Poems, Prayers and Promises

Wow, it's been awhile y'all, sorry 'bout that. Life just kind of gets going and........well y'all know.

I had my first King Air flight today! That was just way to much fun. Brian, one of the TFO captains down at hangar 5, and I flew one passenger out to Epply field in Omaha, Nebraska. The flight out was so cool.... We took off out of Lafayette just as the sun began to rise and the literally wasn't a cloud in the sky. Once we leveled off at flight level 280 (28,000 feet) you could see for miles.

As we got towards Omaha the clouds started filling in and pretty soon we were flying over a solid deck of clouds. Before plunging into the clouds for our decent into OMA, we brought it right down on the top of the cloud deck and leveled off for awhile. You don't really get a good feel for the fact that you’re going upwards of about 300 miles an hour till you're near something like clouds that let you see just how fast you are moving. It was really awesome! You get the same feeling that flying about 2 feet off the ground would give you except when you hit the clouds they don't hit back.

We got into Omaha at around 9:30 our time and our passenger went off to do his thing. He wasn't due back till around 4, so we had a lot of time to burn. We sat in the pilots lounge for awhile, he updated some chart books and I did some reading, planned the trip home, and got on IM.

Sitting around got old real quick, so Brian and I jumped in the airports courtesy car and ran off to find some lunch. Since Purdue was buying, we decided we should find someplace slightly spendy, but somehow ended up at this little hole in the wall dinner named simply "DINNER" in big fluorescent letter over the stainless steel structure. After cutting our way through the cigarette smoke looking for the non-smoking section in vain, we made it to a little table in the corner, where we sat down and kind of exchanged glances like "what did we get ourselves into". But actually, I think that was the best Philly cheese steak sandwich I've ever had and those onion rings would make a blooming onion shake in it's boots. And besides the great food, it became pretty clear that Brian was a Christian when we both ended up talking about God's will for our lives and how great it is to just be able to trust in that. So not only was he a great guy to fly with but he was one seriously cool dude.

After finishing lunch and still looking at 4 hours of sitting around, we decided to go check out Brian's old house down on the south side of town. I guess he had lived out there for a couple years not to long ago. So we "took a wrong turn" and ended up down at his house. I got some pictures of the house and the neighbor hood so he could show his kids when we got back. Actually that's the only pictures I got on the whole trip, so I might put one or two up here lol. I forgot my digital camera in the airplane, so I had to use my cell phone's camera. It actually wasn't too bad, I was surprised.

Summery of the trip back: 80 knot tail wind. So in other words awesome. Although my landing wasn't the greatest. I wanted to flare to make it smooth but in that airplane that just succeeds in making you float for two decades. But over all, good. His wife and kids met him out at the airport so they could see the pics on my cell phone and then all go out to dinner together. His kids were awesome too, well behaved and polite and all.

So that's enough about my king air trip. I'll try to get some pictures on here...... and I promise, no wait, how 'bout I'll try to post more often.