Thursday, April 22, 2010

It Could've Been Nice...--April 21, 2010

Woke up at 7:45 A.M.  I was feeling soooooooooooo tired.  I never really came out of the funk, either.  Went downstairs and grabbed some breakfast.  It was pretty cloudy inside...way too low for our plans.

I spent the morning in the hotel.  There are now five of us here...Dave came in last night.  So we have Dave, Mike, Chris, Kenton, and myself.  We all went out to eat for lunch...which ended up bein' a three-hour affair.  Not by choice.  We drove around looking for a bank for one of the guys...not too fun.

And then the decision was made to at least go up for a scouting flight.  The weather was ominous with some dark clouds off to the southwest.  But the guys wanted their money...so I called the FBO to have them pull the planes out.  We swung by the hotel real quick to grab our keys, and I said that the thunderstorm would be unleashing its rain withink the next 30 minutes.  I was wrong.  I came back downstairs, and it was starting to rain.  Hmm.

The question was raised as to whether we should cancel, but noone said anything.  Mike was saying that he was not going to go up, as he has over 700 hours of mountain flying, and that these storms can either get really nasty real quick or amount to nothing.  But he wasn't so sure it wasn't going to get nasty.  He said we could do what we wanted, but he was staying on the ground.  (Personally, I didn't think it looked all that horrific.  Later on, maybe...but now?  Not so much.).

So we drove the short drive over and waited for our planes to be pulled out.  I was looking out the window, and it WAS looking pretty gnarly.  We definitely had some very dark clouds above us with some westerly flow...the clouds were moving back to the west!  I also saw some greenish up inside the clouds.  But oddly enough, I still felt confident that I could get up there, fly around a bit, and come back and land.  The storm really wasn't doing anything yet.  But we checked the radar, and it was showing some yellow and even a bit of red.  Hmm.  I still thought...

Well, we walked out to our planes, and it starting raining...and I swore I saw something else.  Sure enough, I did.  It started to HAIL.  They were tiny little pellets, just smaller than a BB, but they were starting to come down.  Oh boy.  We walked over to the line guys and asked them to put them back in.  They were anything but thrilled.  Understandable.  We failed.  In order to keep the peace, we ended up buying the guys two pizzas.  After all, we would be with them for another month or so?  We messed up, and we couldn't have them being angry at us.  It was a necessary move.

I walked back into the FBO, and the hail actually became bigger and more dense!  What a storm!  It had literally popped right up in about 30-40 minutes.  Going from minor green to red with hail!!!  (I love it!).  I also realized, too, though, that it's not something to play around with.  I WAS going to go up for a short flight...underneath something that I knew was growing.  Since it hadn't unleashed itself yet, though, I just thought it would be fine.  Lesson learned.  Don't toy with danger.

We played some cards in the FBO, then headed back to the hotel and played some pool.  We were kind of hungry, so we opted to head out to a bar and grill.  I thought I was just going to go out and come back.  End of story.  Well, there was drama.  Someone that had promised another person (too drunk to drive) a ride to downtown all of a sudden backed out.  But the drunk person still wanted to go.  I was basically asked to drive them and the others downtown.  I had ZERO desire to go.  I had been out for several hours by this point (since 1:00-ish), and I just wanted to relax in the hotel.  But basically, one of the guys was going, and the boss wasn't comfortable with him going out alone...drunk.  I begrudgingly agreed.

So I took the guy who backed out back to the hotel (I was jealous), and then I drove the other three downtown.  We dropped the one guy off at a bar with the guarantee of being picked up at midnight.  IF he found a person to go home with (yup, that was his goal), then call us AS SOON AS he knew.  Well, we other three went downtown to a different bar.  The other guys drank, and I had water.  Finally, at 11:50, one of the guys called the other guy and said we would be there in 10 minutes.  He responded and said, "Go home.  I'm getting laid."  <sigh>

Tonight was just really, really stupid for me.  I have NO room for this in my life.  I am not out here to babysit anyone.  And that is exactly what was going on here.  I'm 27 years old.  I have a right to do my own thing.  I have a right to go to the hotel when I want to, to not go out when I don't want to.  But through unforeseen circumstances, I was basically forced (as the only sober guy) to do something I didn't want to do.  And on top of that, I was disrespected AGAIN by being drug on only to find out I wasn't needed.

This job can be enjoyable at times, but it can also be full of a bunch of immature people, too.

I hated tonight.  I'm more mature than that.

I guess it didn't help that the guy who we had dropped off was 31 years old.  It just goes to show...

<sigh>

Drove back to the hotel and was in bed immediately at 12:30 A.M.  I did NOT set my alarm.  The weather is supposed to be low clouds and rain anyway.  But c'mon.  Stupid night.

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