Half time goes by
Suddenly you’re wise
Another blink of an eye
57 is gone
The sun is getting high
We're moving on . . .
There's never a wish better than this
When you've only got a hundred years to live
-"100 Years"
Five for Fighting
Going on three days with no post. The few readers out there are worried--what badness would cause me to go silent all of a sudden?
Well, it wasn't so much badness as a hellishly challenging week, the most busy I've had in a couple years, the stress of the workload compounded by having to fly back-and-forth from Perry to our phone and internet-free office in Panama City for in-person events now that Covid is over (?).
Monday P flew over with me so she could look over our shell of a condo and meet with Lori to discuss decorating it when it's finally finished sometime in The Rock's second presidential term.
[What, you hadn't heard that the Rock, former pro wrestler, actor, and tequila entrepreneur, is considering a run for the White House? Welcome to Idiocracy, the documentary:
That night we flew home, the second of six flights across the panhandle I've made this week. I don't remember much about that one, so it must've gone fine.
Tuesday, the first day of my 58th year on this steamy rock, began with me flying solo over to Panama City for two meetings and a deposition.
The flight over was uneventful, lovely even. Here's the St. Mark's Lighthouse from 6,000 feet.
And here are the Dead Lakes and Wewahitchka, once upon a time the county seat of Gulf County.
I groused a little about having to work so much on my birthday, but reminded myself that it wasn't all bad to fly the fastest single engine piston ever sold on the general aviation market to my luxurious FBO, where I hopped into our Mercedes roadster (well, P's actually) to drive down to my law office.
Not so bad, not so bad.
The middle half of the day was a blur, speed-dating from meeting to meeting to deposition, responding to eighty-plus emails that piled up in between. Everything a crisis. Everything requiring immediate attention.
Meanwhile the skies to the north were darkening, and as I began my scamper up Jenks and toward the airport, things weren't looking so good.
I drove through torrential rain and arrived at Sheltair to find blue skies above, and a line of very strong storms strung north to south across my path to Perry. Time for a little creative flight planning.
I watched the direction the storms were building, and it seemed there was a narrow strip of clear weather between the shoreline and the warning areas offshore that were off-limits due to the military being prigs about these things. I flight planned a departure to the south, basically over Lake Powell, then southeast to run the shoreline to Apalach. It might just work. Maybe.
Here's the thing about thunderstorms and airplanes--flying into one will probably kill you, crumple your plane like a wad of paper, and even if it doesn't kill you the ride will be one you'll never forget. People who've gone there swear never to do it again, all of them. Even when you're riding in a big airliner, those guys are on the radios constantly, informing air traffic control that they are deviating left or right of course to get around storm cells while you're obliviously eating Cheez Its and sipping your Diet Coke.
So it was important to find a path well clear of the weather, or I'd have to stay in PC on my birthday which would've stunk on ice.
I hopped into the Columbia on a sweltering afternoon, cranked, taxied, and took off on my planned route. As I climbed out, the controller from Tyndall Approach tried to help by clearing me direct to Apalach, and then to Perry. Both were behind that curtain of badness boiling to my left, and I told the nice young man I was just fine climbing out to the south.
As I hit the coast, I turned left and skirted the storms, downtown PC just to my northeast.
As I began to leave the storms behind, I eased around to due east and toward home, passing directly over my old haunts at Tyndall AFB.
From there it was an uneventful thirty minutes, right up until I was a mile or so from the runway at Perry and encountered a new set of storms building near the field. I found myself in a heavy rain shower that obscured the ground, and popped out not far from the runway, way too high and fast. Undeterred, I pushed down the nose, dropped flaps and popped the speed brakes. The landing was firm but safe. I was home.
As I taxied in to park under darkening skies, P pulled up in the pickup with a bouquet of flowers she'd picked along the roadside, and a Jameson's on the rocks for her shaky birthday boy. Ignoring the looming weather, I decided we had time to race over to the golf course to play nine before supper. The course was still soaked and par three only, but we had a nice six holes until thunder and lightning nearby shooed us back to the truck.
We came home to Wyldswood and watched it storm violently while I called my Mom for our annual remembrance of my arrival on this planet at St. Joseph's Hospital in Joplin at 9 pm or so on July 13, 1964. Then P and I went inside and ate steaks, and then cake.
And you know you're not eighteen anymore when you get whiskey and a value pack of Prilosec for your birthday. Getting old isn't for sissies.
It wasn't the birthday I'd hoped for, but turned out pretty great all the same. After all, we have our work and our health and, best of all, each other.
I even got a happy birthday message from my Jim, not to mention Issac and Olivia and PT. All very good indeed.
I will spare you the play-by-play from yesterday, except to note that it involved flying back-and-forth to PC again and----wait for it---more late afternoon thunderstorms that damned near knocked me out of the sky as I meandered along the Florida-Georgia line looking for a sucker hole between cells. It obviously worked out okay, because I'm here. Life goes on.
Comments