17 October 2009

Salt Lake City

Off work yesterday at 0700 hours with two hours sleep under my belt I drove to the airport to check a young man out in the R44. The aircraft had just finished having an Airworthiness Directive accomplished on it... replacement of the crankshaft, which is a pretty big deal, so the check out included making sure the helicopter worked properly. Federal regs required a guy with his total helicopter time to get 5 hours in the R44, so we killed two birds with one stone...
Five hours on the bird showed it to be glitch-free, and allowed him to fly the machine back to its owner by himself. On the drive home from the airport I was nodding off... off and on running off the road. I'm ashamed of myself for being so STUPID.

Awake this morning at 0830, I rose and threw some clothing into a carry-on bag. Charged this netbook, my camera, and my cellphone, drove to the Post Office to stop our mail for a week, dropped the "Loose Goose" off at a friend's house for dog-sitting, and made our way to the Big-Town airport. We're now in Salt Lake City where it is 70 degrees and clear, and we can see big-ole rocks East of us on this concourse. We catch our connecting flight to Phoenix in half an hour where our son informs us it is 105 degrees.
I'll drive from Phoenix to Torrance, California tomorrow to attend the Robinson Helicopter Safety Course for the 9th time since 1983. I'll be in school Monday through Thursday at Noon, then back to Phoenix for a couple days before heading back home.

Today is Sara Jean's birthday. She's 39+. Our family will be together to celebrate in about 3 hours...
Wish us safe travels. I'll update you later.

GB

2 comments:

Terry said...

Have a good time and a safe trip.

Don't sleep thru any earthquakes.

CJ said...

We'll let the discussion of stupidity go for another time...

Have a great trip.

cjh