Friday and Saturday, May 20-21, 2005: Arlington, WA to Sandpoint,ID...Friday morning came along without a hitch. We didn’t have much of a plan for the day now that the schedule had changed. We were originally going to do some demos Friday and head home on Saturday, but the demo flight had changed to 1 PM on Saturday. Over breakfast we discussed what opportunities we might have in front of us for today and tomorrow and decided to try and take it easy for a day. The “Take It Easy” schedule is better described as a day full of email follow ups and cell phone calls, but by the end of the day we did fell a little more rested. Saturday will come early!
Saturday started with a 5 o’clock wake up and a 6:30 AM checkout for a breakfast meeting at 7 AM. Mission Aviation Training Academy (MATA) had invited us to be part of day of presentations and fellowship. We taxied the airplane over to the hangar so we could share the airplane with all of them. What a great time. We sure enjoyed the invite.
Back in the plane by 9:15 AM to move it over to Boeing Field where we'll meet a few other prospects before heading home.
A couple of people that Lynn had scheduled came by in the morning and then we opted for a lunch break before our 1 PM demo. Galvin’s was kind enough to lend us a car and give us directions for a quick bite. When we got back we repositioned the airplane over to another hangar for a meeting. This was another reminder of how well the KODIAK shows itself even before we take someone for a ride. They really liked the airplane. For the demo we jumped from Boeing over to the grass strip on Vashon Island and then did some slow flight handling on the way back. It was another good flight to put into the books.
After the end of the flight it was time to grab some fuel and of all things, head home. It's noteworthy that the last time we bought gas was on Thursday in Ketchikan and we still had 90 gallons on board. The weather across the Cascades was a little iffy so we threw another 120 gallons on board and headed for Sandpoint. We were going to fly the northern route on the way home which takes us real close to Concrete, WA where they were having a small Fly-In today. It seemed worthy of a drop in so we landed, taxied by everyone, and took back off for home. We figure it will be one of those mysterious KODIAK sightings that have been occurring around the Northwest lately.
We made it over the Cascades and once again we had a stress free trip back to Sandpoint with reasonable weather and good viz. Most people would think that is the end of the story but not for this crew. We had one more demo to do before putting the airplane to bed.
Chris traveled from South Africa to come and see Quest and the KODIAK. Sandpoint has a huge car show in town this weekend so the closest room he could find was in Priest River, where I live. So I informed Chris we’d pick him up and take him with us to Sandpoint and then he could ride back home with me. This fit into everyone’s schedule easy enough. But even after that we aren’t done with this story; today was Chris’s birthday and he couldn’t have been more excited about the present he received with a ride in the KODIAK! One more landing and we pushed it in the hangar and started grabbing the essentials; everything else can wait ‘til Monday.
Home by 7:30 PM, a little dinner, and then a story for you. I haven’t written anything about the return to my family because that won’t really happen until the morning. My wife has a 24hour nursing shift on Saturdays and the Grandparents have the kiddos so I came home to an empty house! My treasure will all be home by early morning and that is the only time that I feel we had any timing issues on this trip. I think that's pretty good.
We have been gone for a total of 16 days. We put 36.2 hours on the KODIAK and we never missed a scheduled flight for weather, mechanicals, or anything else. We have truly been blessed.
So, I think this will bring an end to this TripLOG. I really appreciate all the great comments about how you all have been following us. I'm also sure that we will have other adventures that we'll want to take you with us on. So keep checking in. Oshkosh is just around the corner; see you there!
Yours,
Kelly