A rainy, foggy Thursday here in Corning.
Sitting here in my workout clothes after a quick run through the gym for the first time in a week.
P and I have set our alarm at 5:10 every morning so we can work out before she goes to work, but every morning this week we've reset the alarm and rolled over for another half hour. I'm back to awakening to an unquiet mind at 3 a.m., and when 5:10 comes around I've usually just fallen back asleep.
This morning's worries, besides the usual parade of horribles regarding those sixty-something cases I'm shepherding along with very little help, focus on tomorrow's flight to Alabama for the law firm retreat. After my intense three days with Skip, I feel pretty comfortable in the plane; the issue tomorrow is weather. This still, misty morning is forecast to give way sometime on Friday to winds gusting up to fifty miles an hour, mercifully straight down the runway, and low broken ceilings. It'll be a bumpy, milk bowl departure out of here on P's first flight in the new plane.
Our first leg takes us three-and-a-half hours to the south-southwest, and to our first stop at Crossville, Tennessee. They're forecasting low ceilings there as well, which means I'll need to carry an alternate if we can't shoot the approach and land. The trick is that the weather everywhere else in that area is also supposed to be delta sierra, so finding a suitable alternate may be a challenge.
We'll get to Alabama, of course. I may just have to flex, and get there the long way by flying to a stopover point further west to get behind this front. And not all the forecasts are quite so bad--the Weather Channel has Crossville tomorrow midday as partly cloudy with 13 knots of wind. That's pretty manageable. If we can get out of here, we'll probably be fine.
The second leg, from Crossville to Fairhope, Alabama, features that southern bane of aviators, the afternoon thunderstorm. The forecast calls for scattered thunderboomers as we approach the coast, which means we'll likely find ourselves picking through patchy weather for the last hour or so of the flight. Thankfully, the new plane has Nexrad on the instrument panel, so we can see the storm cells real time (or close to it) and work with ATC to avoid trouble.
Once on the ground in Fairhope, the Grand Hotel is supposed to have a shuttle waiting for us at the terminal. We have a law firm dinner tomorrow night, and business meetings on Saturday morning. It's supposed to be a beautiful day on Saturday all up-and-down the coast, so if all goes well we'll fly to Perry-Foley after lunch and finally set foot on Wyldswood for the first time in three months. Looking forward to seeing our ducks, geese (well, not so much the geese) and cattle again, and getting to see what marvels George has built there in our absence.
Dean has crawled up onto my chest, tail whipping at the keyboard as he reminds me that it's time to get to work. I have the truck today, so I need to cram as much work as possible into the next few hours so I can go pick up P at 3. From there, we plan to ride over to the airport to check the plane and make sure it's fueled and the batteries are charged. A friend is also stopping by the hangar for a look at the plane--I just need to make sure it's completely shut down afterward, so we don't arrive in the morning to two dead batteries.
And so it goes. Dean has fallen asleep on my chest, purring rhythmically. Slane, much too big for chest-sleeping, is curled up asleep next to my hip. Not sure how I'm going to get a shower.
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