Pilot's Discretion: What a day...

Well after being stuck in Decatur, IL for 6 days due to poor weather we finally made it out. Don't be fooled though, it wasn't without other complications. Allow me to elaborate...

I woke up this morning and noticed an odd fiery orb in the sky. I'm told its what's referred to as "the sun". Well the other two pilots and I all got the release to depart Dceatur for Skyhaven, MO and I was number 2 in line. I got out to my plane, preflight, and hop in to fire it up. My plane starts like a champ and the second I flip on the avionics master (the switch that turns on the radios and intercom) I notice something is amiss. The intercom isn't working right. I try a multitude of switch flipping and cord swapping but to no avail. nothing. I was completely unable to communicate with ATC (air traffic control). I shut down the engine and called the boss. We tried a couple other things to see if we could get the intercom working right but nada. Naturally Decatur airport doesn't have an avionics repair facility and the nearest airport that does is another towered airport. This means that I must somehow coordinate with both Decatur tower AND Bloomington tower so I can ferry up. Well, after calling both towers we worked out a plan to talk to them via cell phone while I flew. Now the issue was that I had to rush up to Bloomington before they had a bank of commercial flight comes in (my situation necessitated them temporarily clearing the airspace). Well I received my various clearances from Decatur and midway to Bloomington the stupid intercom/radio starts working like normal. Could not duplicate the issue upon inspection in BMI. C'est la vie...

So now I'm a good 2-3hours behind schedule. The whole plan for the day was to get into Salina (rhymes with vagina), Kansas early to beat a nasty system that was going to roll through. I pushed on to my refueling point in Skyhaven, MO and actually caught up to one of my other pilots. Well the 3rd pilot wimped out because he wasn't comfortable flying an ILS (a precision instrument approach that you fly through clouds down to 200ft above the ground) even though the ceilings were only reported down to 900ft, so he stayed somewhere SE of Kansas City. Well, the two of us that remained had no problem flying IFR to mins if necessary so we were able to get a go-ahead to depart. We made it all of 15min before we were solid IMC and remained that way until I broke out on the approach into Salina some 3 hours later. I ended up getting stuck in a hold over the final approach fix for 30-40min, solid IMC and winds ripping at 35-40kts. It sucked ass. Never the less by about the 3rd turn in the hold I had gotten things fairly figured out. At this point its turning into night, my right knee is cramping like a mofo, and I'm ready to get this show on the road. FINALLY I get cleared for the approach, broke out 100above mins and brought it in for a nice gusty crosswind landing.

Anyways, that was my day: 7hrs of flying, 4 airports, and 3 states later. Tomorrow we try to finish the trip into Denver (KEIK).

Here's some pics from today:

Parked on the ramp at Bloomington, IL