Day 75 - We're Going Where?!?!?

My initial reaction was one of total confusion. It was one of those split-second periods of time that seems to last for hours. As my eyes flashed open, my mind began to process external inputs one-by-one, slowly trying to piece together what was going on. I was laying in my bed in the pilot house, I realized. Ok, good. We got the "where" out of the way. I could tell by the amount and appearance of the light coming through the window that it was still early, much earlier than I had planned to awaken. I looked at my watch. The two hands on my Casio indicated that it was just after 6:15 am. And what was that noise? My brain recognized the presence of a repetetive, rhythmic noise; obviously the very noise that woke me up from my dead sleep. It sounded melodious... Almost like music. Wait a minute. It is music. It was my cellphone.
This had better be good, I thought. It's been nearly three months since my last shift on an ambulance, which equated to three glorious months of uninterrupted sleep each night. No loud alarm tones, no dispatchers' voices, and nobody wanting me to wake up before I was ready. Until now. I rolled over, still half-asleep, and blindly fumbled around the nightstand with my left hand until I found the offending noise-maker. Who could possibly be calling me at the buttcrack of dawn on a Saturday, and what do they want on their tombstone? I squinted my eyes, trying to focus on the name that flashed across the screen of my my PDA phone. It was Ed. Ok, Ed deserves a free pass on the death warrant, I decided, so I depressed the flashing green "ANSWER" portion of the device's touchscreen.
"Hey Ed." My voice cracked as my body tried its best to jumpstart.
"Mornin' Joe!"
" Well, that's the rumor. What's up?"
"Hey, listen," he said. "I'm not gonna be able to go on the poker run this morning." Ed and I had planned to go on a poker run around Alabama in his tail-dragger this morning; sort of an organized tour of airports culminating with events and a drawing. I had been looking forward to it, and was very disappointed.
"Well that sucks." I cleared my throat. "Everything alright?"
"Yeah, I have had a trip come up. A Baron trip. I need a copilot. You wanna go?"
"A Baron trip?" My ears perked. Ed's really good about letting me fly his charter flights with him to build time, and a Baron trip meant that I got to build multi-engine time. Sweeeeeeet. "Yeah. Where we going?"
"Wisconsin."
"Do what?!?!?" I was still not completely conscious, and extremely groggy, but I could have sworn that he said Wisconsin. Funny, I thought we were in Alabama. And unless my incoherent state had completely eradicated all geographic knowledge, that was a long freakin' way from Wisconsin.
"We've got to carry a guy up to the northern part of Wisconsin. Almost to Canada. I'll be there in about thirty minutes."
"Uhhh... Yeah..." I stammered, now attempting to sit up. "I'll be ready."
Stepping onto the floor, I fumbled around the room for clothes to wear. I brushed aside the normal shorts, flip-flops, and t-shirt that I had planned to wear in favor of the more appropriate, Sunday-Go-To-Meetin' clothes of the charter pilot that I would be for the day. I, gathered them up, picked up my black oxford shoes and black belt, and headed for the bathroom.
Thirty minutes. Let's do it.

So yeah, I flew to Wisconsin today. Between the passenger asking if we had a bathroom onboard, the horribly turbulent air that existed basically everywhere north of Chicago, and the heater malfunctioning on the way up, I'd say it was all in all a successful day. Any day flying is a good day, especially when you're an aspiring pilot who needs all the flight time he can get. Plus, Ed and I always have fun together.
And that's pretty handy, considering that we spent a LOT of time together. We left at 8 am, and didn't get back for another 14 hours. Thanks to a really nasty line of thunderstorms, we were only able to make it as far south as Huntsville on our return leg, after we dropped off our passenger. We diverted there and waited a while, hoping the storms would pass, with no luck. So instead we chose to leave the airplane there, rent a car, and drive the rest of the way. So here's your mental image: I'm 22 years old; Ed is 76. We literally represent both ends of the spectrum, with Ed being the oldest active pilot on the premises while I am the youngest. Ed is a retired Gulfstream (the jet, not the airline) captain, whereas I'm more like Randy Quaid's character from the movie Independence Day when he comes stumbling out of the hangar in a drunken stupor: "I can fly! I'm pilot!" And the two of us are piled up in a rented Ford sedan, barreling down I-65 in the pouring rain, laughing hysterically while singing along with Charlie Daniels on the radio. My friends, it gets no better.

So there you have it, all the news that is the news. Sorry that the reports have been kinda sparse this week. We've been doing a lot of flying, much of it at night, and I've usually come in and gone almost directly to sleep. Things continue to look up now that Danny's here, but I'm still ready to come home. At least I'm having a good time again, so that helps tremendously.
Tommorow's most likely going to be a sim day. The weather's looking crappy again, and I've got another checkride coming up, so we're going to be hammering out some issues. Basically the same stuff on a different day. With any luck, it'll keep being fun.


Good luck to me.

Joey