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This radical, new Cherokee 140 pilot came buzzing around my house just as I was stepping out into the permafrost. So I ran out and fired off a little picture or two of him with my iPad.
Then I got to thinking..."this sucks, I don't ever fly anymore because nobody likes me, I smell like farts, and I have to walk clear across the field to get to my plane".
But inspired by the radical Cherokee pilot known around here as Evan, I plodded past the cows--scaring most of them away because of my farts--and started my pre-heat ritual on ye ole Black-n-Tan, AKA the USS Tatums.
Carefully igniting the tent heater, and keeping my rear quarters away from the open flame, the ritual was well on it's way and I could practically hear angels of flight singing songs of the mortal crop-dusting guy.)
After walking back and forth a couple times to taunt the cows and tell my family I loved them (they didn't respond), I mounted ye old plane and fired up the engine(s). Then I fired up my seat heater since I never put heat back in this ole thing. Then I realized I didn't have gloves and my fingers were already numb, but I was tired of walking back and forth through the cattle, so I begrudgingly put on the left-hand workin' man's glove that my dad dropped years ago that I found laying there, and I strapped on a rubber glove from my toolbox onto my right hand. --Not ideal, but there was only a half hour of daylight left, so whatever...
I flew over the town named for this web site's CEO (Zane'sville), and snapped a picture for all of the kingdom to see. It started a fight on my Facebook® wall unfortunately because my "friends" assumed I was ripping a fart over city limits. I was not.
Then I went home and did sporty little maneuvers in the sky and on the ground like we all like to do and then parked the plane.
Then the next day this same Cherokee 140 pilot calls me saying he's headed to my neighborhood. I said "freaking go inside and turn the espresso maker on". I probably also threw out some disclaimers about the smell of my house...
We talked more than I care to type right now, and then it hit us, we're both pilots and I have a plane right over the hill, just past all of those cows!!
We were jacked up on just the right amount of caffeine to make this happen. We fired up the pre-heater (I hate to get all redundant on y'all)
We must have put at least 30 seconds in our log books on the first cross country. It was totally kick-ass.
Basically we flew back across the field to my house and took a picture for the logo of my new syrup company I hope to come out with someday if I ever start tapping some maple trees and figure out how to boil it down into syrup and then bottle it.
Then we did some light Aerocrossing™ through my forefather's snow capped fields. Evan shot some video with his phone while holding his breath in the back seat. He even flew my plane a little for old time's sake.
After he hauled his sorry ass back home in a truck that can't even fly, he emailed me that he had left his iPad in my stinky little house in the woods, but he didn't even really need to email me that notification because that morning his alarm woke me up and scared the living bejeeezus out of me (whatever a living bejeeezus is--if it was a dead bejeeezus it would explain the smell).
His alarm uses rock and roll as it's method of audible tone. AKA, the devil's music㎑.
So, after going back to bed for a few hours like any decent man would do, I arranged to do some pre-heating, BP gas-station benefactoring, cow tipping, and got back in the air...of course I completely forgot his iPad, so I had to land back at "Prostate Exam" to get it...which was totally awesome...then headed to the big city of Parkersburg, West Virginia. The class delta tower operator even let me in for a landing!
It was a magical place! Evan took me out on the town for Mexican food!
He gave me a sack of clothes from his new line of aviation duds too! (with an MSRP of well over a hundred dollars).
Then we got to visit his girlfriend Lindsey who runs a real-live-working-mini-goat-farm™!
By now Evan was jealous of me and all my flying, so he rented that amazing Blue and White Cherokee 140 and went flying all by himself.
My iCom 200A was stuck on tower frequency somehow because the knob decided to break today, but last I heard he was turning downwind. Most of my friends try to stay upwind. Unique guy.
It was cool. The day before was downright cold though, and rubber gloves aren't all that warm.
