Not as Planned

The dental appointment this morning was fast, and weird. They used a wrench to unscrew the post out of the middle of my tooth hole, and they did some kind of mold off of that, and then they used a caulking gun to do something else in there with a mold, then they did a tray with that stuff in it on my bottom teeth, then again on my top teeth, and that was a lot of goopy stuff in my mouth. But the caulking gun and the wrench in the mouth were the worst. Afterwards he had to use the wrench to bolt in the thing in my hole again, and it didn't hurt, but you could feel it, and it felt weird and I didn't like it. I as in and out of there in 20 minutes flat though.  Dec. 15th is my last appointment for it, hopefully, where I will once and for all have the permanent tooth in there.

From there the race was on. I was trying to get the Conquest over to Toledo as soon as I could. I called off using the Cherokee Six since we didn't know the runway conditions and didn't have time to drive two hours round trip to find out. So Steve, Morgan and I took the Aerostar. It's 500' overcast, and I take off, am in the clouds, and the nose wheel never came up. My gear wasn't working right. I recycled it, no good, so I told Grissom I had to go back into Kokomo. They asked if I needed assistance, I said no, I got vectors for the ILS 23 into Kokomo, and half an hour later I'm back on the ground.

So next we take the 172RG. Except there's a potential for icing in the air, too, which is now illegal to do in a non-FIKI airplane like the RG. (Flight into known icing). Except we were just flying around in it for the last 30 minutes and there was zero ice. It's about too cold for ice anyway. So Morgan and I took the RG into Frankfort, had to shoot the RNAV into there. She drops me off, takes off and heads for Toledo IFR. I get the Conquest ready and take off and fly right over the top of her doing 313 knots while she's doing 160 knots. lol It's IFR in Toledo, so I get the ILS 25 Zulu into there. The runway is in good shape, as is Frankfort's, while Kokomo's is not good, and the ramp in Toledo is a sheet of ice. It's so hit and miss everywhere.

I drop off of the Conquest and wait for the RG to catch up, and eventually she does show up. ;) I get in, and we head back to Kokomo, and have to shoot the RNAV 23 back into that an hour and a half later with some nasty headwinds all the way home.

The ramp in front of the RG hangar was ice, we almost couldn't get the plane out. So I left it out and asked our guys to top it off and put it away for us, so we could drive the hour over to Delphi to check out that runway for ourselves for the next round of things to do tomorrow or Friday. 

Morgan drove in her VW Bug, and now that it was 3 pm, we stopped at Wendy's for a late lunch, and went out to Delphi. The runway had ice on it, but it wasn't drifted over or anything, and it wasn't a sheet of ice, it was patchy. I had her drive on it and hit the brakes, and it wasn't that bad. In other words, it would work as long as it's not a huge crosswind. So that's in our plan for tomorrow.

It took us another hour to drive back to Kokomo Airport, and then we met up with Steve, drove to Grindstones, left two of our cars, and the three of us went down to Greek's Pizzaria to meet up with the guys and have dinner. I wasn't super hungry yet, but it's good pizza and leftovers, and it's something better to do than sitting on my couch and pouting.

Now we're in limbo for a day or two. I wait to hear from National that they are ready for me to come test fly the Conquest with them. Then Morgan and I drive to Delphi, pick up the Cherokee Six. She lands at Frankfort so I can pick up the 340's logbooks, and we can drop them off in Defiance, for the mechanic, for the airplane that is selling. Then I get run to Toledo, where I test fly the Conquest for 2 hours while they work on engine parameters.  If all is well, I send the Cherokee back to Frankfort, then I fly the Conquest there and leave it to be put away, get in the Cherokee with her, go back to Delphi, and help her put it away in the icy hangar area. Drive an hour home. Now. I don't know if that happens tomorrow morning, tomorrow afternoon, or at any point on Friday. No clue. So I sit and wait and hope the weather cooperates for all of that, and by the way, the temps will be a low of 6 degrees tomorrow night, with windchills in the double digits below zero. That's a bunch of bull crap. BULL. Crap. Normally we run decent temps into January. This is January/Feb. weather and we are still in November/early December. Just...no. I can't do this for 100 more days.

By the way, Rania is pregnant right now, and Tanner and his wife Halle are also expecting now too, due in July. Two new "Cherry" grandbabies coming. :)