Wednesday the 5th in the afternoon I took Nick and dropped him off in Wisconsin Dells in the Cirrus, took Morgan with me. I can't remember what I did in the morning.
Thursday, yesterday, was a long day. I had to wake up at 4:15 am, and then drive to Frankfort, pick up the Cirrus, fly it to Delphi to pick up Clay, and then fly out to North Platte, Nebraska. It was about 4 hours out there, in a small airplane with uncomfortable seats and seat belts. It was below minimums out there when we left out of Delphi, but fortunately we had 4 hours for it to come up to minimums, which it eventually did. At 4 hours flight time, plus my hop from Frankfort to Delphi, I was at the edge of fuel reserves, and that airport currently doesn't have 100LL available, which means I had to fly somewhere else, too. So I leaned it pretty far out and was looking around. THREE other airports nearby also do not have 100LL. I don't know what's going on out there. But I found one, and it was cheap, and it was close enough by that I could still make it with 45 minutes fuel reserves on board. We are heading into North Platte, and the controller tells me that I'm #3 to land at that airport. We all have to shoot approaches because it's low IFR. The other two are coming from the north and using Runway 30, and I'm coming from the south and want to use Runway 12, because winds are calm and I don't want to use up the gas it would take to go all the way 10 miles past the airport and shoot the approach from the other side. It would make me too tight on gas to be able to fly to get more. But now as #3, I'm going to have to hold. I get hold instructions, which frankly I'm completely unsure of how to do in this airplane. I power way back and slow down so the two jets will hopefully get in there fast. I figure out the hold with about 3 minutes to spare, and do one round of the hold super slow. Coming back in, the 2nd jet is down, and I get cleared for my approach. Boom.
I land, kick out Clay, don't even get out of the airplane, fire up and fly to Cozad to get 100LL. Walk the 5 steps to the pump from the wing and fuel up the airplane for $5.80/gallon which is cheaper than around anywhere else. Hop back in the plane, fly to North Platte, and Clay is done and waiting for me at the door. I tell him I'm going to the bathroom. Hit that for the first time since 5 am, and get back in the plane and fly back to Delphi to drop him off. That was 8.6 hours of flying total. Get out at Delphi and walk 5 steps to the fuel pump and top back off, get back in the plane with Morgan this time who met me there, and we fly up to Wisconsin Dells to pick up Nick. He's waiting, we don't need gas, so we hop right back in and fly home.
All together I flew 11.9 hours yesterday. Day started at 4:15 am and I didn't get done flying until 7 pm, and I wasn't on the ground for more than about 30 minutes total all day long. Clay brought me a Subway sandwich, which was good. I had one bottle of water which was better than nothing, got another in Wisconsin. So afterwards Morgan and I went to an ice cream place in Delphi that was actually pretty good, talked for awhile before I drove an hour home at 9 pm and realized I'd left my iPad in the airplane. Too bad, I'll get it today.
The Aerostar will likely be leaving, and we'll know if we can keep the T-6 or not probably by the end of next week. We will be keeping the big hangars and taking those on, and should be able to keep the 172RG for the flight school. Morgan's last day is the 16th, and she's going down to do rides in BOB this weekend in Chattanooga. She just started telling her students she was leaving, and she said she almost started crying telling one of them. She does not want to do this. But we all gotta pay our bills one way or the other.
I have pictures, but for now I have to do some other things. So I'll go do those and then re-update this entry with anything else from today and the photos from the other day whenever I get time, probably tonight...
Okay, I'm back.
First thing this morning was my second Physical Therapy appointment. Different guy had me doing exercises, stretches, and I was thinking...I dunno about this. It's my knee that hurts not my calves. And then another more experienced guy came over and explained to me why I was doing them. He showed me on both my knees where the muscles were surrounding the knee cap, and pointed out that when I straightened my legs out, my right leg had a muscle here and here, and my left leg was just puffy there. No muscle. I'd lost the muscle over the last 3 months, and it was weak, in my hip and my knee, and I have to build the muscle back up in it. The bend in my leg is already better. It's not perfectly straight yet, I don't know the degree, but I've been working every day to make it straight, and I'm doing well there. He gave me a gold star for the efforts. ;) But the leg is still wobbly and weak, and it's in part from the muscle loss, so I have some strength to build back up, and stop taking it all on my right leg. I do need some tighter shorts though, because I have to lay on this bed in a room full of beds full of people and lift my legs up and do these bendy things in the air, and I'm having to hold my shorts at the same time so nobody can see all the way up my pant-legs. lol
I took some paperwork out to Steve at the airport and brought us lunch, and then took the Citabria to Frankfort to go pick up my iPad that I left in the Cirrus. Came home to do some work, and then Morgan texted about flying in the Champ. She's in a foul mood, she's upset about the new job, and scared to death to go fly BOB this weekend. The last time she flew BOB, she bounced it multiple times in one landing with a plane load full of people, and that was months ago and she hasn't been able to fly it since. So she wants to fly it, but she's really nervous about flying it and doing rides. But we don't have options. It's her. She's up, she's the only one who can right now. And she's better than 90% of the pilots flying BOB right now too. The difference is they're all confident about their skills and she's not, even though she's seen some of what they do too. So I tried to distract her tonight by Champ flying, but it didn't work mostly. Even though I went out there in glasses and a pair of jeans with a broken zipper because my others were all in the wash. ;) Hopefully it was a little bit of a distraction and helped a little bit. She has to get home, where she has two roommates instead of one (her roomie's boyfriend stays over a lot which drives Morgan nuts), get packed, try to sleep, get up very early, leave Kokomo early in the Aerostar and fly down to Chattanooga, get her 3 currency takeoffs and landings in, and then start in on BOB rides right away. She had to tell students and instructors today she was leaving, she doesn't want to be leaving, and all in all she is not having a very good time either. But she knows she's lucky to be able to fly BOB, and she WANTS to fly BOB, she's just nervous about the whole thing, and has a lot on her mind. I told her to put everything else aside when she's down there. It's called compartmentalization. Put the rest of the shit in a box and focus on this one thing for the weekend. Deal with the rest when the time is right.
Steve, Chuck, AE and I went to Harvey Hinklemeyers tonight for early dinner, where I heard about how Chuck opened his door to his house to a guy who said he was there to spend the night. Now Chuck's house is always open for pilots. So he lets the guy in, and then says "Did Steve send you?" and the guy's like "yeah!" The guy says he's there for a ride and Chuck said "Oh, you here to see Tom?" and the guy's like "Yep, Tom!" Of course this guy had no idea who Tom or Steve are, he's just getting all the information he needed right from Chuck. The guy went over to Tom's hangar and broke a window. Chuck was just glad to have the guy out of his house. Took a picture of his truck. Come to find out, this guy was wanted, had stolen that truck, and was having a "mental health breakdown". Steve told Chuck to answer the door with his gun if anyone else came up. Well, that night AE went over to Chuck's house to spend the night because we are having a Young Eagles Rally this weekend. AE walks in and Chuck had set the alarm, which deafened AE. He keeps going inside and sees Chuck standing there with a gun in his hand. AE is like :o It's just Meeeeeee! Then AE thanked Steve for telling Chuck to do that. lol So that was the adventure around Glenndale a couple nights ago!
Morgan is headed to Chattanooga instead of me because tomorrow evening we're having dinner with Ethan and Amber and can't really miss it. So instead I'm doing Morgan's Young Eagles rides in Jerry's Citabria all day, then flying with Brad in his new to him Bonanza, and then dinner. So it'll be a busy Saturday all around.
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