Time's Flying

As stated in the title of this post... time's been flying.  It's been 6 weeks since the accident, and I can't tell you how much my life has changed.  Some for worse, but mostly for the better.  Still stiff some mornings, but for the most part I'm thankful I get a second chance at life.  God has been good to me.  He has let me go back to work, he's let me continue to fly, and most of all he's introduced me new friends.

I went back to work for Era Alaska yesterday.  I got lucky, I was called mid week last week and asked if I'd like to work out of Anchorage.  You don't have to twist my arm... no commute to work, and I get to sleep in my own bed every night.  I will miss working out of Barrow, and hope to get to work up there again, but right now with physical therapy and still working with the FAA, it's nice to be close.  It felt so good to hop in the Beech 1900 and blast out of Anchorage.  The 1900 I'll be flying out of Anchorage is strictly freight; no passengers.  We went to Aniak, then onto St. Mary's with a very full plane load of supplies for the villages and outlaying villages.  I got the leg home, and was impressed with myself... I picked right up where I left off with call outs and procedures, even greased the landing back here in Anchorage.  I'm looking forward to flying the Beech more this week.

I made a big purchase on Friday... bought a "new to me" fuselage.  Looks like the direction of my project will shift a bit, but all that truly matters is we are making headway.  So far, it seems like it'll be a worthwhile fuselage.  Has quite a few mods I wanted to do, but of course, I want to do a few more.  I plan on picking it up Tuesday, and bringing it to a place to get it sandblasted so I can do a good inspection and figure out if we need to do some repairs.  Once its out of the sandblasters, I'll find someone to weld the mods I'd like then I'll bring it back to Lake Hood and start building some floor boards, interior pieces, etc.  After I get all that done it'll go off to the powder coater for a final finish.

I made a new panel for 29A.  I made it out of lexan, so I can install the gauges and see if they'll rub against the fuselage or anything else.  Super excited to cut this all out and see how it looks.  It is the same size as my old panel, but I changed a few things up.

I ended up getting a call from a friend tonight wondering if I could go help another friend.  I got to borrow a cub and fly out about 15 minutes from town and replace a piece of exhaust on a cub with a piece of mine. The fellow who owned the cub was super impressed how quickly I got out there and how quickly we changed the part.  He wondered how he could repay me, and told him its all about karma.  I've had many different people help me over my career, and when given the chance to help I need to as well.  I also need to build up that good karma bank, as I'm sure I'll need help again some day.

On my way across the inlet for tonight's rescue mission.