Broken Plane Means Broken-Hearted

So there I was. Sitting in Northeast Philadelphia Airport all day, waiting for the call to head to our mysterious next destination. The call comes, the airplane is readied, and Big Boss arrives to fly to our nation's capital. As we are taxiing out for the flight, one of our pre-flight checks makes us stop in our tracks...

My airplane is a flying multiple-system computer. Lots of different computers talk to each other, and many systems are redundant as a backup. Some systems have two identical components but need both operational to be able to take off. We ran into a problem tonight as we were heading to our departure runway that made us limp back to the FBO. It's called an Attitude Heading and Reference System, commonly known as an AHRS. It contains all sorts of computer parts and also contains a sensitive gyro that helps the instruments to know what to display. It is certainly the brains of the airplane for navigation, orientation, and just knowing which way is up! There is an AHRS 1 on the left side of the airplane, and an AHRS 2 on the right side. Even though there are two of them, we need both of them working in order to fly away into the great blue yonder. Wouldn't you know that the AHRS 2 died tonight!

After quickly trouble-shooting and knowing this was bigger than we could fix, we called maintenance all over the city to see if someone was available. Seeing as it was almost 8:00 PM, it was hard to track someone down who could look at my broken baby. Meanwhile, I got Big Boss a rental car and a map of the area so he could drive the ninety miles to get to his desired destination. Did I mention it would only be a 20-minute flight if the airplane was healthy? Luckily, he took the broken-airplane news as well as he could. We will keep him updated tomorrow on our maintenance progress.

Meanwhile, I am at the hotel and sick in bed. Terry is with the mechanic now (at 11:30 PM!). They are going to switch out the AHRS box to the other side to see if it is still broken. If so, GREAT! We can order the part tonight and have it on a 6:30 AM flight out of Wichita tomorrow morning, to arrive to us at KPNE airport around 2:00 PM. The mechanic will put in the new AHRS box and remove the old one, sign some paperwork and give us a sticker for our maintenance logbooks before sending us on our way. If the swapping doesn't work? Bad news. It means it won't be an easy fix since he will need to come back tomorrow morning to take a deeper look at the entire system. And who KNOWS when we will get the airplane fixed if that happens! We will have to find out what's wrong first (please not a short in the system, please not a short in the system) before being able to order parts and have a mechanic tear into the system to fix whatever is wrong.

I have my fingers and toes crossed that it's just the AHRS box. No doubt it will be a very expensive part, but it is an older airplane (fourteen years old this year!), and things do tend to wear out eventually. In a dream world, we will land in DC to pick up Big Boss tomorrow afternoon to take him to his next mystery location. I am a little worried...my husband walks across the stage for graduation on Saturday morning. Wouldn't it be fun to be there to watch?! Come on, AHRS 2!

Nor Cal, Here My Ears Come!

Thursday was a great day at "work." I woke up early and found that I had a scratchy throat. I didn't realize how sick I was until a few hours later when I was trying to adjust my ears to the pressure changes inside the airplane. Since I have small Eustachian tubes anyway (that will be a fun Google search for you!), any sort of infection in my head makes it impossible to clear my ears when descending from altitude. It means there is a ton of pressure pushing on my ears from the outside with no way to relieve the pain. It rarely feels good, and it is a wonderful reminder to try to stay healthy! As a side note, I have been in bed since Thursday night when I got home to try to beat this, since we are heading out again tonight.

We visited all sorts of beautiful places that I had never seen before. Chico, California is north of Sacramento by seventy miles and is nestled in a beautiful green valley. We were greeted by Mack the Hangar Dog. I don't like dog hair, but this guy kept sitting on my feet for attention and was simply adorable! I wanted to steal him when we left, but I was too afraid someone would notice. We then went to McClellan Airport on the north side of Sacramento. Again, I had never been here before and enjoyed the stay. We were there long enough to try for Johnny Carino's for lunch. When we saw the traffic (typical California), we decided to stay close to the airport by eating at Golden Corral. Thank goodness we did, because Big Boss came back early to leave for our next destination.

I have a dear friend, Shari (hi Shari!), who lives in Tahoe all summer. Now I know why. Our last stop of the day before heading home was South Lake Tahoe Airport. What a breath-taking sight! I couldn't get enough of the mountains, pine trees, crisp air...I could go on and on! It was simply gorgeous, and it was hard to leave. The guys at Mountain West Aviation were exceedingly polite, and you just don't find that kind of customer service any more. My passengers returned by 6:15 PM, and we were on our way back to Phoenix. Not bad for a day's "work!"

Phoenix - Chico - McClellan - Tahoe - Phoenix

Signs of Summer

John stayed home from work on Tuesday to work on one of his take-home final exams for school. Did I mention that my husband is just one week away from finishing his Masters Degree at Arizona State University? And that, as his wife, I am slightly stoked to get him back? All that aside, I felt sorry for him being stuck inside working away on his computer. It took him until dinner time to finally finish his masterpiece, but John was proud of what he had accomplished. I decided to take him out for dinner to celebrate. We have a new burger place by our house called Lenny's Burgers. The sign on the window gets my attention every time I drive by...99-cent root beer float. Eek! One of my favorite summer treats! So we headed to Lenny's to try out some burgers, fries, and, of course, root beer floats.

John got a double hickory burger, which meant they were supposed to slather it with BBQ sauce. They forgot the sauce, but he ate it like a champ. He says it was a really good burger and was much better than In and Out. I slapped him for such a comment then continued picking at my cheese fries. They were a disappointment...the cheese wasn't melted but squirted on with some foreign metal contraption. It all tasted like rubber. John got the same thing but added chili to his, like a champ. He complained about the odd flavor as well, so at least I know I wasn't being paranoid. I sipped on my root beer float and watched him enjoy his post-final dinner.

In addition to almost being done with school, another sure sign of summer is that my Summer Wreath made its first appearance today. It replaced the Spring Wreath, which hung in there with the best of them until well into May. Now that it is consistently above 90 degrees every day, I feel rather silly not celebrating with a Summer Wreath on my door. Problem remedied this week!

I love summer. Maybe not so much here in Phoenix, but it is a wonderful season full of BBQs, fireworks, and water parks.