My 1956 Cessna 180, 72B, “wintered” in Piqua, Ohio, while Mark Runge worked his magic on the annual plus some spa treatments and minor cosmetic surgery (we old girls need all the help we can get). I was in no great hurry to get the airplane back since the January weather was dreadful and then I jungled my elbow in a fall. Most adult persons don’t need to be warned about running out barefoot in the snow for the newspaper and then flying down the basement stairs to get socks out of the dryer. I did learn, however, that any pain is bearable if you keep up a stream of words you didn’t even know were in your vocabulary. The guys at the ER said nothing was broken and a flying buddy who moonlights as an orthopedic surgeon did his magic with a needle in my baseball-sized elbow.
But the gnarly and uncomfortable truth is I was finding too many excuses to avoid flying my airplane alone in the clag. “Fuel’s outrageous, better to save the money in this economy, sure looks like ice up there, the ceiling’s too high to practice, the vis is too low, I’m kind of rusty and [the ever useful] I am so busy …” With what? Putting other guys in the hot seat on practical tests? That might have worked as an FAA inspector but not the real world of flying airplanes.
