Two Pilots & an LSW: Days

I was too tired to write last night, and I'm kind of too tired tonight, too, but it's only 8:30 pm so that's sad.

Yesterday I had a trip to Flint, Michigan to start with, leaving at o-dark-thirty (7 am) with 6 other guys. We arrived, and I had time to go into town and get some good brunch, a 1/2 order of walnut banana pancakes that I still couldn't eat all of, and of course bacon and coffee. Food staples. ;) The runway had some patchy snow on it and it was windy, but not bad.

Then we were headed within a couple hours to Galion, Ohio. The weather was forecast to be okay, just cloudy, and there were no NOTAMS that said anything was an issue. We'd gotten some flurries in Kokomo but nothing major that should have headed to Ohio. I get closer and they don't have weather reporting there so I pull up a nearby tower airport, and they say "Braking action 2/2/2 with ice and snow". That's bad. 0 is no stopping ability and 5 is perfectly good. 2 is "poor" braking action. Well, the bigger problem with that is that this airport only has a 3500' long runway and I'm in a 10,500' lb airplane with 7 people and lots of gas on board. I tell them I'm going to circle around the airport and look at the runway. If I don't like it we may have to go to the tower controlled field, which is reporting bad braking action but at least it's got long runways, twice as long as here. I circle around and what I first think is the runway isn't, the runway is actually covered in snow. Once I see it I look closer, and I actually don't feel too bad about it because snow can give you some traction. I decided to give it a whirl. Winds were light. So I came down final very slow, touched down super soft and carefully and straight, put the props back into beta, stayed off the brakes, and rode it to the end of the runway until I was good and slow, and it wasn't a problem. The only one who knew what was going on was the guy in my right seat who was on the headset with me, the rest were just sitting back there. I pulled off the runway and he said "Wow, nice job", and then we slid around on the ramp a little bit trying to turn tightly to park. lol I was there for a few more hours, and this place was in the middle of nowhere. No car, no food (which is why I had a big brunch earlier).

The guy who rode up front with me this time, he had never been in a small plane before, and he was nervous on the first leg to Flint. Once on the ground there he asked me a bunch of questions. I told him the next leg to Ohio was about 30 minutes and he could sit up front with me if he wanted. He did, and he loved it, and he asked questions non-stop, until I told him in the pattern at Ohio that I wanted to concentrate and he wanted me to concentrate so stop talking. lol He asked a bunch more questions, then asked if he could ride up front on the way home, too. Fine by me. After we got to our own area, I cancelled IFR and then let him fly it for a couple minutes just to freak out his backseat co-workers. It worked. :D

That evening we had our CAF Christmas party at the West Fork Whisky Company in Westfield. There were 60 of us in a pretty small room, so it was loud. The food they brought in was really good. Fresh fruit and big plump veggies, a very good salad with beets, meatballs, chicken, pasta, desserts, bread, all sorts of stuff. We had the room 6-9 pm. We had to be two of the last six people still in the room at 9 pm, close down the place. It was a nice evening out. By the time I got home around 10 pm, I was wiped out, having gotten up at 5 am to start the day.

Today was more laid back. Steve and I did lunch with AE, went to Mark's and picked up the Buick, and I pulled out all the airplanes and took the T-6 up for one last hurrah for 2023. I took Brennan along. He's a quiet, introverted, hard working college kid who works for us and has for awhile. He doesn't get a lot of attention because he just quietly goes about doing what needs done. The other day after our Christmas party, the next day we were all having leftovers at the small hangar. He got done eating, everyone else was pretty much done eating, and he just started putting away all the food, wrapped it up, back in the fridge, then quietly left and went next door to get back to work. Nobody else thought they should clean up. I notice these things, though, so when I knew I'd be going one last time for the year, and he's never been in the T-6 or gotten to do a lot of cool stuff, so I decided I'd take him with me.

We went up and yanked around a little, did a fly-by of Glenndale, and I came in and did two takeoffs and landings. I was going to do more, but that second one was accidentally almost perfect, and it only goes downhill from there, so I went ahead and put it away on that note. He's still pretty quiet, so he said thank you, and was smiling, but it's hard to tell with us quiet people sometimes what we think. Later I found out he'd taken a video during the Glenndale pass, and was showing it to the guys back at the airport. That's when I knew for sure he'd really enjoyed it. :) I also got a text from Ron thanking me because it had been too quiet over there, and Chuck came on the radio and said "Thank you!" So I got to have fun and make a couple people smile while I was at it too. Works for me!

Jon put it away for me, and I headed out to go do a few things before Steve got back, and we headed down to "Greek Pizzaria" in Sheridan to meet up with the Wednesday night pilot group. There were about 10 of us. It's a new place to us, we used to go to a bar in Kentland, but this has a better set up for us. So when the waitress came over to us, she said to me "Oh, they let you join the club, huh?" and I didn't know what she was talking about. Then I realized, I was the only woman there as usual, but she wasn't used to that. :D She left and the guy across from me said "If she only knew", and that made me laugh too.

Tomorrow is Kentucky in the morning with the concrete place in the Conquest, and Tre to Waukegan in the afternoon in the Aerostar.

I'm still coughing. Not all the time, but the evenings are the worst, and once I start I have trouble... Stupid thing.