Florida

Yesterday was a long one. I had to get up at 5:30 am, be out the door by 6:30 am, and up in the air by 7 am, headed to Kissimmee, FL in the 340.  I could make it all the way down without stopping for fuel, barely. I had to work on it all the way there. Monitoring the fuel, tweaking the power settings and the mixtures all the way there as the winds changed, then as the weather moved me around, then as ATC gave me a re-route. It's more of a work load than just landing for gas and not having to worry about it, but it does save you about an hour of time.  I get down there, and get the plane topped off, and add a quart of oil to each side, even though it's steaming hot, because...last trip it burned through more oil than it should have and I ended up low on oil by the time I got home. Low oil pressure and all. Don't want to do that again, so now that I know its oil burn has increased, I added some. Speaking of steaming hot, it was 100 degrees down there and humid.  Death.  

The older line guy pulls up with the truck and says "Hey, don't I usually see you here in a Cheyenne?"  I was like...yeah. Wow, good memory! I'm in a different plane and he recognizes me and remembers what other plane I was in. 

We take off out of there, hot and heavy, and I was in a position where we needed to not lose an engine, so fortunately we did not.  Went on to Athens.  Landed, and got gas.

The younger line guy pulls up with the truck and says "Were you here a couple months ago in a big blue Navy plane?"  Damn.  Now I get that the plane is memorable, the C-45, but he recognizes me as a random pilot in a 340 and puts it together with that airplane. Seriously, I was impressed. I don't recognize either one of them. I don't remember people. I don't remember their names, I don't remember their faces, not until I've been around them a lot. It's not because I'm rude or don't care, I just usually have my mind on the "what's next" part of the trips, and I don't spend a lot of time looking at, if I even see, whoever goes out to the plane once the person in the vest and hat and sunglasses parks me. But I have lost track of the number of people who have said "You were here before, weren't you?" or "You flew in here in the xxx".  Apparently I have a memorable face or something.  I'll never forget the desk lady at Fon du Lac's FBO who remembered me six months after Oshkosh from flying in and out of there during Oshkosh, when I came back in in some other airplane.  "You're Laura, the lady who flew in here with the 340, right?"  I mean....DANG.  

Seriously, good thing I am always friendly and kind to line/desk workers, because if not I'd have a crap reputation in a LOT of different airports!  :o

I put more oil in in Athens, talk about steaming hot engines, and then we loaded back up and took off hot and heavy again, one more time.  A line of weather that should have been no big deal suddenly expanded into a big deal, but they had no idea as they were all in the back. The line now extended 200 miles and I couldn't get over it, so I picked my way through it. We had a few bumps and a smattering of ice and rain and turbulence, but I picked a good path, and all was well. We landed at Kokomo like 5:30 pm, and my 12 hour day from start to finish was basically done.  I was pretty well done. Put the plane away, stopped at DQ and brought home chicken tenders, sat on the couch and vegged out, watched a movie with Steve, went to bed and slept in today until almost 9 after a brief wake-up at 6:30. 

Today I'm going to Columbus, OH, the International airport, with Steven, and I'm taking Morgan with me for the experience of it. Last minute trip here. I'm just glad I got to sleep in--I needed that.

Kaylee is super pleased with her new car.  She ordered food and couldn't wait to go pick it up. She can see her car out her apartment window and keeps looking at it, and can remote start it and unlock it from her apartment too, which she loves. Here she is sitting in front of her apartment which you can see up there through her sunroof. She's quite happy. Can you tell? ;)

Boring sky photo.  ;)