Two Pilots & an LSW: Mix-Up

Tuesday, January 07, 2025

Mix-Up

Kaylee's cardiology appointment was supposed to be today. She took off work, moved all her people, and they called Monday morning and said they had to reschedule her and the next time they could get her in was sometime in February. She was upset, she really doesn't feel good and really wants to be seen, so she called our doc back, and they got her in with a different provider, for Wednesday. So she had to reschedule her people for Wednesday too, and some of them were already disgruntled. But it wasn't her fault. It's still not cool though. So...she goes in tomorrow at 2 pm, and we'll see what they have to say.

My schedule was blocked off to be: Monday, Nick trip to WV. Tuesday, Nick trip to WV. Wednesday, take Conquest to Colorado and be there through Friday. Instead, Nick's two trips were canceled because of the weather at his project site. And my trip to Colorado was just canceled tonight because they don't know if one of the parts made it there or not. So I don't have any work this week.

Instead, yesterday I did a LifeLine flight. I took a man and his wife from Burlington, Iowa, down to Raleigh-Durham, N. Carolina. He has brain cancer, and it's terminal. He's maxed out the radiation he's allowed to have, and the chemo almost took him out. But he goes down to NC every 3 months and gets a scan, and he's on an experimental treatment. It doesn't shrink his tumor, but it slows down the growth of the tumor drastically. It's still growing, but very slowly, so that he's been doing this for 4 years. He's lost some peripheral vision and a bit of balance, but is living as he said 3 months at a time, in between scans. They have new twin grandbabies, she's a school teacher, and they're very nice people. They were also very scared to fly. I had brought Morgan along, and they were so happy to see that there were two pilots because she was scared of only having one pilot in case I fell asleep or got in trouble. She said it like 5 times. She was scared of clouds. I took them up to 27,000' in the sunshine and smooth air, and we just had to come down through some snow, rain, and shoot an ILS approach down to 100' above minimums. It went great, and they were super appreciative and happy. I took them in a large Conquest with a bunch of room that was super fast and smooth and non-stop from Iowa. They're going home in a "4-seat Cessna". I'm betting it'll only have one pilot, and it ain't going to be fast or smooth. They have no idea what they're in for, and I totally spoiled them. Lol I just hope the first experience was good enough to make them a little less scared for the next experience. She gave me a gift bag that was super thoughtful, had a bunch of stuff from Iowa and their hometown, and home-made chex mix stuff, and a long thank you letter, etc. It was sweet.

When we were down there, I offered to drive them to their rental car, but we couldn't find the place to go there, so that was a pretty big cluster. Eventually got them there, and Morgan and I went off to a place to get dinner. It was weird looking on the outside, like a dingy bar, but when you went inside, the food was really good and it was clean and newer. I'd found it on Google Maps, looked fine, got there and it didn't look fine, and then went inside anyway and it was great. ;)

Got home around 10 pm. It's frigid. We won't see temps above about 25 degrees for the next 10 days, that's the HIGH. So yesterday was almost 6 hours of flight time, and a good deed was done. The husband, Michael, gets seizures when driving, from the lights mostly, and it was going to be a 16 hour drive, and it was going to be a long drive with a bunch of snow and ice in between them and NC. He was already 3 weeks past due on his next treatment, they weren't sure they could make it, and that 16 hour drive was turned into a 2 hour flight for them, and that just made life a lot easier for them, for which I was glad. I was happy to be able to help. Glad I didn't have to pay for it, too, that's a lot of gas...

Today was easy. I met up with Nathan, Kevin, Chuck, Steve and I for lunch, and then drove to Frankfort, where Ethan picked me up and drove me to Delphi, where I pulled out the Cherokee Six and flew it to Ohio, to leave it for annual. While there, I picked up the 340 and flew it home from Ohio from maintenance on the fuel system. Flew it back to Frankfort, and then drove back to Kokomo from there. Met up with Morgan and Steve for dinner, signed off Morgan's High Performance endorsement, which I had somehow missed, and came home to catch up on my schedule and paperwork.

I would like to sleep in tomorrow, but we're getting our house cleaned tomorrow. So I can't stay here, but I no longer have a trip to Colorado to leave for, and I can't hang out at Kaylee's house because she's staying home to do virtual therapy sessions until her cardiology appointment and I can't listen in on those. So I have to get up and leave and go somewhere, aka the airport, for no good reason. Too cold to go fly something. Boo.