Yesterday was a long one. I flew for 8 hours total, 7.9 to be precise. I arrived at the airport at 7:45 am, to be picked up by the student pilot in his Bonanza at 8 am, supposedly. I got up very early, I didn't have breakfast, I filed a flight plan, I waited. Around 8:35 I finally got a text from him that he was running behind doing his Garmin updates. Long story short, he arrived an hour and a half late. I could have slept in. I could have had breakfast. I could have done other things. Instead I did everything I could to be there on time and be ready, and he left me sitting in a lobby for an hour and a half because he wasn't able to manage his time properly. It was then that I remembered that every single time we've ever flown, he was no less than 30 minutes late, usually 45. I sat outside of his hangar on the ground for an hour once waiting on him. Yes, I get paid for it, but I find it incredibly rude and wasteful. If you're early you're on time, and if you're on time you're late. If you're THAT late, you seem to think your time is more important than mine or anybody else's, and he has been late every single time. So now we're running late. We have to get out to Newark (Linden), New Jersey, be on the ground 2-3 hours, and get home, in a Bonanza, by sunset, because he has to drop me off and fly home before dark as a student pilot. I'm annoyed, truly.
It's about 3 hours out there, and when we get to Newark it is, of course, super busy. The Linden airport is a small airport right under Newark's major hub, under the Class B airspace. It's a zoo, as all east coast major hub airports are. We end up not getting under the bravo airspace in time because he's an overwhelmed student pilot, and I hope I don't end up getting a letter or call out of it. I could file a NASA report but I don't necessarily feel like it, and I haven't heard anything yet, so hoping it stays that way. We also had an adventurous landing coming in. Shorter strip, surrounded by high tension power lines, plants, houses, towers, displaced threshold, right off the end of Newark's major runways, with airliners taking off and landing right over top of us, and a gusty 40 degree crosswind of 20 knots. It was more than he could do, so I had to rescue it at the end there and it got a little hairy for a second, but I don't blame him for that one--it was a lot going on and he's a student.
On the ground in Linden, I called a friend, Bill R., who is an imaginary friend from an internet pilot board I've been a part of for years. We went out to Chick-Fil-A for lunch and caught up and chatted a bit. He dropped me back off at the airport, and later than he was supposed to do it, my student got back, and we added gas and headed for home. We were so late from him being late both times, that we actually landed after the sunset at Kokomo. But he's not my student, so when he took off to go back to his own home airport 10 minutes away, I figured 1) it was still light enough he was probably fine and 2) he was not my problem on this end of things, not my sign-off. We had a head wind, and it took us 4 hours to get home. That's a long time to sit. While I was coming in, I got a text from Morgan, who needed to get night current before Tuesday. It's Easter weekend, and I was going to be landing at dark at Kokomo anyway, so I said if she wanted to do it tonight, I was already there and could do it. So thus we did.
Took a 172 up and did six night landings to dial them back in. I got home around 10:30 pm, and I left the house at 7:15 a.m. So about a 15 hour day all in all.
This morning I had a lesson at 10:30, but unfortunately I woke up at 6 anyway. That's why I'm so tired today. :p I did a 2 hour flight lesson in the RG with Ana doing VOR approaches at Marion. Ran my car through a car wash, went to Meijer to pick up some milk and stuff for Ann and Kaylee. Completely forgot to get anything for Easter dinner and then didn't care because it was so crowded in there anyway. Watched some catch-up TV from last night when I was gone. Hung out with Kaylee who is home right now. Did the carrot and green apple juice for Kaylee and she liked it too. Steve had the guys over tonight around a fire in the back yard. And those are the bullet points of yesterday and today.
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