Iron Mountain

I didn't quite get enough hours in bed last night, my ring was correct when it said I had a sleep deficit. But not too terrible. I was up at 6 am, out of the house by 7:15, off the ground by 8:15, over to Versailles (pronounced "Ver Sails") Ohio by 9 am, picked up two guys who also own a Conquest that are Ethan's friends, and took them up to Iron Mountain to pick up their airplane. Landed up there in some gusty winds, rolled out, and Gary said "you're very smooth" and I said thanks! Some days we all get lucky, eh? ;)

I enjoyed my trip home by myself above the clouds listening to music and playing a game up at 26,000' all alone.  It was peaceful, and relaxing, and nice.

So I came home because I was tired, told Steve I was going to try to take a nap and then I'd thought about flying the Champ because it was sunny and warm and a perfect day. He said "YES, you need to go do that!" Later when my nap was unsuccessful, he said "Get out of here and go fly the Champ. You need a smile on your face." So I did. I took a picture of myself smirking in front of the airplane to send to Morgan who I knew was in Indy and would want to be flying the Champ too. She fired back within seconds and asked if I'd still be there in an hour and she'd be on her way. lol 

I hit all the things and flew for 1.2. Then when I knew she'd be getting close, I started flying down the highway until I spotted her, flew over the top of her a few times, then headed back and landed and picked her up. She flew for the next 45 minutes or so, then we topped it off and put it away, and both had a smile on our faces.

Steve wanted Outback, so I ordered it from the hangar, picked it up, brought it home, and we enjoyed steak and a new Statham movie, "Shelter". Good end to the day. Nothing on tap for tomorrow. Monday is a trip to Missouri (Malden, MO).

Iron Mountain, Michigan, which is still quite frigid up there

Me smirking in front of the Champ to taunt Morgan

Pennyslvania

I'm writing this a little wired and a little tired at 8 pm. lol 

I was up at 6:30, and I will be up at 6:30 tomorrow too for a trip to OH then MI then back home. I slept okay, but my sleep monitor stuff did mention that my resting heart rate was higher than normal. But I think the Oura ring is a little confused, because it told me today that my biometrics were telling it that I was relaxed. I was not relaxed. At all. But in my medical meeting today, my pulse was 66, and my blood pressure 110/78. They commented on it. So apparently I can fool a ring and a doctor into thinking I'm cool as a cucumber. ;)

I'm wired up because the whole day was stressful from the get go, including the flight in. It was VFR, was supposed to be VFR, the weather was perfectly fine. We take off and Morgan pulls up her phone ten minutes later and says "Pittsburgh just went below minimums!" I'm like...what?! Sure enough, it was down to 1/8 mile and "freezing fog". WHAT?! I look around at other airports and several of them in that area are going down. I don't know where that came from, but that was an awful feeling, because I had to be at the meeting at 10 am, and if I had to land somewhere else and get a car, I was going to be at least an hour late, and I didn't even know if they'd still see me. I came up with Plan B and C on where to go, and then I powered back just a little. I wanted to delay my arrival as long as I could in hopes it would lift, without delaying so far I ended up late. It worked perfectly. But it stayed below minimums until SEVENTEEN MINUTES OUT. Finally Morgan yells "It's UP to minimums!" I took a deep breath for the first time in a hot minute. Approach tells us that people are breaking out at minimums. We shot the approach, landed, I got the courtesy car, and I walked into the appointment at 9:50 am. After going to the wrong building first. Apple maps said go one place. It definitely wasn't there. Google maps sent me to a second place. It was there. Morgan dropped me off then took the car back, and I was there until almost noon.

It didn't go as well as I hoped, and what I needed resolved is not, yet. I have another appointment March 4th towards that end, and then it'll be a waiting game. I'm pretty chill most of the time, but this has been and is stressful. I think it will resolve fine in the end because there's no reason it shouldn't. But these don't always resolve properly even when they should. So I won't be 100% relaxed until this is done and over with. And probably not for the next couple years, either, until this falls off the radar.  He also warned me that there are still snags that could happen, and listed three of them, most of them involving extra time and money. I'm just hoping for...quick, seamless resolution after March 4th, and less cortisol running through my system. ;)

The kitchen floor is in, and we like it. I'll take an 'after' photo once trim and stuff gets put up.

On the way there

Morgan landing at KPIT

Getting ready to take off for home

Louisville

I woke up at 3 am for no apparent reason, and I was really awake. So around 3:30 am I just got up. I had several things on my mind, so I just took care of them and shot off a bunch of emails from 3:30-5 am. lol

When I can't sleep, things I need to do weigh on my mind. And the below kept circling in my mind, so I decided to just deal with them. So I emailed the Cirrus place and asked them why I couldn't schedule the airplane any more. The maintenance center in PA to let them know we weren't coming to pick up the Cheyenne on Friday after all. The insurance checkpilot for the Cheyenne to know that I wouldn't be able to do the checkout. Asked a question about maintenance to someone with specifics. Shot off some questions to the doc in Pennsylvania I'm visiting tomorrow. Organized a few things, and then around 5:30 am I decided to try to lie down again, because I didn't have to actually get up until 8:45 am, and that's still 3 hours. So I went back to bed, and I actually did fall back asleep until my alarm went off. My ring started off saying I didn't get enough sleep and had a sleep deficit, and then after that second round, it said I didn't get enough Deep Sleep, but other than that I was given the sleep thumbs-up. :)

This morning I took the 340 over to Delphi, picked up Clay, flew him down to the Louisville, KY area. The courtesy car there was actually a good sized black truck. I took it into town and ate at a place called Fireside Cafe. Since I was in a truck, I decided I should back up into the parking space, only to find there was a 6'-7' drop off with nothing to stop you. So I may have given myself a little extra room, since I could quite vividly picture dropping off the back side of that backwards and having all sorts of problems.

From there I ran to a nearby Hobby Lobby to see if they had the blue and white flowers Morgan's mom needed for her brother's wedding. They had no blue, and only one white, and someone had picked petals off of it, so it was unsuccessful.

The trip home was uneventful. I dropped off Clay then took off for Kokomo. Nice day, no problems, easy going. Put the 340 away, ran home, and Steve and I met Chuck at Grindestone's for dinner, brought some dinner home for Kaylee, and I started getting ready for tomorrow.

They said the appointment should take about an hour. I don't know what we'll actually be doing. I asked, but they told me where they were, how long it should take, and that I should bring my username and password for MedExpress "in case he does the exam and you need to submit it". That's not a guarantee that it would happen, just a suggestion to bring the log-in stuff. I'm nervous and cautiously hopeful.

They got about half our floor done. We're going to like it. :) Hopefully when I get back tomorrow they get most of it completed! I'll share "after" photos when it's done.

You can't even tell the size of this drop-off. But it's taller than I am by several feet.

4th unsuccessful Hobby Lobby Trip

Aw, Chute

The kitchen workers didn't get their truck fixed until late today, so they didn't come today either. They'll be back here tomorrow morning at 9 am and hopefully finish up by Friday afternoon. I'm still looking forward to that.

I slept great last night, not as long as previous nights, but woke up feeling pretty good. I think I finally caught up on a little sleep deficit. I was going to bed at 9:30-10:30 pm and sleeping until 8:30 am or so, until yesterday when I wasn't tired until 11:30 pm, stayed in bed awake until after midnight, and woke up around 7 am, which is all a more normal time for me. Waking up without the stuffy head, or the grogginess. Wheeeew.

I've been contacted to start flying the CAF C-47 called "Ready for Duty" known as "R4D" out of Dallas Ft. Worth. I said I don't have airline travel privileges and do have a busy schedule, but the head of it, Joe, said he would love to have me on board, that they want to build a group of experienced pilots for it, and even though I'm not experienced in C-47s yet, I'm experienced in warbirds, tailwheel, multi-tailwheel, CAF, rides programs, etc. SO I'm kind of excited about that. I feel stagnant in flying. I see a lot of people around me advancing, moving into all sorts of planes, fighters, even people I taught or who came way after me. I don't want to disappear off of the warbird or flying scene yet, so I think this might give me some more momentum in that arena too. We talked some tonight and will be talking more soon, and I THINK this one will actually pan out.  This is what it looks like:

Steve, Chuck and I hit lunch at Grindestones, and then Morgan showed up at 1 pm, and she and I drove down to Indy Exec to go fly the Cirrus for the first time by ourselves, without the instructor. 

We get there, and a lady at the desk was worried about letting us take it because the winds were high, and the max allowable winds are 20 knots sustained. They were like 17 gusting 22. RIGHT down the runway. She was concerned, but she let us do it. It didn't have gas, so we had to get that topped off, and then I had Morgan start off in the left seat. She did the start up, taxi out, take off, and we went up in the air and mostly we were button pushing and figuring out screens. Then I took the controls and went up to 5500', as high as I could get, and I left some power in, and turned off the "save you" controls called ESP, that does the rudder for you and won't let you bank over 40 degrees, etc., and I did a power on stall, and I didn't coordinate it, and I kind of yanked it and 'accidentally' hit a rudder right when it was stalling, and whoop, there it is. It went into a right spin entry fairly aggressively, more abruptly than I figured it would. I immediately recovered, and as I was pulling up, the airplane yells "AUTOPILOT ENGAGED!" and it took over and leveled the wings and leveled off on altitude too. It was behind--I already fixed it before it took over, but hey, it got there eventually. :D I did not and will not let it get into a fully developed spin, but it will enter and exit a spin entry just like any other airplane, which honestly I'm glad to know. I don't like not knowing the envelope of the airplanes I fly. I'm also anti-authority and hate to be told what not to do, so that's a thing too, but...I still wanted to feel the airplane out anyway.

Oh chuuuuute! ;)

We were going to land at Kokomo, but the winds were stronger than 20 knots sustained, gusting over 27, so we listened to Marion's weather, and it was 19 gusting 25, so I went there instead. Morgan did 3 crosswind takeoffs and landings (50 degrees off), and then we pulled up and shut down the airplane. Switched seats, and I did a hot start, I did 3 crosswind takeoffs and landings there, then we went up and did a little more button pushing and wandering around before heading back to Indy Exec. The winds were still not 20 knots sustained, but reeeeally close, but also still right smack down the runway. I brought the plane in for a really pretty landing, so I was hoping my instructor was watching from his office. ;)

When we brought the keys back in to the office, the lady collecting the keys sounded nervous, she asked "Is everything okay? Did everything go okay?" We were like "Yep, no problems!" I don't think they get a whole lot of pilots who fly in close to the 20 knot winds, apparently. ;)

It was a good flight. We stumbled through some of the buttons and screens, because our instructor would hit some of the buttons for us, and it's hard to know what you don't know if you're not the one doing it. So I think we made good progress today. We're going to go flying some more next week and go on a trip, I'll do one leg, she'll do one leg, and shoot approaches on both ends, and just see if it's all sinking in and if we're feeling good about it. That was just my 3rd flight in it, so hey...

On the way back, we were hungry, stopped at Applebees for dinner, and then I'm home for the evening and trying to catch back up.

Ethan with 7 others is flying out to Vegas this week via Southwest Airlines, to save hours on the Conquest, then on to Marco until March 9th.

Guess that's about it for today...

Cheyenne

Got the text today that the Cheyenne is done and ready to go! It'll have been 5 months and 8 days since it last flew, since I last flew it. It will be coming out of MAJOR maintenance, torn apart and put back together. So I will be being very careful with it.  My medical appointment in PA happens to be by Pittsburgh International on Friday, and where the Cheyenne is is a literal 7 minute flight away. So the plan right now is to take Morgan on Friday and go to PIT, go to my appointment, and whenever I get done, hop over to AFJ and pick up the Cheyenne. She flies the Aerostar home and I fly the Cheyenne home. It'll be good to get it home. And then I have to worry about getting my insurance checkout done in it soon too. :)

Got my invite for the T-6 groundschool on March 7th, and already got my quiz done. They also sent out a syllabus from the CAF HQ for T-6 training now. It's so much. SO MUCH RED TAPE. A "demo" lesson with the student in the back seat first, then like 7 separate flights listed, and a ton of ground including aerodynamics, and also requirements to do loops and rolls even though you're not allowed to do that with riders or on your own unless you get a specific endorsement from them for it, just to "demonstrate the capability of the airplane". *sigh* I don't know about messing with this one with the CAF. 

The kitchen guys didn't make it in today, something about their truck having trouble. Hopefully they make it tomorrow--I'd love to get this project wrapped up. They originally said they thought it could be done Wednesday night, so now hopefully by Thursday night. 

Still sleeping well at night, by the way. :)

Nothing else going on I can think of...

Finis

Yay, the Olympics are over as of tonight! They're over as of now, but they'll drag it out past tonight. And tonight is a new TV show again, Grey's Anatomy, which will thrill Steve SO MUCH. ;) I'm not opposed to the Olympics, I'm just opposed to being force fed them for 2 weeks. It's like people being forced to watch the SuperBowl for 2 weeks straight if they don't want to but want to watch TV. ;)

My local CAF groundschools are also over with. I started the day at 9 am doing the C-45 stuff. I think it went well, minus one thing I forgot to talk about that I meant to talk about, but all in all it was good. Then we broke for lunch, and Sparky (Tim S) did the BT-13. His was Really short, but none of us minded, I have to say. Now my CAF website RallyPoint, where you plug in all your stuff, is Green again for me, meaning I am good to go on flying everything except their T-6. Groundschool for that is March 7th, and I have to have a checkride in it too if I want to fly one of theirs. 

Biggest problem with today is it was 22 degrees and snowing again. Who needs that crap?

I have continued to sleep really well. With that, I have noticed that my heart rate, both resting and average walking heart rates, have gone back down to nice lower levels too.  I still get a mid-afternoon slump of sleepiness, and I've been going to bed earlier than I used to, but I can definitely tell I'm getting better sleep again. Thank goodness. I'm pretty sure the UV light on the room air purifier/noise maker was the biggest contributor to removing my sinus congestion and stuffy head every morning, believe it or not. And then the positioning of the pillow/wedge was making my body hurt, ache, and waking me up all night to reposition myself. I think I'm actually doing pretty well now!

It feels good that the CAF stuff is done, the public presentation over with, everything there up to date, so now it's time to move on to what's next. Tuesday flying the Cirrus for our "first solo", Wednesday I get my hair cut, Thursday I probably have a trip with Clay to Louisville, and Friday Pennsylvania. In the meantime, the guys should have the flooring done in our kitchen this week too, so that'll be exciting. They still have some caulking to do, a little touch up thing here or there, closets to finish, but the end of the week SHOULD provide us with hopefully completion in the kitchen...and then we have to put it all back. Wish us luck...

There's more folks behind and around us, but this is at Sheridan for the CRM and PT-26

A few more folks to the right side too, but this is Kokomo for C-45 and BT-13

Ground School Round One

Not much to report today. I drove to Sheridan at 8 am and we started ground school for CRM at 9 am. Did that until noon, then did PT-26 groundschool until about 3 pm. I took quizzes, participated in instruction and ground chat, got a review of the airplane, met up and hung out with folks, and then drove home to get ready for my round tomorrow. Nothing else really going around today...

Wind and Thunder

Mother Nature was very angry today. Low hanging grey clouds, 35 knot winds (or more) gusting around, power outages from the winds nearby, rain. Just a cold, grey, angry day. I didn't have to fly anywhere, so that was good. Wouldn't have been the best day for that!

I started watching "Severance" as something to watch, considering everything else is re-runs or Olympics. Boy is this a weird show. Don't bother. It's freaking...weird. And slow. A company puts a chip in people's brains (they choose this) that separates their personalities, one that goes to work every day 9-5 that has no memories of the other life, and one that is outside from 5 pm - 9 am and has no memory of the work life. So they call them "innies" and "outies", and they basically become two separate people inside one body. A decent premise, but the show is just....gosh it's weird. We don't know what they do or why, it's slow and everyone talks like a freak and it's dark and depressing and you don't even know why, and there's minimal actual interesting content. It's like watching paint dry. I kept waiting for it to get better, since it had  Christopher Walken and Patricia Arquette in it too, but she was EXTRA weird and uncomfortable, and now I just want to know how it ends and move on with what's left of my life. ;)

I got ready for the CAF weekend today. Got my presentation updated and saved off on a flash drive, got my quiz printed off for everyone, and did the prerequisites for tomorrow's CRM. I think I'm basically done other than actually attending all this stuff and then presenting mine.

The guys are still finishing up painting in our closets, repainting them white inside. Next week they should get our flooring done, and caulking and trim. They've pulled out our washer and dryer, so I did all our laundry last night in prep for that. I do like the kitchen so far.

Trying to decide if I buy/download the Cirrus training for the turbo tonight or just let it go. I think let it go, worry about it after this weekend.

I read an interesting article Here about a blood test that has been proven repeatedly to be accurate on predicting Alzheimer's before symptoms started. The older you are when you test positive for these proteins, the sooner symptoms will start, but it also gives you a heads up on starting treatments that can help. But so far they won't give you the test until you are a certain age and already showing symptoms, to confirm it that way vs expensive scans like they do now, or if you're part of the research on the blood tests. I don't know, I feel like I'd rather know and start taking something or doing whatever I can. 

Kaylee and Molly are doing all right, nothing new...

Night!

Nowhere Fast

It was thunderstormy this evening, which is kind of wild. Warm and wet and windy and grey outside. THAT time the weather got my head. I have an app, and any time I have a headache, I pull it up, and the last 5 times it said "weather variability" was in the red, or extreme risk for headaches for people. Yup. Gets me every time. But it wasn't bad because I caught it early this time.

I picked up some stuff from CVS for Steve, washed my car (yes, before the thunderstorms where my car was sitting out in a gravel parking lot), picked up a bunch of packages, drove down to Tipton to look at a 2026 Dodge Charger, did all our laundry so they can pull out the washer and dryer and work in that space, worked on my C-45 presentation for Sunday some, answered emails, did some scheduling, and went to the EAA meeting tonight.

One of my packages was the new Oura ring, which I am currently wearing. One difference I can tell from the apple watch is that you can't just look at your O2 levels. It has to collect data for a time frame and then it will report it back to you. The watch you can hit your O2 level any time you want to know. But the data the Oura spits back out is pretty impressive looking. You have to wear it consistently for a couple of weeks to get some of the stuff, and I'm going to do that, see what it says. I am just interested in all that. The ring itself is bigger than the jewelry I normally wear. I like small rings. But I can deal with it, and it's actually very lightweight and comfortable. You can also hook up a glucose monitor thingy on your arm and it'll read that out too through the same Oura app. I'm thinking about doing it to see what various foods cause the worst spikes for me, or the least spikes. For example, this guy I know who is diabetic can eat potatoes just fine, but brown rice makes his sugar spike like crazy.  I'd be interested in the data. Maybe I am a scientist at heart after all, even if Math never was my thing. ;)

I slept last night about 8 hours, and got a 97% on my sleep score. Again, I'm thinking maybe it's not hormones out of whack after all, thank goodness. I don't really have hardly any other symptoms. For a couple of weeks last month I was getting hot flashes at night, but now I'm not even having that happen. I dunno, man. It'll get here eventually, just waitin' and seein'.  In the meantime, I'm just grateful to be sleeping again these last two nights. I was about out of my ability to function properly on so little sleep, was making mistakes I don't normally make.

When I went to Tipton, I saw the car they wanted me to look at in the parking lot, so I went and looked at it, and I don't like it. I told Steve it looks like a dude car, and I don't like the back end of it at all. I don't even care about cars much and I don't like the back end of that car. It looks weird. The only thing I did like the best was from the outside, the roof looks like a roof. But from the inside, the whole roof is a big clear window you can see out of, all the way to the back. That's cool, I dig that. But the rear window is just...weird. Steve doesn't see it the same way, but I don't want to turn in my car from its lease in order to drive a car I feel like is a dude car with a weird back end. ;) The only colors there were also grey (nope), bright blue (hell no) and midnight blue, which was the nicest looking one but still screamed college aged boy to me. I don't want black, either. Also dude. I like my red, or some of the olive green ones out there. I got home, only to find out Steve had texted the sales guy and they had pulled one in for me to come inside and look at, opened it all up, cleaned it up, and were waiting on me, and I never went inside. Because I saw one outside and decided I didn't like it so I wasn't going to go inside and be like "heeeeyyyyy". But I didn't know they did all that, either, so I felt kinda bad.

Tonight's EAA meeting was quieter, there weren't a ton of people out. It was rainy, and there wasn't a lot on tap, so that might be part of it. They had a bunch of ham and beans and cornbread to eat, and I don't like any of those things, but they also had peach cobbler and ice cream, so I had a bowl of that for dinner. Good enough, right? It was fruit and grains and dairy, so hey. ;)

I'm trying to decide if I take someone with me next Friday to Pennsylvania. Steve is willing to go if I want but doesn't have a burning desire to. Kaylee wants to go. Morgan would want to go. A good reason to take her would be because I'm going into Philadelphia International, a big busy airport, and I very well may be rather distracted, before and after the appointment. Having Morgan along would be a safety net on the flying end of things. But I don't know that I want anybody along. For better or worse, most of the time I deal with things better when I'm not having to deal with anybody else, too. If I have to have someone else's comfort or thoughts or concerns on my mind, and don't feel like I can just...be...it can make it harder for me. It would be nice to celebrate with someone if that's in the cards. Would be nice to not have anyone around if there's not a good outcome. I don't know. Will chew on it some more and decide later.

Welp, last load of laundry just quit, so I'm going to get that stuff together and get ready for bed tonight.

Missouri

Actually, Illinois, Missouri, Illinois, northern Indiana, Home. 

Another 5 am wake-up call. But I took the wedge off the bed and slept on normal pillows, and I slept a lot better than I have in a long time. I like how the wedge props me up, but I think my body isn't positioning on it properly. My hips and knees and shoulder hurts and I wake up and flip around the rest of the night, hauling myself back up the wedge. Last night I slept decently for the first time in a long time. Maybe it's not age related after all, maybe it was just positioning issues, which would actually be lovely. lol The main thing I'm worried about is stuffing up without being propped up as high, but...I didn't last night. So fingers crossed.

Today was beautiful weather, but the barometric pressure dropped from 30.23 down to 29.57 today--and I didn't end up with a headache either somehow. Amazing. But it was sunny and warm, 65-67 degrees, and it was just lovely. Windy and gusty, direct crosswinds several places I went up to 27 knots. The Conquest does well with it at least.

We went to Morris, Illinois with Morgan, Tell and Stephen to pick up a guy there and fly them all over to Lee's Summit, MO. Spend a little time there where Morgan and I ran to three local Hobby Lobby's looking for specific blue and white flowers her mom is trying to find for her brother's upcoming wedding, unsuccessfully so far. They're all out of those specific flowers! It's wild. Then a fast breakfast, back to the airport, the guys came and we flew the one back to Morris, then went to Elkhart, IN for a couple of hours. Lee's Summit was CAA, so that was good. Elkhart had a $300 landing fee! That is higher than the last time I went into Chicago Midway! Unreal. It was waived with 85 gallons of fuel, which wasn't CAA but at least was only $5.30/gallon so it wasn't as bad as it could have been. I already made note of that in ForeFlight to warn people. A $300 landing fee in small town Indiana is stupid. I even told the front desk lady, when she said "That's a pretty good deal, isn't it?" about waiving the $300 with $450.50 worth of fuel, that "Well, $300 is a really expensive ramp fee." I told her I wasn't upset at them personally, I know they don't set the prices, but just so ya know, that's a really high fee!  Some day I may learn to keep my opinions to myself, but I doubt it. ;)

Our kitchen is totally painted now, and looks good, even inside the closets. Hopefully they do the floor soon/next. I don't feel like putting all this stuff away, but I do look forward to it being done.

I don't have anything on the schedule for tomorrow or Friday, so I'm going to work on my CAF groundschool for the C-45 that I have to do again this year, along with laundry before they pull our washing machine out to do the floor in there, and errands that need done. Saturday is part of our ground schools, Sunday is when I have to do mine. Tuesday Morgan and I are taking up the Cirrus for the first time by ourselves. And then Friday I go to Pennsylvania to meet with the medical guy and his team...

Kaylee's giant TV is mounted on her wall and I'm pretty sure she loves that. Molly is fine. Steve is behind as always but doing okay. Nothing new on any other fronts I can think of for now.

On the way home

We took photos in front of all three of the HL's, with our fingers up for each stop. I'll just put the first one ;)

Mansfield

It was time to head back to Mansfield, Ohio. I've been there so many times, from when Kaylee was a counselor to three different company people who have business there. It's kinda funny. Today I took Andy B's two guys there. 

There was a guy who flew in in a little Piper from a local flight school. He came in and took the crew car for almost 3 hours, the time we were there. So I ended up ordering in from a local pizza place and having it delivered instead.

I'm really sleepy now. My night rest has been bad again for awhile. I sleep 3 maybe 4 hours, then wake up for the rest of the night no matter what.  It's getting pretty old! So I'm going to try to go to bed early tonight, as tomorrow is another 5:10 am wake-up call for another trip, this time to Illinois to pick up a guy, then Kansas City for some projects, back to IL to drop off a guy, then maybe Elkhart if there is time, then home long day!

The Conquest will probably be sold in the next two months--he has an offer. And I am finished with the initial Cirrus checkout, after a shit ton of groundschool. I have the turbo checkout to complete, but our flight Friday was bumped for 3 weeks. So, for now, off we go.

Sunrise taking off on Runway 9

Three Blackhawks out there on the ramp behind me. Pretty mean looking dudes

Mansfield wants you to know there are things to do here

Home

Kaylee brought Molly over on a walk, on her leash. Molly wanted to wander around outside in the dark, but Kaylee wanted to come see our newly painted kitchen. She made Molly come over, but Molly stood by the door and just wanted back out because the door was closed and cats hate closed doors. lol 

The kitchen looks good. You could really tell that it looked super white next to the other tan color in there, but once the whole thing was painted white, it just looked normal and good, only brighter in there without the burgundy and the tan. The space looks bigger and brighter, just like we hoped. It also shows how bad our floor looks now, so looking forward to that being out of there too!

I went out to the airport and flew with Josh F in the Champ for 1.7. It was 16 knots down the runway, and he's working on his tailwheel endorsement. He was with Jerry, moved over to me, and he's kind of gone backwards. Started off able to do wheel landings but struggled with 3 points. I got him back to 3 points and now he can't wheel land. lol So we worked on those today. It felt good getting out, it was warm and sunny and we enjoyed it.  Well, I enjoyed it more than he did, but still. ;)

I was at lunch when I got a ping, a message from my doctor in Russiaville. Four days ago I'd asked him to write me a letter for the FAA towards my upcoming medical. I hadn't heard from him since, and today I'm sitting there when it comes in, so I read it with my heart pounding, and he wrote it perfectly. I forwarded it on to the people I'm having help me, and they agreed it was a good letter, and we move forward from there. I can't wait until this part is over. And I'm gonna have to be pretty much dead again before I will ever go into a hospital again. This has been and is rather stressful. The FAA is months, years in some cases, behind on "reviewing" medicals. If I'm grounded for that long, while they look things over to decide it was all fine after all, I am...in trouble. I will sleep a lot better on the other side of this one.

I'm looking at getting a ring that will monitor sleep stuff better, more data plots, etc., than the Apple Watch does, with a LOT less EMF impact, if that actually matters. I like having the data, I find it very interesting, and sometimes helpful. The watch is good for some things, I think the ring would be good for sleep.

Will have to go to bed early tonight with a 5 am wake-up call for Mansfield, OH tomorrow...

Detroit

Also known as De-toilet.

Actually it was kind of nice. It was a warm, bright, sunny, clear day, not a cloud in the sky, and wandering around Detroit a bit I didn't end up on the wrong side of town, the bullet-proof glass at cashier stations at McDonald's or bars on the outside of windows areas, and never did I feel like I was gonna get mugged, raped or shot. So, it was a better experience than the last time I was in Detroit. ;)

I ended up getting an arrival into Detroit, and they made me Descend Via, which is my least favorite, most rife for mess ups. But I was only on it for about 60 seconds before even at 235 knots I was too slow for them and they moved me off the arrival. lol  I wanted to take photos of the area as it looked pretty cool, as DTW is a huge airport, like 12 runways, 4 different ground frequencies, etc., but I was too busy. Then they had me switch runways on less than a 2 mile final, and I was just kept hopping to make sure I didn't goof something up in there.  :)

On the ground I grabbed one of their crew cars to wander around. I found a place to eat that looked interesting, but it was a little off the beaten path and small, and I decided to stick with the main drag, and ended up at Red Robin instead. ;)

Drove around for awhile and looked at the sights before heading back to the airport. They weren't gone super long, but I had enough time to do that, catch up on the logbook stuff, and do a little reading.  When they got back, I got a Departure out of there, and there was an aircraft disabled on the closest runway so there was a lot of taxiing around to get to another runway. 

I dropped the guys back off at Delphi, then headed right to Indy Metro. I was supposed to meet 2 guys at 5:30 pm. T and J. Well, nobody showed up until 5:45 or so, and then T walked out and was like "Oh, are you here?" after I'd asked at the desk if he was there. He had another guy with him, but not J. So T and this other guy and I went out to the airplane, and I showed it to them. Other guy took video and photos, then left for dinner. T and I went up for a flight. He has 20 hours solo in one and about 200 hours with J in one. I let him fly from the right seat, and he hit buttons and flew the plane and did an approach just to make sure all the systems worked and such. He landed and it was dusk. J who was supposed to be there by 6 now, wasn't going to land until 6:45. T left for dinner and I was left sitting in the FBO waiting on J who was flying in from Tennessee. The FBO closes at 7. At 6:55 I text J that they are closing up and I'm going to have to wait outside by the plane. He shows up, and decides he doesn't want to fly it because T already did and it's dark and he's tired. Fine by me. I show him the plane on the ground, and we both leave. I fly back to Frankfort and have to put it away, and then drive on home. I got home late, and was tired, went to bed around 11, slept until 7:30, so not too shabby.

I also texted my Cirrus instructor and asked for clarification on a lot of things. He said Morgan was done with the regular Cirrus as of yesterday, but didn't say that of me. He told me we needed a turbo transition course and I couldn't find one. He didn't tell Morgan that, but he did say there was a required icing course. It's $159. I know a lot about ice, I don't need more of that. So I asked about all that and a few other things. I AM done with the regular, still have to fly the turbo, the icing training IS required, so I went and found and did that today, which took a ton of time. It was good in the end because it's part of the POH that it's required every 24 months, and it did go over Cirrus stuff too, not just icing in general. Etc. So I do still have to find the SR22T differences course and do that, and then the light at the end of the tunnel is the 20th, if the weather permits me to actually go flying that day in the turbo...

A "how fast are your reflexes" game. I scored with reflexes as fast as a 22 year old. I'll take it :D

Indy, where I did have time to take a photo

Cirrusl-y

The guys started working on our kitchen today. They got the base boards off, trim, and did a primer coating on the red on the walls, and left to let it dry. Tomorrow they'll either do another coat of primer, or start in on the painting. The room is already brighter with the red gone.

No news on anyone else. Today the only thing I accomplished was mostly finishing my Cirrus transition training. I'm just writing down what we did for my own posterity, nobody else will find it interesting, fair warning.

I stopped at Frankfort first to wipe down the Conquest again and get my Lemo plug headset out of it, as the Cirrus only has Lemo plugs in it. Got to Indy Exec at 1:40 pm, and walked over to meet instructor Pat at 2 pm. We didn't get going for awhile. I did the preflight, sat in the plane and looked over some of the buttons and checklists, and then he arrived and off we went. We flew to Crawfordsville to do some button pushing and navigation, and on the way did steep turns, slow flight, power off and on stalls again. We'd already done all that, but he said they (Cirrus) wanted to see that done a couple times, so fine, did it a couple times. Got to CFJ and did 3 normal takeoffs and landings there, a short field takeoff, then a half flap landing, then a no flap landing. Left there and did the RNAV 27 at Frankfort, something I'm familiar with, but finding frequencies and approaches and putting the charts up on the screens, it's all the buttons that are tough. Did a touch and go, then the published missed approach, then came back in for a landing. He pulled the power and we did an engine out to the runway. I made him twitch, swinging the plane around and getting it down on the runway, but I made a nice landing out of it and made me smile, anyway.  Took off and went to Kokomo and did the ILS 23. Missed approach and a hold over at Marion, did the VOR 15 approach at Marion, circle to land Runway 22. Touch and go on Runway 22, climbed up and did unusual attitudes under the hood. Then the RNAV 18 circle to land 36 back at Exec. I hand flew all of that except for one approach that he said had to be coupled with the autopilot. We flew for 3.3 hours, and I hand flew all of that, as precisely as I could. Didn't do too bad. Towards the end I think I was getting a little fatigued because my last approach got a sloppy a couple times on pitch. But overall it went very well. He said one more flight in the turbocharged Cirrus SR22 G7 model and I'd be signed off and done. I'm scheduled for that on the 20th, which is as soon as I could get in. Meanwhile, Morgan has a flight tomorrow and Monday and will be done first.  I Am tired tonight though, that was a good work-out.

Tomorrow I go to Detroit International, the big one. Taking the Conquest there with Nick and Clay, then dropping them back off at Delphi, then running down to Indy Metro where I'm meeting with a couple of guys who want to look at the Conquest to potentially buy it. Which is why I wiped it down and took out the trash this afternoon and will bring a rag along to do again tomorrow if need be. The sooner this sells, the sooner Ethan looks at getting something else like the M600 to fly. 

That's about it. It's only 9 pm and I'm already beat. Will have to go to bed early tonight even though I don't have to get up early tomorrow. :) 

This is the airplane

It's a pretty blue color, I like it. I am going to try to get a good photo of it one of these days. These all suck for different reasons.

Illinois

It was a beautiful day to fly. I met up with Ethan G (instructor Ethan) at Kokomo just after 8:30 am, pulled out the 340, and I flew the first two legs. I took us to Delphi to pick up Clay, and then over to Pekin, Illinois. Severe clear and easy going. We were there for 3.5 hours, Clay was done, and I had Ethan fly us back to Delphi, then back home. With that he exceeded his needed multi hours to head to the airlines. He still has some night, hood, and total time to do, but he's doing fine on all that, it was the multi hours he was worried about, and I took care of that for him in 2 flights flat. lol

While he and I were doing our thing, Morgan did a Be Real with Steve at the hangar, so here are these two pictures. :)

Morgan & Steve

Me, airline-pilot-as-of-next-April baby Ethan, and Clay in the back

Steve and I went to Texas Roadhouse, and somehow I pulled a muscle or pinched a nerve in my back a bit. I'm wondering if Kaylee has any muscle relaxants I can borrow. :p

Tomorrow the guys start working on painting our kitchen, as they are all done next door. Yay!

Heat Wave

It was 50 degrees today and sunny! Yay!! I have a timer on my phone that counts down to Daylight Saving Time in March, which at least makes it lighter for longer during normal people hours and makes it feel like Spring is actually here and life is actually beginning again.

I only slept in until 8 am, and woke up with an unsurprising headache after yesterday, not one I wake up with a 3 am, but one I wake up at 8 am and am mostly okay but then it starts up and gets bad no matter what I do or take within a couple of hours. So then I have to bring out big guns and make it go away, successfully, by lunch. 

Met up with Ty and Mary and Chuck and Steve for lunch, and then did the errands run. One funny one, I had to pick up a vacuum cleaner Steve had bought that was shipped accidentally to our PO Box instead of the airport, and they couldn't deliver it there, but they kind of did anyway, and left us no note, no slip, no way to get it, just an email to him that it was unable to be delivered but left at the post office. So I went in with minimal hope that they'd actually have or find it, but fortunately they did. We gave our old vacuum to the airport, threw away the airports ancient 3 heavy ones that didn't suck much any more (or did suck at sucking, or something like that) and bought ourselves a new one.

Then I went to the car wash, and that was the Thunder Dome, man. None of the gates were working, it was the first nice day in ages, and the cars were lined up almost outside the entire parking lot. So cars were jostling for position to get in the single line from the 4 lanes, and it was like a bad NASCAR race at snail speeds. Kaylee would have hated it. Morgan would have hated it. I thought it was great and funny and let the aggressive side out. I got in line at an appropriate time but didn't let anyone in who wasn't waiting their turn like they should. Sometimes the rude or the bold rule the world, they get used to just taking what they want and everyone just lets them, and I don't like letting them. It's one of my small pleasures in life. In the car wash lane. Hey, sometimes it's the small things in life. ;)

From there I went out to the airport to make sure the 340 was ready for tomorrow's trip (it is), and decided, what the heck, it's a beautiful day, and I took up the Champ for an hour. I did a Be Real of me in the front seat pointing at the empty back seat, knowing Morgan would see it and be jealous. Which she was, because she was at the dentist having a terrible time. But she got out of there and came out to the airport and arrived right as I was shutting down the plane from topping it back off, with her face so numb she smiled and talked like she had a stroke, and couldn't feel from her nose down. lol We went back up together for 4 landings and had a good time before putting it all away, going back to the maintenance hangar, doing some work stuff with business cards and students, and then going out to dinner, by which time she could feel her face again so she wouldn't eat her own tongue. It was a nice day.

At home Steve wanted me to write up a letter of recommendation for him. I don't even know the kid, but Steve told me what it was for, and it took me 2 hours of half watching "Will Trent" and "Doc" while trying to concentrate before I finally got it done and sent it to Steve to read, print, sign, scan, and send on if he liked it. He informed me it was a most excellent letter, so even distracted I apparently can still write halfway decently.

Then Morgan sent two shots of herself in a bridesmaid dress and asked which looked better. I finally told her I picked B, and she told me that her mom picked A. I said that I suck at this so not to go with me. She said she liked this about A and this about B. I told her why I liked B and not A as much--I thought A just kind of hangs there kind of boring and you can see every bump and line underneath, while B has some shape to it, some lines that draw the eye and provide some...shape and design, and she agreed, and said she was going to make a change on it at the bust area which is the part she didn't like, but then go with B. Her friend Maggie and her sister chose A, her other friend Izzy chose B, and she stuck with B. Then I asked Kaylee, and Kaylee said A. I told Morgan I am not the person to trust on this, I don't know what I'm doing. But I pose these two photos to you. Both dresses need ironed of course, but...

Welp, it's bed time. Tomorrow is a scintillating trip to Illinois, in the 340, with instructor Ethan.

Most of this snow is melting off now. Yay!

Empty back seat. ;)

And this was her reaction with her dental face. HAHAHAHA Totally worth it.

Louisiana

I kind of missed something last night about Kid Rock. It started out with him screaming "MY NAME IS KIIIID" for his first hit/famous song when he was a sleezy rocker. Transitions to classical music, and then he comes out without the glam, under his real name, I didn't even recognize him at first, and sang a song about forgiveness and redemption, interspersed with clips of him publicly proclaiming his faith. With a good voice, for the record. So I had to give a little nod to that. Mostly I couldn't care less about this year's Superbowl, or this year's half time show(s) for that matter, and I think people must be bored or on edge to get so completely bent out of shape over it. Like...who cares, man? Does this negatively affect your quality of life in any way? Live and let live, enjoy what you enjoy, ignore what you don't enjoy.

I went to bed before the Superbowl was over so that I could wake up at 4:50 a.m. Only got about 5.3 hours of sleep last night, which isn't quite enough, but I did the best I could. Met up with Instructor Ethan at Frankfort at 6:30 am and pulled out the Conquest in the frigid air, and we were on our way to Louisiana. Where it was completely fogged over. I spent the entire flight trying to see if I could get in, what the weather was doing, seeing where I could go, changing the plan about 6 times. I found a place to get into that was a 2 hour drive away from their project. Then right as I needed to start coming down for that, one of the airports down there went "up" to almost minimums. I started calling AWOS on my phone with the internet. I had to make a call, and the airport I could probably get into was next to the airport we were supposed to go into, but was still reporting fogged over. But the reports were old and there was a chance. But...I went with my gut. I bypassed our alternate and kept going, and instead of going to the original I went to the one next to it, which ended up being just fine to get into. That was a long 2.5 hours of effort. It was good for Ethan though, as he hasn't experienced anything like that. I let him do the flying. That's why I don't like taking some people on trips, *I* like to fly too. ;)

It was a long day to hang out next to someone I don't know that well, as we didn't get home until 8 pm. So 14 hours worth of small talk is hard for me. He's a good kid, two years younger than Kaylee, headed off to be an airline pilot in April, needs 7 more hours of multi time to meet his minimum hours. No real world experience, just instructing and now off to fly the airline skies. Fortunately I don't mind his company, but it's still too much time to be "on". I'm taking him with me Wednesday to Illinois, too, in the 340. He did a nice job with the flying, just a couple of glitches that you'd expect when flying a new-to-you airplane.

They're doing Mardi Gras stuff all over down there, and it was quite festive and pretty. We went out to eat breakfast, then waited there for the guys to come back, which didn't happen until mid-afternoon.

I don't know what else today. I'm really tired and as soon as this show is over (Rookie) I'm going to bed and staying there until I feel like it tomorrow!

Lake Charles, LA

Sunshine, 70 degrees, palm trees.

Mardi Gras decorations

Sunset on the way home

Super

It's SuperBowl Sunday, but like I said, it's going to be hard to top the college game with IU, particularly when I don't care much about the Seahawks and I dislike the Patriots. I guess since I can't root for both teams to lose, do I go for the Patriots who are a new team and not the annoying Tom Brady/Bill Bellicheck team, or do I go for the Seahawks who are deliberately bullies on the field? *sigh* We'll see if the commercials are any good. If I'm even around. I have to go pick up the Conquest at some point today, I have no idea when, and I'm just sitting around waiting for it. Which is sort of annoying.

Kaylee's kitchen and bathroom are painted and the bathroom has new flooring in it. They are almost done over there, just have to put back in light fixtures and shower curtains and then she can start hanging stuff on her wall again and cleaning up. She's also getting Chuck's old giant TV for her living room, and is looking forward to that. 

Kaylee created a monster with Molly, who now wants to go out for a walk all the time. Friday night she walked over to the deck where the guys were hanging out and didn't want to leave. It's really cold out and she is a floof ball and apparently is warm enough, because she really likes it outside, and when Kaylee made her go home, she stood at the door and meowed to go back out. lol

Yesterday we finally de-Christmased. The lights were cheery and bright out on Kaylee's deck, but it was time, and it took most of the day. I really don't enjoy that part of it. Putting up and taking down the stuff takes hours and hours, and isn't even as festive and bright as other people's houses except for the tree. I wish someone would just come in and do it for me and make it look all pretty, and then when it's over with, a couple weeks later, would come in and make it go away. Without me having to pay an arm and a leg ;) But it's gone now, and things are almost back to normal, except our houses are torn apart doing or waiting on doing some remodel stuff. We're living out of our guest bedroom for food, bringing it into the kitchen to eat whatever isn't in the fridge. You didn't realize how much you use stuff from the pantry until they pantry is gone and you have to hike for it.

Health-wise. If you remember, I'd had a spike of cholesterol for some reason two tests from different places to make sure it wasn't a fluke, took Citris Bergamot for awhile and the next tests it was back down.  It's also supposed to help with blood sugar levels. Mine have been okay anyway. So Steve took it for a few months here, and then went in and got his blood work done. His blood sugar levels did drop, by a decent amount, but his cholesterol went up, and by a decent amount, too. We don't really want him on the statins as they have side effects too, but his cholesterol went from 177 to 235 off of them, so...experiment didn't work for him. :( Maybe for blood sugar. He's going to go off of it altogether and just go back on statins and see what his blood sugar does. If IT goes back up, he'll probably do both. There's mounting evidence that higher cholesterol levels aren't as bad as they used to say, and that statins are not great, however, being wrong and having a heart attack would be worse. *sigh*

On my end, I guess I've hit the weight gain phase of life. I've put on a lot of weight since the end of last April. I'm not eating any more or moving any less. So welcome to That Phase I guess, huh?  Do research and it's all "do this do that don't do this don't do that" and they all contradict each other. Nor do I think I can live on all meat like the carnivore people swear by, I don't even like meat THAT much, nor can I imagine it's very healthy for you. Pretty sure that's not how we were designed to eat. Nor do I want to just not eat at all.  So I find myself in a predicament a bit. I'll work on it more, again, but I still wish I could have a pill that sped up the metabolism without damaging your heart muscles. 

Mostly I'm waiting here to find out when I can go pick up the Conquest. I'm supposed to get it from Michigan SOMETIME today, if they find out the wing fuel leak is fixed, and tomorrow I'm wheels up at like 6:30 am from Frankfort in it to Texas and Louisiana. It's Superbowl Sunday, and I'd like to relax, and instead I'm sitting here at home waiting for the 'go', at which time I have to give Morgan the 'go' and we have to go. Or not go. And if I can't take the Conquest I have to take the 340 which will take a Long, Long time, and make me get up at the ass crack of dawn. Actually pretty much still the night before. So, my fingers are crossed and I'm sitting here not relaxing, waiting to hear what the hell I'm doing.

It's now 9 pm, and it was decided. I got the text around 1:15 pm that the Conquest is done and ready for pick up. I texted Morgan and headed out to Kokomo, and I flew us into Iron Mountain, Michigan. We self-serve fueled up the Aerostar because they don't seem to have a fuel truck, which is dumb. I paid for the fuel on the Conquest, and then sent Morgan off for her first solo in the Aerostar.  She was nervous, and of course did great. I flew the Conquest back to Kokomo to put it in our big hangar so I wouldn't have to get up so early tomorrow.

This did not go as planned. The Cheyenne tug, the belt came off of it as I was taking it out to the airplane, so I couldn't use it. I drag it back in place. I take the tug off of the 340 to use it. Get it on there no problem. It's very tight with the 50' wingspan, and I'm having to go very slowly and check both wing tips over and over and over, go a few inches or feet, and check again. I get it most of the way in only to see that the tail is not going to clear the 340 wingtip as is. The other tug is still down, so I take the tug off the Conquest and go over to the 340 to put it on that so I can push it back a couple of feet. I can't get the tug on the 340 in the hangar--the wheels just spin. No luck, at all. I get really mad at this point, because now I'm hosed. I put the tug back on the Conquest, and have to very slowly pull it back out of the hangar a few feet at a time while checking both wingtips. I have to close everything back up, hop in the Conquest, fly it to Frankfort, open that hangar, tug it away myself (by the way it's very cold and dark out too), text Morgan to come there to get me, fly back to Kokomo, put the Aerostar away there, then drive home. It was a debacle. PLUS it ran me lower on gas than I preferred. I still have enough, but it's going to be low fog in Louisiana and Texas tomorrow, and I liked having tons of gas. But nobody is open this late and won't be open that early to put more in, so I will have enough with extra but just tons extra.  For now, fog is supposed to be on the entire coast down there until 11 am, and we're supposed to get there at 8:30 am. So I found a place I could stop at on the way down hopefully, about 75 miles away, that is just supposed to be IFR, not fog. And for now that's the plan. Kid named Ethan is going with me, one of our instructors who is headed to the airlines the first week in April, and has to get multi and IFR time logged by then. So I'm taking him on this trip to get both. He'll REALLY get both now. lol  We meet at Frankfort at 6:30 am, which means leaving at 5:30 a.m., which still means getting up at a time with a 4 in it. *sigh*

The Superbowl is lame. New England can't do a darned thing on offense. The halftime show, I flipped around to both it and the TPUSA one to see what they were. I'm not a Bad Bunny fan, not because he's "not an American", which he is as a Puerto Rican, but because I don't dig his music and I usually listen to things in my own language so I can enjoy and understand them. The NFL halftime show was of course a huge full-on spectacular event. The TPUSA show was a small concert that had some (to me) good music. I thought it was funny they kept calling it the Kid Rock concert but he was only there for like 40 seconds singing half of one song which they interrupted with an interview he did with Joe Rogan about his faith, which was sorta funny listening to him talk about being a Christian in comparison to the lyrics of his song. lol But I did enjoy the other artists on there.  Some of the commercials have been good, some we've already seen, some are weird or lame. Par for the course. I missed everything until at least 8:30 pm, so maybe I missed the good ones. ;)

Well, going to try to get sleepy soon so I can get to sleep before it gets too late. At least I know I'm not missing anything on this game if I go to bed before it's over. ;)

The Himalayan sea salt scent thingy Alonna got us for Christmas--so pretty and it smells good!

Ice on Lake Michigan. If you click on these and zoom in, you can see some wild patterns in the ice

Kinda pretty, actually!

Morgan on takeoff on her first solo ;)

Cirrus-ly

Wednesday I got to have a later start; Morgan and I met up at Kokomo at a reasonable hour, flew the 340 over to Delphi and picked up Stephen and Tell, and ran them down to Washington, IN. Dropped them off, then she and I went on to Indy Exec, where we went out to breakfast at a local place, just getting some Greek yogurt, fruit and granola, and coffee. Met up with P Gaston, who was our instructor in the Cirrus. I was going to have her go first this time. Whoever goes first is at a disadvantage and I’ve always gone first before, to give her the chance to see what to expect. But I thought it only fair that *I* have the advantage for once. ;) Unfortunately, with my upcoming schedule, I’m going to have a harder time getting over there to finish training than she will. So I went ahead and went first anyway, while she rode in the back.

The Cirrus is a nice airplane, it’s a pretty blue color, so I’m going to have to get a picture of it one of these days. It’s a 2025 SR22 G7 model, with 310 horsepower and 5 seats. Starting it up takes an act of Congress to get through all the checklists and screens and button pushing, as does run up and pre-take off. No wonder they sit there so damn long before going. We went up and I did steep turns, slow flight, power off stalls, power on stalls. It has a stick shaker, and won’t hardly break. I kept trying to get the stall to break and I think he didn’t think I knew how to recover, wanted me to do it again, so this time I told him I was holding it there to try to get it to actually break. It’s quite docile. Came back in and did a couple normal landings, then a half flap landing, a go-around, and a no flap landing. They were all fine. He was on the controls and ready to take over for most of it, but didn’t have to. ;) He said that next we have to do cross countries and approaches. The plane is easy to fly. The one thing that is not easy is all the screens. The whole front of the cockpit has a bunch of shit in it. Two controlling touch screens with knobs below four large ‘windows’ across the dash which have everything, and can also control things. And it’s hard to know where to go to get to what you want. It’s not intuitive at all, and there’s a LOT of it. They call it a PFW now for “Primary Flight Window” instead of the old PFD for Display (oh brother). At one point on my flight I was just trying to pull up a damn map so I could figure out where I was, and was having a dickens of a time doing that! lol So it’s the knobs, buttons and screens I’m going to have to figure out before I can safely fly the plane, not the actual flying. Flying=easy. The Space Shuttle of the Future avionics, not so much. I mean, heck, it made me feel like a poor Boomer dealing with their first ever iPhone. ;)  Seriously though, that is a LOT of buttons, knobs, features, functions.

When we got done with that, we took back off and went back to Washington to pick up the two guys, and drop them back off at Delphi, before bringing the 340 home for the evening. At that point all the airports were closed for fueling, so I tried to self-serve at Delphi, but the pump didn’t work. Got back in and had to self serve at Kokomo, in the frigid. When people think the job is glamorous, those are the things I want to show them. Some times it’s glamorous. Sometimes it’s freezing and grumbling.

Put the 340 away, and met up with Kaylee and Steve for dinner at Olive Garden, and Morgan came too. We were starved as it was 7:15 pm and all we’d had was yogurt/granola/berries all day. Had a good meal, and a good time to end the day.

Early the next morning, today, I am up, picking up the 340, taking it to Delphi to pick up Nick and Clay. We head to Sullivan, Indiana, south of Terre Haute, to pick up another salesguy. The runway is snow and iced over, taxiways are worse, the whole field is in crappy condition with no NOTAM to say so, but it was good enough to get in and out of at least. Took all them to Malden, Missouri, where there is also snow and ice packed all over the ground, although at least their runways are clear! Those guys took the only crew car into town, so I ordered from Door Dash, the only places available/open were basically Taco Bell, McDonald’s and Pizza Hut, so I ordered a personal pan pizza and a couple mini cinnamon buns for lunch, and have waited in silence. I had to self-serve fuel here, too, in the cold. I like going places that have fuel trucks and line guys any more. ;) But…I got it done, and the plane is sitting out on the ramp freezing and waiting for them to get back, at which time we’ll drop salesman guy back off in Sullivan, and I’ll drop them off in Delphi before heading home myself. They said they’d be done at noon, it’s now 1:20 pm and I haven’t heard from them. Shouldn’t be too long though I hope. It’s currently 2:20 my time, which means I can’t get back before 5 pm as it is even if they showed up now. Not that I have anything super pressing, but I’m tired, it’s cold in this place, and I’m ready to head out.

Tomorrow I don’t think I have anything, so I’ll see about catching up on some of the stuff for the medical guy, among other things… Pics will have to be added later as I can’t do it on my iPad any more for whatever reason. Maybe I’ll come back tonight if there’s anything else to add to the day. If not, see ya tomorrow!

Aerostar Rainbows

Cirrus wings

Me and Pat in the Cirrus

The snow bank I plowed through at Delphi

Added power and "sent it"