Two Pilots & an LSW: Colorado and Ohio

Monday, March 17, 2025

Colorado and Ohio

I left the house around 8 am yesterday to take the Cheyenne out to Gunnison, (and Pitkin) Colorado with Ethan, his wife, daughter and her fiancé. We had good weather, so no problems there, just the usual headwinds heading west and not as much of a tailwind heading home. While out there we got some fancy brewery coffee, local english muffin stuff, and went out to the cabin where they worked on paint samples, measuring bed frames, cabinet colors, and sorting the last of some old house stuff. We were there a couple of hours before heading back to Gunnison Airport. Last time I was there my O2 levels were low 80s, but today I was fine, in the mid-90s. Just more proof that whatever hit me while I was there, it wasn’t really the altitude. Something else was wrong…I’m glad, though I’d prefer to know what happened/what got me.

We got back to Kokomo at like 8:40 pm, with my windshield frosted and iced over even with the heat and defrost on, so I didn’t really see the runway very fast, nor end up lined up on the centerline, but hey I got down all right after all. ;)

Got to bed after midnight sometime, then was back up this morning to go to Gallipolis, Ohio. The place with nothing but one big conference table, a dirty bathroom with giant John Wayne TP, and an overly friendly and chatty airport manager who is always here. So I dropped Nick off here, and then took right back off and headed to Clermont County, Ohio, which is the home of Sporty’s and a very busy flight school and Cincinnati Avionics, where Nathan and Ethan have both had things done on their planes. In this case I have a warning message on my transponder and they told me to stop in any time, so I did, and they looked at it today and said I needed to leave it overnight. So I got some gas there to waive their landing fees, took their courtesy car over to Sporty’s, and sat upstairs in the Cafe, had a sandwich and a drink and watched a T-6 do a couple low passes and a nice landing (Tri-States Warbird place there too) and a bunch of 172s do some pretty bad landings. The T-6 made a nice landing, was trying to get off at a taxiway but was way too fast. You could see him hitting the brakes to go for it, and I started paying a lot more attention because it was about to get more interesting based on my knowledge of T-6s, but then he gave up and rolled past and ended up going to the end before turning off. Wise choice. ;)

I sat there for awhile so I wouldn’t have to sit at Gallipolis as long, and then I decided to head back and gas up here at GAS (ha). I’m going to get home too late tonight to get gas at home, unless I self serve it, which I don’t feel like doing, and then tomorrow I’m leaving before they’re open, so no time to do it then either. So I topped off all tanks including wing locker tank here. It’ll take me 1.5 hours to get home, and another 1 hour to get to Lexington tomorrow morning first thing, top off there to avoid their landing fee, for the next stop at Mansfield, OH. Top off there again to avoid their expensive landing fee. Should all work out nicely, though I had to plan it/work on it. I miss the Conquest, which I wouldn’t have to worry about fuel at all with for these short hops. Would have to worry about landing fees, but I don’t have to pay for those—I just try to help avoid them where possible. But someone who spends thousands and thousands of dollars to fly to Colorado and back to just measure bed frames and paint samples just for a couple hours probably doesn’t care much about the $40 landing fee, to be honest. I just can’t help not wanting to unnecessarily spend money, mine or someone else’s.