I went to bed around 1:30 am because my sleep schedule is still messed up. I don't know what time it was that I woke up, but I woke up uncomfortable. When I'd breathe out, there would be a high-pitched whistle at the end of it. I felt like my lungs couldn't expand or contract appropriately, it felt like fluid in there but in retrospect I'm not sure it was. I got up and got a big couch pillow and put it behind me so I could sit up more in bed to sleep. But never did really get any good sleep from then on. Can't roll over, can't move much. When I finally decided to get up, I also felt hot, which is bad. Took my temp and got 100.0. Doc had told me if my temp got up to 100.4 I needed to go back to a hospital. So I carefully got up, sat up in my chair, drank water, took my antibiotic with a cracker so it didn't make me nauseated. Over the next couple of hours, my temp dropped to 99.6, so that's better. I put on my Apple Watch so I could monitor my heart rate (good and slow, so no rapid or problematic rate there), and my Oxygen levels (high 90s, so good there). Got out a blood pressure cuff and took a couple readings there, 124/70 which is high for me but still normal in reality. Last night I ate cheesy bread, did two loads of laundry, put away my bags, had a crab meat sandwich, and felt weak but good. Today I ate Greek yogurt and bone broth soup and water and a few crackers, some with peanut butter, and feel...like being very careful. I may try to sleep in the living room sitting up better tonight instead.
Going down to Sun-n-Fun, I ended in Knoxville the last post. We got up the next morning and moved slowly, because it was fine in TN, but it was low IFR all through Georgia and into northern Florida. We can't go IFR in the plane. And then I have a brilliant idea. We will launch out of Knoxville, climb on top of the clouds, where it's clear above, and then not come down until we're in VFR conditions in Florida. We ended up having to go up to 9500' or 10500'. Solid layer of fog below us. Not my favorite way to operate, where I couldn't come down and land if I had to, but at least I had two engines burning, not just one. Plan worked, and in central Florida I came on down to VFR conditions, and we arrived at Lakeland at 5:15 pm or so. Airspace opens back up at 5:30, they said, and the plan, well, it worked. Doug R. later told me it's against CAF rules to fly on top of a cloud deck like that where you can't come in and land at any time. I honestly didn't know that, so I said that, and oops, and won't do it again. If I do do it again, I won't tell the story, is more like it. ;)
When we got to Lakeland, I was the first person to call into the warbird arrival and say we were there and ready to come in. Because it was the end of the airshow on Wednesday night, they allowed non-stop departures for over 35 minutes, and it ended up being about 45 minutes of circling around 10 miles away waiting for them to let us in. Finally they cleared me in, I came on in and landed, and wa-la, we were at Sun-n-Fun.
Couldn't get to our parking space. Needed to go to Foxtrot taxiway where we'd be doing rides. I told them that, they told me to follow the flag men, the flag men sent me the wrong way, I got on the radio and told them again, they said follow the flag men, I said the flag men are sending me the wrong way. Three times, until I stop, running, in the middle of a taxiway, and force them to deal with us. We get a motorcycle escort over to Foxtrot where I should have gone in the first place. NOW we made it, another 20+ minutes later.
We taxi in and shut down. All our stuff is in the plane, and a money box, and our bags, and trash, and everything. We're on the main ramp. We get out, and there are people everywhere, because Wednesday night is also the night airshow and people were packing in for that. It was chaos. And loud. And a long day. A long series of days. And as we're walking to the performer's tent to gather our credentials, a local Indiana woman (B) who I'm not a super fan of from the get go comes running up and tries to stop me to talk, and I wave and smile and say I'm so sorry, we're late, I really have to go, and I keep walking with Steve and Morgan and Jim. We go get our credentials. We get a little food. I realize my tooth hurts. We walk back to our plane, only to find B had decided to open up the plane on a busy ramp and let her kids wander around in there, sit in the front seats, and do God knows what else. She was confronted by someone else, and she told them she had permission. She most certainly did not and would not have. She lives in Indiana, if she wants to set the boys in the plane, come ask while it's here and we'd be glad to. It was on a packed out ramp where one person getting in a plane makes everyone else think they can too. And all our stuff and money was just sitting there exposed. Thoughtless moron. I'm now trying to unload our stuff from the plane, with a crush of people all around. B comes up to me, gets close to my face, and yells "DO YOU HAVE A CHAIR"? I'm like...What? She repeats it. Do I have a chair. I'm like "Chair? Do I have a CHAIR?" I was dazed, over-stimulated, and confused. She said a friend of hers has a friend who needs a chair and doesn't have one and do I have an extra one they can use. I'm at a loss for words for once, and I put my hands up in a push away/get away motion, and I just say "I....don't know" in a...voice. She gets offended and says "Well okay then" and marches off. I feel three seconds of relief, pull something else out of the back of the plane, turn around and Dan K is standing INCHES from my face. I'm backed against the airplane, there's nowhere for me to go, and he is well, and I do mean WELL inside my personal space. He starts talking to me and I'm just trying to hold my shit together because I'm at the end of it. His question? "Do you have a chair? My colleague doesn't have a chair and has a bad back and wants to watch the show and..." And I apologize for the language, but fuck that lady and fuck that chair. We're at an airport fly-in event with tents, tables, booths, FULL of little cheap chairs you can buy, any time all day long. If you didn't prepare better than that for tonight so far, go ahead now and Go Buy Your Own Fucking Chair and Leave Me Alone. What I actually said was that we really only had the number of chairs for the number of butts we have on board, and I tried backing away from him until I was against the elevator of the plane and still didn't have anywhere to go. When he finally left, I was almost shaky. Normally if I get overstimulated I can just leave, but I had nowhere to go, no breaks, no air, no space, and I was about to have a melty.
Morgan watched most of that. She absolutely loved it when I put my hands up like "BRUH" and made B mad/go away. Then when Dan came up right afterwards, right in the space, she thought "uh oh, here we go", and she was not wrong. Later I asked if I should feel bad about B, and she insists that any normal person would also have reacted the same way. B was hyper, hysterical, yelling, and in my face, and wouldn't stop, so my push away was a reasonable boundary, she says. I sort of do feel bad because usually I can hold myself together better than that, but that whole week, that day before, THAT day, it was a lot, and I had had zero time or space to decompress or reset. I didn't yell at her, I just couldn't hold together the normal standard of polite engagement.
I said I had no desire to go to the night show, I wanted to go to our cabin and get our stuff put in it, so that's what we did.
We were being put up by the airshow at Margaritaville, which was an RV resort with little cabins, too. I wasn't so sure what that was going to be like, but it was actually, really nice. A small, new, clean cabin with an electronic door lock with a code to get in. A little front porch, kitchen, living room, dining room bar, bathroom, king sized bed with tv in the back. It was a neat little place, and we would definitely do that again, and it wasn't any more expensive than a hotel room down there. You had a car pass to get through the security, wrist bands to get into any of the stores or bars in the area, and everybody was super friendly and chill. It was Margaritaville, man. :) We liked it!
The next few days we scrambled for rides. We got one ride in the morning on Thursday and Friday, and one ride after the airshow on Thursday and Friday. The morning rides weren't too bad. The rides after the airshow let out? Disaster. I'm not sure it's worth doing those At All. If you could get your act together and do 2-3 rides in the mornings, and then park it, you'd be way better off. It took over an hour to do a "20 minute" ride, because they wouldn't let you come back in for huge periods of time. So you'd sit and do holds out south of the field. We usually wouldn't even have a full airplane, so we're losing money like crazy on that ride. It took a lot of gas to get there and get home. It took hotel rooms for the stay on the way down. Hotel rooms down there for the week. Rental car for the week down there. So we needed these rides. Saturday was perfect. We ended up with 2 I think rides in the morning, and one for after the show, all completely booked up, seats full. We needed that. That's why it was so painful for me when I knew I had to cancel the afternoon ride for my health. That Sucked.
My favorite rider was the kid I posted about on Facebook. His name was Jackson, and when he and his dad first came up to the rides desk, he said "No, Dad, this is too expensive, let's go." His Dad waved him off, and the kid got upset by the end. "It's too expensive Dad, PLEASE, don't! Let's go!" Later, his Dad came back and bought a front seat and a back seat ride, and told us that when his son came up, if he asked, we had to go along with the fact that he'd gotten a 20% discount on the flight, otherwise the kid wouldn't go. He was like 10. In love with the airplane, with flying, super excited, but refused to let his Dad spend money unnecessarily on it. A stark contrast to B's little boy who was pretty entitled to do whatever he wanted, eh?
When I took them out to the plane for the ride, to give the pre-briefing, etc., Jackson was jumping up and down on his toes. He stuck his hand out, looked me in the eye, firmly shook my hand, told me his name and that it was nice to meet me, and said he was very excited and thankful. He sat up front with me, and he did not stop smiling for 30 minutes straight. I asked if he wanted to fly it and he would not, said he was quite happy doing exactly what he was doing right now. At the end of the ride, he shook my hand another 5 times in a row, thanked me about a dozen times straight, and ran off on cloud 9. And THAT is why I enjoy these. Not just to make money, but for a memory a 10 year old boy will have of some lady flying a big blue WWII airplane out of Sun-n-Fun with him, the history of the airplane, and who knows, maybe a love of flying too. And with his character and personality, he'll be able to make some things happen, too. It was fun. I had several good riders, but he was my favorite this time. ;)
The airshow itself. I was supposed to fly in the warbird review on Friday. I got to the briefing at 11, only to find no briefing, because they'd canceled the warbirds. I learned we were to have a 30 minute slot, which they shortened to 15 minutes, then said there were too many of us signed up to fit in, so they just canceled it. Meanwhile, Mon-Wed they hadn't had a warbird section because they said nobody signed up. Bottom line, they were jet heavy. They had the Blues, they had 3 military jet teams. The skies were full of screaming jets the whole time. It was extra, super, uber annoyingly loud. I got ear plugs to wear back by the rides tent just so I wouldn't go deaf out there. No real warbirds all week, no warbird formations, no warbird showcase. Just jets. And there were a BUNCH of warbirds there. It's usually a pretty big draw for people, so I think they have made a mistake. I'm trying to figure out who to tell that to to get any kind of impact. People want more than the F-whatever demos over and over all day long. C'mon...
I think that catches up Sun-n-Fun. And my health for now. Except a retake of my vitals shows my BP is up, 136/79, and my temp is 99.7. Everything else is okay. I went back and added photos to the other posts. So I'll end with my trip home, and then I'll be all caught up.
Ethan arranged to have a guy named Mark from Grand Junction, CO pick us up in the Conquest in Lakeland and fly us home to Indiana. This is because I don't think I'd make it on an airline flight, hiking through the terminals with all our bags, standing in TSA lines, all of it, too much.
The ride home was a bit of a hoot. Mark has supposedly over 4000 hours in Conquests. He's been flying "30 years". I promised myself not to be "that guy", and just ride back there and be grateful. But he made it impossible to not be that guy. Right out of the gate, I noticed that he's very old school. Which is fine if you know what you're doing. But he had full-sized paper printouts of all the approaches and arrivals out of Lakeland, no iPad or anything. No biggie. He went to write his clearance down with pen and paper, no biggie, Steve prefers that too. Except he didn't know what he was doing. They read the clearance to him and he had to have them repeat it four times, and he didn't know what to do with it. *I* knew what our clearance was going to be because FlightAware will tell you if you pull it up, "expected clearance", and it's almost always right. If not exact, which it usually is, very very close. So he didn't know to do that. Then they gave him an airway Q118. He didn't know what that was. They told him it's an airway. He said he didn't have that in his equipment. We are operating with Garmin 430s and they don't have airways in them. But there's a yoke mounted iPad that does so you can look it up and plug in all the waypoints. He'd never heard of a Q route. He asked what VORs the airway was off of. A Q airway is a GPS airway. He had no idea. He said "I've never run into this in 30 years!" I'm like...you've never been given an airway in 30 years? No GPS airways in the last 20 years? Seriously? I didn't say that, but I did look it up for him, because I also found out he had NO charts with him. No way to look up anything except the Garmin 430. Dude was lost. So I told him the waypoints on the airway so he could plug them into the 430, and then sat back there and kept my mouth shut the rest of the way.
He didn't know how to reroute us from Frankfort to Kokomo without help. Looked up Louisville, KY as "local weather" for Kokomo when our AWOS was down. Didn't know what to do with the uncontrolled field at Kokomo. Did a right 360, called final when we were lined up with a different runway, almost messed up a kid on his instrument checkride on an RNAV approach, and when he landed, it was fine, firm, nothing special, and he said "Wow, that was a great landing!" We taxi off and he says again "Super smooth landing!" and now I'm snorting because if Morgan landed like that she'd be angry, and if I landed like that I'd be annoyed. But he left me no choice but to "Yeah!" it. If he has 4000 hours in a Conquest and thought that was a super smooth landing, I'd kind of hate to see the others. lol I kept Morgan entertained via internet up in the airplane, Starlink, to keep her mind off her guy on a checkride, and I was EVER so grateful to be home and back in Kokomo. But I also told her...just because someone has been doing it for a long time doesn't mean they're actually any good at it. He usually now does test flights on Conquests at West Star out there in day VFR at a tower field. This whole thing was outside of his recent experience, and that's fine, except you can tell he was a lot more impressed with himself than he should be. Morgan with 1400 hours total time way outperforms him in the IFR system, in the plane itself. And at least she knows what an airway is and how to find it, plug it in, and fly it. And yet, I am still grateful to him for getting me home in one piece, and to Ethan for letting me use his plane to get home. It sort of saved the day.
When we landed, Chuck was watching, and he came on out to the plane with his car, helped me load up, gave me a big hug, said he was glad I was still alive, and took us back to the hangar so we could start heading home. And that is the end of today, through 4:45 pm. Caught up!
I had to wear yoga pants home cause I can't zip up my jeans yet with the swelling. There's a happy Steve and my buddy Mark up there too. :)
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