A Busy Day

We closed out inauguration/anniversary day with a spectacular sunset after playing a little bad golf at the Perry Golf & Country Club.

Then drank a little too much wine on this joyous occasion, then fell comatose for the night after a big steak and a movie.

Meanwhile, out in the south pasture just behind our master bedroom the creator went to work creating more steak for some future anniversary dinner.

Peg could hear the bellowing heifer over my snoring at 5 a.m., but quickly went back to sleep. I sat up a couple hours later and saw the black outline of a cow standing over a dark lump of something just below her. Donning my "walking around the farm in pajama bottoms and sweatshirt" look, with George already working on Splinters just a few yards away, I made my way to the fence line and found a calf curled into a ball on the ground, not moving but definitely steaming in the cold morning air. Freshly dropped, apparently.

I was afraid we'd lost one, as still as he was, but at the sound of my voice he turned and looked at me. Then he pushed himself up on wobbly legs, hindquarters first then front hooves, and stumbled like a drunk toward his mother.

That's dad in the background.

Mom, meanwhile, had set to work munching and swallowing the afterbirth in long, wet, purple strings. It looks as disgusting as it sounds. By this time P had arrived at the fence beside me, and drew from her farmgirl upbringing to explain that mammals often did this to recapture the nutrients in the blob of goo. I just figured this was sort of like when the paratroopers landed in those World War II movies, and assiduously buried their parachutes and harnesses in the brush lest the mass of canvas and silk give away their location. We do have coyotes out here after all. No use leaving a birth announcement lying there on the ground.

All this drama threw our schedule for the day completely out-of-kilter. We needed to be in Panama City mid-morning for various errands, and P hadn't had her coffee yet. With the promise of good weather for at least the first part of the day, we bumbled out to the Mighty Cardinal nearly an hour late and loaded up for what should have been a short hop to ECP. Once we got in the air, however, we encountered 25 knots of steady headwinds. Our groundspeed dropped to less than 105 knots. It was going to take a little longer ride than planned.

Still, it's always a pretty trip. Here's the Apalachicola River, just north of Wewa and the Dead Lakes.

Landing in Panama City is always a pleasure. Sheltair had a rental car waiting next to the terminal, and we hopped in and were on our way within maybe ten minutes of the wheels touching down. No security. No baggage claim. No overhead bins. P may never fly commercial again.

Of course, as we were riding into town they called to let me know I had a fuel leak in the starboard wing sump. It's always something. I added this latest problem to the list, glad that our annual inspection is only a month away.

The day that followed was filled with running around attending to things we needed to do in person. Peg got some blood drawn for a long overdue physical. I made a cameo at the office and found myself in a long, impromptu partners' meeting, then gave a pep talk to my exhausted and overwhelmed paralegal. I signed up a new case, another federal court donnybrook that should be a lot of fun if you enjoy that sort of thing.

Next came another dash in the rental car back to Sheltair for the flight back to the farm. The sun was setting, and some unforecast low ceilings were rolling over the field in gray blankets. I called Gainesville Flight Service and, after the weather briefer confirmed the stuff overhead in fact made VFR flight impossible, filed an IFR flight plan for the ride home.

Sure enough one wing was dribbling fuel when we got to the plane, but at such a slow rate we'd have plenty to get to Perry. As I taxiied out the tower let me know that my strobe and anticollision beacon were out, and I only displayed nav lights on my wingtips. Another problem to add to the list, but by God we were going home tonight.

The Lord taketh away, and the Lord giveth. Those headwinds that slowed our trip west to a crawl became tailwinds that hurled us back to the Big Bend. Peg saw 168 knots groundspeed on my Foreflight iPad app--that's a shade over 200 miles an hour, and means Perry is only 45 minutes to the east.

As we crossed into Taylor County, I descended in darkness through the scud until we broke out at 3000 feet, and I cancelled IFR and flew toward the beacon at FPY. Ten miles out I flipped on the landing light and . . . wait for it . . . nada. Damn. The taxi light seemed to work, however, and although it's not at a great angle for finding the runway in the dark it sufficed.

At five miles I clicked the mike button five times, and the runways at Perry lit up before us. I've always loved that feature, and being able to light up an entire airport from several miles away. It makes one feel important, I guess. The automated weather did not report the winds, so it was a guessing game which direction to land. I decided on a straight-in to Runway 12 because it was the shortest way to the ground, and started trying to slow down and descend a little. Once the gear was down and we were on about a two mile final, the Cardinal started to weathervane hard to the right--we clearly were going to contend with some crosswinds, in the dark, with no landing light. Not perfect, but manageable.

As always, the plane didn't want to slow down on final, but with cross-controls and full flaps I got it down to on-speed as we crossed the overrun, then shifted to the task of finding the runway in the dark with no landing light. When finally the taxi light illuminated the concrete we were descending a little more than I would have liked, and only maybe five feet above the ground. We landed with authority--no mamby pamby flare and gentle touchdown for us. I cleaned us up on rollout, and taxied toward the ramp as if it all was according to plan.

Going to Panama always leaves me out of sorts. It used to be the lingering wreckage of Michael, but now I ride around shaking my head at how little imagination went into reinventing this place once Mother Nature had handed the survivors a tabula rasa. Then there are all the signs that many locals had not gotten past the election, and now were engaged in some sort of cold civil war with all the MAGA trappings on their property that proclaimed to the world that they were wing nuts. It seems that to survive this last season of life and make my peace with this place, I need to find my inner Montaigne, retreat onto Wyldswood, and poke my head outside the fence like some bald, bespectacled gopher only when work mandates that we venture out. And I miss Corning a little, a place that never got a chance because we spent that entire sojourn on lockdown in the solarium.

This morning I'll spend trying to catch up after the day out of the office. It's rainy and so golf doesn't beckon for once. George and his helper are out in Splinters grouting or staining, and Peg has threatened to go help. It's all very good.