Is It Tough In Here?

I am finally home, after a long, busy week. There is no doubt that this was the busiest week I have ever experienced at this job. It was fun, but it was exhausting!

On Thursday morning, we departed Hartford, Connecticut for Millville, New Jersey. They were having motorcycle races there (yawn), so the airport ramp was packed with airplanes of racing fans. I am glad I never got into that! Millville was the first defensive airfield built during World War II, and some of the original buildings still stand! They had a free museum honoring WWII soldiers. I love looking at old stuff like that. They even had an early Sperry Trainer, which was used to train pilots in the good ol' days to fly using the airplane instruments. While waiting for Joe to return from their trip in town, we ate at Dotty's on the airport. I had a delicious chicken salad sandwich, one of my favorites. When they got back to the airplane, we took off to Baltimore so Joe could attend some meetings near Washington D.C.. I love this place but have never had time to really give it the attention it deserves! Someday, I will get to visit the Smithsonian and the Air and Space Museum! After a few hours in Baltimore, we took off towards Teterboro, New Jersey. I love this place! And the weather was an improvement from two weeks ago when we got stuck for three hours! Joe decided he wanted to go to Florida, leaving at 9:30 PM. Everything was closed and made it impossible to get a rental car! Luckily, as he was stepping onto the airplane, he changed his mind to fly to Nashville instead. I have killer toe muscles now because I am always on them with Joe. He never knows for sure where or when he wants to fly. We just have to be ready and flexible for changes, because they happen several times a day. We arrived at Signature Flight Support in Nashville at 11:00 PM.

Friday was an odd day. We were at the airport by 9:30 AM in case he showed up to leave that morning. After three hours of waiting, he arrived at the airport and requested a peek at his road atlas to decide where to fly next. They needed to get to Meeker, Oklahoma, but the closest airport was 15 miles away in Shawnee. Joe and Darrell were only going to be gone a short while and were on a time limit of when they wanted to arrive in Phoenix. The fuel truck ran out of fuel while filling us up! So I got to wait another half hour while they put more fuel in the truck so they could finish fueling us. We took off at 5:00 PM local time for a two-hour flight back to Clifton Airport in southern Arizona. The airport is tiny and doesn't have any instrument approaches...all visual. It took me back a few years! After dodging some thunderstorms from Clifton to Phoenix, we finally landed around 6:00 PM (a record to land that early with Joe).

In addition to flying nineteen cities, I didn't sleep well all week. By the time I got home, I was dead! It was a Killer Week!

Phoenix - Clifton - Denver Centennial - Provo - Ogden - Renton - Greybull - Oshkosh - Milwaukee - St. Louis - Cincinnati - Hartford - Millville - Baltimore - Teterboro - Nashville - Shawnee - Clifton - Phoenix