Stuck Midway To Indy

Sorry that I haven't posted in a couple of days, I'm sure you were getting used to my daily posts while I was at the sim. Tuesday I decided to skip blogging for a day and use my small amount of useful free time (we had a lot of free time, but most of it was spent being too tired to do anything) talking with my lovely girlfriend and Wednesday I was busy packing and preparing for my checkride Thursday morning.

I was a little scared going into the checkride this morning because my last training flight on Wednesday went absolutely terrible. Fortunately, it proved to be a lot like other times when I've had my last practice flight before a checkride not go well and then the checkride goes unusually well. Yep, you read that right, I passed. I made a number of small mistakes along the way, but they were the sorts of mistakes they expect from someone who hasn't actually flown the plane or operated on the line with the company.

They don't know how long it'll be before a plane is available to do aircraft training back in Billings, so they're letting me go home (well, Purdue, which is really home as much as Chicago is for me) for a few days. Unfortunately, all the flights direct to Indy were booked solid, so I decided to take Southwest and connect through Midway airport in Chicago (and yes, you can groan now, the bad pun in the title was intentional).

What I didn't know when I decided to take that pair of flights was that there's a line of thunderstorms on the east coast causing havoc for the air traffic system across the country. This means that my flight to Indy has been delayed from its scheduled 9:00pm departure to, well, we still don't know, it's 11pm now and the're saying we'll leave at 12:25am. They plane is supposed to be coming in from Washington Dulles and I'm *hoping* that it's finally on its way here.

I was going to get picked up by Amy Chen when I arrived, but it's simply gotten too late for her. Fortunately, as I was sitting at the gate waiting for my endlessly delayed flight, I struck up a conversation with a gentleman sitting near me who was wearing a Purdue polo shirt and using a laptop with a big Purdue logo on it. As we talked, I learned that he is a retired banker who's made a name for himself at Purdue by being the unofficial photographer of the Marching Band (and whom I've heard Amy Schott mention on a couple of occasions). As it turns out, he's going to rent a car when we get to Indy and drive up to Lafayette (assuming Hertz stays open for him like they've promised) and he's willing to give me a ride. I'm still going to have to get Amy Chen to wake up and come pick me up from the far side of town at some terrible hour of the morning, but at least she's not going to drive all the way to Indy and back really late.

Ok, they just said the plane is finally flying (I took a little break from thumb-typing) and it should arrive about 12:20, which means we'll probably leave about 12:50 and get in at about 2:30 (accounting for the time difference).

Ugh, I'm just tired at this point. It's been a very long day and I've got quite a way to go before it's over. I amost wish I'd just stayed the extra day in Greeley and gott there Friday morning, but on the flip side I'd have spent the whole time asking myself if I could've made it tonight. I also had the opportunity when I first got here to have my parents drive my car for me, but I never thought we'd be *this* delayed (and then I'd have had the problem of having to drive the car back to Chicago when it came time to leave again).

I guess that's it for tonight; I'm exhausted and I want to say my battery for later when I need to keep Shane updated on my progress and get Amy to come get me. 'night all.