Two Pilots & an LSW: Coaching

It's been a rousing two days.

Thursday I was up at 6 am, and I didn't get home until about midnight. I had 7 legs worth of flights. At 7 am I drove to Frankfort, and took the Conquest with Nick to Decatur, IL and on to Centerville, Iowa, for projects. Unfortunately I hadn't slept well the night before, and I had a headache that I had to take something for in Iowa. I sat there in a quiet room for an hour while they ran errands, and it went away, but my stomach was still kind of bleh. It was a beautiful day, severe clear, so that was nice. We landed and got back at 4 pm, and I hopped in my car and drove an hour to Kokomo Airport, where I took the Cheyenne, Kevin, and Coach Painter from Purdue, and we went to Huntingburg, Kentucky to watch a kid play that he wants to recruit. Jets and coaches were there from IU and Notre Dame, as well as one other, so apparently everyone was looking at this kid. And he had a terrible night. He didn't hit anything he shot. He didn't even play towards the end. The whole game was bad, nobody was a good player. Coach said that the kid was talented, he just had a bad night, that he's seen him play a lot, and you have to watch them at games, at practices, etc., and you go by the 80/20 rule. Everyone will have bad days, but you need the people you're looking at to be good 80% of the time, and you can make them really good/great. If they're 50/50, or whatever, they're not going to make it. He said this kid was talented and he'd seen him a lot, and this was his 20% 'off' day. Me, I can't imagine the pressure of being in high school and having three or four college coaches fly in in jets to come watch me play, and then sucking...

I was really, really tired. I hadn't flown the Cheyenne in about a month, and hadn't flown it at night since November, about 3 months ago. It was a short flight, fortunately. Coming back into Lafayette, the ATIS was calling for 2600' and 10 miles. Cool. We are 15 minutes out, and it is reporting 9 miles. Fine. I break out of the clouds, and it's kind of murky, but I see the runway. I enter crosswind, and head downwind, and the airport disappears and I'm over a layer of clouds. I stay above them, turn base and about final, no airport in sight, finally the clouds are gone and the runway is over there, but I've way over-shot final, and I can't turn final without getting into the clouds. Visibility is going down fast. Instead of messing around any more, I just landed downwind on the opposite runway and just got down. Clouds and visibility was just bad now. I call up and ATIS now says 500' overcast. So I file IFR to get back to Kokomo. Kokomo is also tanking. In the 10 minutes it takes me to get there, it goes from 1800' and 9 miles to 1000' and 5 miles, and by the time I get home in my car, everything is 300' an 3/4 mile. None of that was forecast to happen.

I went to bed, and at 3 am I woke up and had to take headache meds again, a double dose. I had to wake up at 6:30, as my original plan was to leave at 8 am to get to Aurora to take a lady's 340 to Kentucky and then train her CFI in it. Get back by 4 pm and take Painter again in the Cheyenne to a different game. Fortunately for me, the weather was crap in the morning still, and I couldn't do Round One. I had to postpone that to Sunday. So I went back to bed, slept in until 8:30 or 9, and then had the day to do a bunch of catch-up stuff until 4 pm, at which point we went to Cincinnati to watch another game with Painter.

This was more fun. I'd slept better and wasn't running all day and didn't have a headache I'd kicked mid day, so all in all I felt better. We flew down there, and we were going to get a "shitty hot dog" at the concession stand, but they didn't have any there, so we just had a drink and watched the game. This game went a lot better, it was a lot more entertaining. The player we were there to watch started strong, and then about halfway through started losing it, and by the end he wasn't hitting anything either. Coach says he's not as strong of a player as the kid we watched last night, even though the kid we watched last night didn't hit squat and this kid at least hit for a half. lol Obviously I trust his expertise. ;) After the game we stopped at McDonald's, where he bought dinner for us and we sat and talked. We'd talked at Wendy's the night before, too. I enjoy his company, actually. He's smart, and a little wise, too. He knows his stuff, and he has a good head on his shoulders too. Last night he was hounded and surrounded by people all night wanting his autograph or photos with him. He was patient and gentle with everyone he met, even the 25th group of them. He sits at the clear top of the bleachers because from there you can see people coming and not be surprised by anyone. He says also teenagers don't climb up there because they're too cool to ask, old people don't climb up there because it's too far up there, so you get a bunch of middle school kids who do. He was right. Out of all the people who stopped, by far the majority were middle school kids. Which is cool. I'd have no clue who he was at that age, but a bunch of them did. Or maybe their parents or siblings did and sent them. lol Tonight he only had a couple people come up.

It was a good day.

Tomorrow I'm supposed to pick up Ethan's planes from Ohio, fly with Morgan and then fly with Cameron. Sunday I'm supposed to do the 340 from Aurora to Kentucky. I just hope the weather holds out for all this. It's been stupid for so long, going downhill IFR like it's Spring or something, in January/February.