Two Pilots & an LSW: Freakin’ Florida

The good news was that I didn’t have to wake up early. The bad news was I was headed to Florida, not leaving until 3 pm, which is the worst time to deal with weather from Tennessee on south, and the worst time to deal with traffic, airspace, heat, all of it. I looked at the radar a couple of times and you could see where it was going to blow up, little specs everywhere from Louisville on south.

I met up with Steve, Chuck and Ty to eat a decent lunch since I didn’t know when I’d be eating again and I had a 7+ hour flight to do. Ran my car through the car wash to get the bugs, which are getting bad again, off. Those things have cement in their veins.

Kaylee was off and running at her new job today! She was eager and a little nervous, but says she slept well anyway, and was within 5 minutes of when she wanted to leave, so that was all good. I told her to tell me how it went. So at 3 pm she texted she was done. At the time I was at 31,000’ in Indiana going around thunderstorms. She called, and I was actually able to talk to her on the phone for like 30 minutes total. When I’d get a radio call I’d tell her to hold on, I’d answer them, and then I’d talk to her. She could hear me talking to them, but couldn’t hear them and they can’t hear her. Just all through my headset. Which is pretty cool, man. She said the day was awesome. The people were nice and they were excited to have her start. They kept saying they wanted to keep her, so they wanted her to be happy, and they moved her first client from tomorrow at 8 am to Thursday at 11 am. Today she went to Lafayette to their facility there, and tomorrow she goes to where she’ll actually be spending most of her time, in Carmel. They have “Wellness Wednesday, and tomorrow afternoon they’ll all be leaving the office early to go bowling together. lol Kaylee will love that because she’s looking to make a couple more friends, and getting to know the people at work your age that you have something in common with will help with that. The boss told her, “I see here you say 26 is your max client list”, and Kaylee said yes, if that wasn’t a problem. She said “No, not a problem, it’s just around here, more than 25 is a lot for a caseload.” That’s about HALF of what the community mental health place expects. The boss flat out told her that it’s a lot of time and effort to retrain new people, so they work hard to make sure their people are well taken care of and happy. She said that as a contract therapist to start with, Kaylee can set her own schedule, her own times, her own number of clients she wants to do. That if she doesn’t have anyone scheduled in the afternoon sometime, she can go ahead and take off, and doesn’t have to stay in office. Boss even suggested limiting the number of days she offers to start with so she doesn’t have one on Tuesday and three on Wednesday and one on Thursday instead of 5 all on a Wednesday for example. Be efficient with her driving down and back, etc. So all in all, Kaylee is really excited about all of this, and about not being in the position she was in Marion with regards to constantly getting in trouble for not meeting quotas and for having to deal with people who don’t want to be dealt with, via courts, etc. The people here are here because they want help, not because they robbed a store and need to prove they went to therapy against their will. That’s something she’s eager to dive into.

Meanwhile, I’m up here writing this at 32,000’ too. ATC gave me a re-route around the Indiana weather that was way aggressive, took me way farther out of the way than I planned on. Then I had to go way around the other direction in the middle of Tennessee because of a bunch of weather there. That one’s going to be a problem for me going home, I’m thinking. Atlanta is also supposed to blow up and you can see the small stuff starting down there. Parts of Florida also having popups, but so far okay there.

I tried one thing. I pulled up Uber Eats up here in the air and said I wanted food delivery at 7:15 pm, and then found some seafood to have delivered at the FBO I’m going to. Originally I scheduled it for 7 but it was too close to when I’d actually arrive now, so I bumped it back. The app kept saying “You sure about this address? This seems very far from you”. Yes it is, right now, but I’m headed there. Fresh fish, jasmine rice, to be delivered to me to eat on the way home. ;)

I landed, they topped off my plane in like 20 minutes flat, I paid the bill, and 5 minutes later my Uber Eats food showed up, hot and ready. I went out to the plane, had my PDC (clearance) texted right to me, uploaded it into the avionics, when I called Ground I just had to tell them I had PDC and they sent me to the runway, and I took off from Palm Beach International with a minimum of muss and fuss. It was all so easy, the technology made it a cake walk. I enjoyed my trip all the way up until past Florida, and that's where it went wrong. Weather was indeed a factor. Storms blew up and were aiming for Frankfort and were going to get there about the same time I did. But I kept going, and eventually I started seeing them dissipating, but fast enough? Dunno. I still had to break through a line of weather, but my plan was to go north, get in front of it, and beat it either home, or to Indy Exec, which I felt I could get to, and if there, park under their overhang until the storms passed. But ATC said nobody was going to the north and they gave me a clearance way to the west, to get behind the weather. Except there was a WALL of weather, and I had to keep going further south and away, and I still had to break through the line, only now it was built up, full of lightning, night time so you couldn't see well except for the lightning, and took me 30 min longer. I got some great photos of the lightning in one of the clouds that I'll have to put up when I can, which is not tonight.

I landed at Frankfort at 11:30 pm. My whole windshield was completely fogged over, defrost isn't working, and it was so humid I couldn't see even if I wiped off the inside of the window. I had trouble taxiing off the runway safely, after I found the runway to land on, and not on the centerline. lol It was way later than I anticipated, it would take me an hour to get home, and then I'd have to get up at 5 am to drive back out to the airport for the next day. I had a bag with me, so I slept in Frankfort's upstairs sleep room. There's a bed (fresh pillowcases and sheets in the drawer next to the bed), a bathroom with a shower. I crawled up in there and slept until 6:20, which was a much better time to get up; got ready and went out to start the next day...

I'll upload pictures sometime soon, and talk about today, and Kaylee's next first day, tomorrow.