Yikes

Man.  I saw/have a photo of my acquaintance Chris in the T-6 with his tail chopped completely off behind the rear canopy and no left aileron, pointed straight at the ground, with his left arm up bracing against the canopy, and the ground right in front of him.  The last moment of his life and him seeing it coming and nothing he could do about it. That made it hard to go to sleep last night.  Sometimes having a vivid imagination does not work in my favor.

MY day was much more benign. I still had to wake up at 6:30, which I did not want to do. Usually when my alarm goes off it pulls me out of a pretty light sleep, because my internal alarm clock knows it's getting close, and I'm just barely under, lightly dreaming, whatever.  Not this morning. I was sleeping so hard that when my wrist buzzed, I was confused for about three seconds as I swam my way up to consciousness. Then I didn't want to get up.  I was late this morning, which I never am, because I had such a hard time getting going this morning.  Fortunately I wasn't late for anything super important, or I wouldn't have been, but yeah...I was pooped.

I took the Conquest over to Ohio today and went over to the pilot's lounge while Steve F. worked on a squawk list Ethan had for the plane.  After a couple hours, Ethan flew in in his Cherokee Six, and is leaving it there for annual, and then he helped Steve on the squawk list, and they got a ton done.  The two front seat backs fixed, the air conditioning valve fixed, the vent on the floor, the rear seat back of the panel, the torque gauge, the oxygen mask port, all the little squawks that have built up in the last 136 hours that I've flown it since July 7th.  After awhile I took the courtesy car into town and went and got McDonald's (their choice) for lunch, and then hung out at the hangar the rest of the afternoon while they did the maintenance work. I am not a mechanic, not helpful to one, don't even want to be one. So all I did was clean up the oil off the plane and get lunch. And fly it there and home.  I felt reasonably unproductive, but...not sure what I can do there.  It took all day though. Up at 6:30, in the car at 7:30, in Frankfort at 8:30, in Ohio by 9:30, not home until 6:30 p.m.

I ordered a pizza on an app on my phone and had it delivered to the house, and the pizza showed up 5 minutes after I got home. Now that was timing, thankyouverymuch.  ;)  Steve got home around 7, and I even left enough pizza for him.  As soon as I walked out of the garage, I heard a noise I thought was Ann yelling at me.  It wasn't--it was the cat howling at me in a particularly human sounding noise.  I fed her almost an entire can of food, and she was loud and demanding about wanting fed an hour later again. Miss Bony over here is putting it away today.

Tomorrow will be an easy day. I will probably have a trip to Chicago and Tennessee and back to each, swapping two men one from each place to the other.  But those are quick trips and they won't be early. So I can sleep in a little bit and not be rushed tomorrow.  It's Wednesday and Thursday that are going to be ugly. But we'll talk about that later...