Friday I didn't do anything but housework stuff. Nothing important, or big. I still get tired really fast, have no stamina. Even getting up and doing a load of laundry will have me briefly fatigued. I really need to start exercising again but just being up and productive wears me out right now, so I'm trying to take it easy so I don't back slide, knowing I'm going to need to push and get some physical activity back in soon. Today's really the first day I'm not hacking my lungs up and blowing my nose every few hours. So I'm trying to be patient with myself.
Steve's cousin Mark Kline died last week. Mark was the son of Ann's sister Ruth and her husband Hank Kline. He was a problematic fellow. He was raised super strictly, and went off the rails maybe even because of it, I don't know. Alcohol, drugs, criminal activity, stealing things, bringing harm to his parents, strife within the family. His son (Justin) didn't want anything to do with him either. Justin called Steve today to tell him Mark had died, and didn't have any contact info to tell anyone else in the family "who might care". And I just got an email from a guy who flies with us who says Mark went to church where he goes to church and had mentioned Steve was a cousin and the church is reaching out to us to get contact info from family to notify them. A tough life when nobody knows how to reach or who to tell or if anyone cares to set up services when you die. I was surprised to hear he was going to a church, honestly. It's a sad cautionary tale. Of what is purely debatable, but it is one none-the-less.
The rest is airplane stuff. I had a trip to Marco Island, FL, taking Ethan, Amber and Atlee down for New Year's Eve vacation. They all rode in the back. Meanwhile, Morgan had her first solo trip in the Meridian to Sarasota, FL with Caleb and his three boys on board. I got an EDCT, a delay, and tried to work around it to no avail. So we ended up sitting on the ground for another hour before we could leave. The rest of the trip was uneventful. I got down there, got gas, and took a courtesy car in to the Island Gypsy outdoor little restaurant on the water. I had a 30 minute wait to get in. At 2 pm I had a 30 minute wait to get in for lunch. Good grief!
Meanwhile, Morgan had made her first trip, and she was freaked out. She'd had an oddball approach into Georgia, low almost at ceiling minimums, where the glideslope didn't come in when it should have, and she'd been worried about getting an EDCT like I had and how to handle it, because I'd texted her about it before I left and what to do, and she was just...rattled. She was nervous to get in and head back home, so I talked to her on the phone for about 30 minutes, talked through her options to get home. The weather was bad in Georgia, and she didn't have the fuel for TN, and Florida was still a cluster and she was going to have to file low to get out of it, so I offered the option for her to stop in Macon, Georgia, which is almost in Florida, so it's not a very far flight, but it's far enough for her to file low, get out of Florida, have enough gas to be low, the weather was decent IFR and not low, and then she could file high out of there and get home. So she liked that idea, and did it. Meanwhile, I left after she did, flew home non-stop, and beat her home by an hour.
She lands, and I text her, and she's not responding normally, so I pry it out of her, and she'd had icing issues, was a little traumatized by the whole day, being responsible for the whole trip, single pilot, with bad weather, in busy airspace, all of it. It's a lot. It's fun and games when you do it as a crew and someone else (aka me) is responsible for everything. It's a little more terrifying when suddenly it's all on you. I could just tell she was shaky and needed to decompress, I could feel the adrenaline coming off the phone. So even though it was 9 pm and I'd just gotten home, I suggested we meet up for a drink. I ended up driving to Marion to meet up with her at a little tavern that was open at 10 pm, since nothing else was, and we just sat and talked and hung out and debriefed and talked about the good, the bad, the mistakes, the solutions. She started off saying she didn't want to go by herself again, which would be a problem, and I poked and asked her what other job she'd like to do--maybe truck driving. ;) She ended by realizing what I realized from the beginning. She was ready, and she handled every single thing that came up that day, and she handled it all appropriately. She handled the bum approach and made it happen successfully. She handled the busy airspace and changes in flight plans. She recognized the ice, and handled it appropriately. She wasn't sure she did it all right, but once we went through everything, I had two small things to tell her that she could do differently or add next time that may help, but that nothing she did was wrong, and SHE did it. Her own decisions that were correct for the situations at hand, and she successfully completed a flight that a LOT of crewed jet pilots couldn't have done on single pilot/on their own. We decided and agreed at the end of the night that she earned "Real Pilot" status at this point.
I didn't get home until 2 am or so. Slept in until 9, so got a little under 7 hours of sleep, which isn't bad, and then woke up to go visit with Kaylee who had felt icky and wanted Mom time too last night, brought her a Smoothie King smoothie and just hung out for a few hours, and then came back home to fix Steve eggs, do laundry, get some drugs for him, etc. Next up is finishing laundry and fixing myself some food.
The little outdoor restaurant, water is on the other side
My tasty fresh grilled sammich
Cruising low over Florida
Pretty proof that the sun still exists after all
Yep, I look puffy, pale, and tired still. But the sun felt sooo good
Cool almost night, smooth, flowy looking sky and clouds
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