m a decent enough pilot, but I am not graceful, and here I am perched on top of a wing trying to balance a bunch of stuff at once.  HA.  Fueling, oil, pre-flight, getting it ready for the day, closing it up for the day, hooking up the catch cans, it’s so messy.  I would never own one of these unless I also had a minion to come do all this for me every time I wanted to fly. :D So it’s hot, hard, dirty work, standing outside all day, talking to people, trying to get them to ride in it, sweating to death inside it.  We need air conditioning. ;) But of course I also have something to prove, so I will be doing my best.  I need to bring a cloth to wipe my eyes in the plane, and I will keep the flightsuit off until I have a ride even if that means I’m doubled up on clothes inside the plane, because I sat and stood outside all day in the suit and felt awful.  Didn’t help.  I sunburnt myself a little already and I also had sunscreen on.  It’s friggen hot and sunny out here, it’s like hard core summer with the big bright hot sun by 8 am.  Boo. Florida in February would’ve been better. ;)

Punta Gorda was a pretty dead stop. We did two partial rides the entire time it was here for like 5 days. Not great. Our average needs to be about 4 flights per day.  Tomorrow morning we head to Vero Beach. I’m picking up Nathan at the airport tonight, and I think Spencer will be at Vero Beach tomorrow, so thank heavens I’ll have some assistance for a couple days while Spencer is here.  They advertised a lot for Vero Beach, so hopefully we’ll get a lot of business.  If I’m going to be hot we might as well make the rides we need.

Morgan passed her instrument checkride today! So one of my three girls is ‘done’, and the other two are still just starting.  So I’m sitting out here stalking her on FlightAware so I know when she’s flying and done flying and can see what she’s doing. She texted that she passed, and it was a relief for both of us. I hate checkrides.  I know I’ve never said that before.  She hand flew it all, too. Woo hoo!  Now we’re going to work on her Commercial, and should be able to knock that out pretty quickly too.

Well, I’m getting sleepy, at 8:45 pm, but I need to get Nathan at 9:30. Then I’m definitely going to bed early. Tomorrow we’re up at 6:30 am to leave by 7:30 am to get to Punta Gorda by 8:30 am so I can take the hour I need to preflight the plane and get it ready, so we can be wheels up by 9:30 am, and head to Vero Beach, where hopefully we have a better set of days.

Yawn.