Illinois

First of all, let it be known that if you drink juiced beets, a whole fresh beet, it does indeed do the thing where you get up in the morning and think that you have a serious problem.  For about 5 seconds, I almost called a doctor.  lol

I headed to Illinois today. Went to Frankfort and picked up Ethan's 340 and his worker Nick, and flew him to Decatur, Illinois.  VFR day, super nice weather, super easy flight. Dropped Nick off there and got 20 gallons of expensive gas to waive the landing fee, then flew over to Springfield, IL by myself. ATC evacuated for a fire, so I had to go VFR over there because there was no ATC.  No problem.  In Springfield I grabbed the courtesy van and headed over to Lucie's Diner to have a waffle and eggs.

The problem happened when I was on my way back to the airport and "Be Real" went off.  There are several jet fighters on display, so I turned into an area to go take my picture by them.  Except where I turned was the entrance for military base people there.  And once you turn down the road, you can't turn around.  So the guy at the guard gate waved me forward, and then made me get out my ID to allow me to turn around and get out of there. So...that was embarrassing. I didn't get my picture, that's for sure!

Around 3 pm Central time, Nick came back, and I flew us home to Frankfort, after putting in 20 gallons there too, which was just enough to waive the fee there too.  Put the plane away, drove home to Kokomo, picked up dinner for Steve, put Ann to bed, fed the cat, and continued on with my CFI renewal online stuff.  I'm on 10 out of I think 12 lessons/chapters.  

Tomorrow is a trip to Pennsylvania to hopefully pick up the Cheyenne from annual. I'll have to test fly it with them up at altitude to try to get it to do that popping noise that kind of freaks us all out. I'll have to go up to 28-35,000' and try to get it to do it. It's intermittent and that makes it impossible to track. But when it bangs, it's LOUD, and it makes you feel like the airplane is about to have something fall off, or depressurize, and it's disconcerting.  I've never just flown around locally at 35,000' before, a little unsure of the protocol, but I'll just file locally and tell the controllers what we're doing and hope for the best.  I'm bringing our new CFI, Shelbe, along with me. She has an unfortunate name, as I haven't liked anyone named Shelby before, but maybe with that spelling it'll be different. ;)  But she can get some right seat Cheyenne time on the trip home if I'm able to bring it home tomorrow...