The week in review

Family has been after me to update the blog so here it is.

The week started out with church Sunday and then I went flying. It was a really nice day and hardly any clouds in the sky. It was a little windy at Troutdale but once you got away from the Gorge it was just fine.

I took Cole & Ellie for a flight up by Mt. St Helens and then over to Shelton to meet Tim & Shelly. Ellie sat up front and had a good time but I think Cole got a little bored sitting in the back.

After dropping them off I was dispatched to Kelso so that I could take Clark and Courtney for a flight up by Mt. St Helens. We flew around the mountain at 8,000 feet and got a really nice view. The air was smooth and there is a lot of snow up there. Courtney said it was one of the best things she has ever done. I got her back to the airport in Kelso in time so she could head down to PDX to catch her flight back home to California. Courtney seems like a really nice girl and Clark would be lucky to snag her. The only problem with the trip was the airplane intercom didn't work very well.

Monday was the Presidents Day holiday and I had made arrangements to have the airplane annual inspection started. Daryl Dasher, the owner of Dash Air at the Troutdale airport, lets me help out to save some money. I took Tuesday and part of Wednesday off to work on this project.

I took all the inspection covers off so that the mechanic, Gary Sparks, can look inside and see if everything is OK. This is a required inspection and so if something is wrong it gets fixed right before it breaks down up in the air. The plane came through OK with only some minor repairs required. We put brake pads on and replaced the control yoke bushings. We then weighed the airplane so I could get a current weight and balance since the last one was 20 years old. On Wednesday the job was done and the plane is now back in the hanger waiting for the next trip.

On Monday night Goni came out to Troutdale and went shopping at the outlet mall. After I finished up with the airplane we went out to dinner at Red Robin with Caroline and her friend Natale.

We kept pretty busy at the office on Wednesday and Thursday while the county law enforcement folks did a roundup of criminals. They used the EOC for a command post and I had to setup the radios, telephones and computer network so they could work. It is a good to do this every once in a while so we can make sure everything works. In the end they arrested 55+ people and checked on the addresses of most of the sex offenders living in the county.

On Friday I received my upgraded FCC Ham radio license in the mail. For those who do not know it I took my the Technician test last September and got my Ham radio license. This helped out our communications in the EOC during the floods in December when the phone lines and electricity went out down at the coast. We delivered many messages to folks down there until their phones and power came back almost a week later. I decided to take some classes to upgrade my license so that I could use radio equipment to talk to people around the world. I passed the General license test on February 9th. I also have new Ham radio license plates on my pickup truck. Maybe next winter I'll find some used Ham radio equipment and start using it to talk to Europe or Africa.

On Saturday Goni stayed home with Caroline and I went up to the Puyallup Fairgrounds for the NW Aviation Conference. I saw all the latest and greatest gadgets for airplanes and visited with a few friends I saw up there. Bought some cleaning and polishing chemicals for the airplane and picked up some catalogs. Before leaving I found a new intercom for the airplane for $121 so I bought it. Should make life better for my passengers.

Next stop was the new Cabelas store in Lacey. Sam had bought me a gift card for Christmas and I hadn't been able to use it. This store is amazing and there were lots of people there. It is a cross between a museum, aquarium, outdoor store and restaurant all wrapped up in one. You could spend a whole day in there looking at stuff. The prices were not too bad and I bought a few things with the gift card. Had a bison meat sandwich in the restuarant that was pretty good.

While I was gone to Puyallup Goni and Caroline went shopping at Costco and Winco to get stuff for a church brunch we are having on Sunday.

While that is all for this week. I will try to make more regular posts to keep complaints to a minimum.