Waterloo Aviation Fun Day

Despite the weather forecaster folks predicting thunder storms for the last week, today was nice and clear.  Mike and I headed out to the St. Catharines Airport just after 9:30 this morning and hopped into cute little Vyctor.  We flew out to the Waterloo Aviation Fun Day.  I thought the flight was around an hour but we arrived within about 45 minutes.  The air traffic heading in seemed very busy and we figured everyone was heading to the event.  We were one of only four planes there.  Weird!  The nice thing was that one of the marshallers came up to me and said that he remembered me from my presentation at that airport about two or three years ago.  That was just awesome.  We then walked over to the static aircraft and cars and display booths.  It was awesome to see how many drove into the event today!  When we walked into the terminal building, Mike was THRILLED when I noticed the “free souvenir photos” with Star Wars folks.  I dragged him there and it turned out great!

Aren’t we adorable????  Mike was a little bothered when I asked if that was Darth Vader.  What the heck – so I’m a little behind!  The worst part of the photo is that the brown, Ewok-looking, Wookie-ish dude left before we got there.  Fortunately, I tracked Wookie-Sand-Dude down and got my pic taken with it:

Ok….just wondering why it has C3PO’s….or R2D2’s head…..(I always get them mixed up)…why does he have his head??????  So disturbed but so wanted my pic taken with it (and the decapitated head).

We wandered around and saw a bunch of plane and classic car displays:

(above bug looks so sad….Mike thought he looked kinda smirky).  I think he’s sadmirky.

It was a really great day.  We spent around and hour and a half wandering around and had an awesome time.  Fortunately, the flight back was as equally as awesome.  We took off nicely then headed toward Hamilton.  Even though I didn’t fly through Hamilton airspace, I always call them to say that I’m going to be close to their zone.  I called when I was about 15 miles South-West of the most Northern point of their airspace.  The tower responded and said “ok so fly over to the intersection of Highway 5 and 6″….  I was all “errrrr….I recognize one of those highways…”  He said “Ok, fly directly to Waterdown”  I responded “I’ve heard of Waterdown but am not too sure where it is”  He said “Oh dear!”  It was awesome!  He told me my heading and what to look for.  He was so fun to talk to (but still so professional and serious as far as where I needed to be and constantly advising me of other traffic).  Mike and I then flew toward the Burlington Skyway as he instructed, then we eventually flew over the Waterdown water tower.  I was so excited and Hamilton didn’t seem too busy at the time, so I radioed him and said “Oh wow!  I think I just found Waterdown!”  He replied “Affirmative – that’s Waterdown!”  I said thanks for teaching me something today and he said “Now you have to find the waterfall”  I said you’re kidding, right?”  He said “That’s what the town was named after so good luck!”  I flew over this water-fally looking spot and realized that there was no water.  Either I missed the spot (most likely!) or that dried out area was the dried up falls.  I called the tower and told him I regretted to inform him that the falls had dried up and they needed to rename the town.  He asked if I had any suggestions and I suggested “Water-is-no-more”…he suggested “Waterless?”  He was so great to talk to.  Very professional but had a sense of humour!  Hamilton has always been good that way!

Anyway, Mike and I had a couple of laughs heading over the QEW.  Ewwwww….look at this traffic (that we just flew over in a rather fun matter):

What a wonderful day!!!!  It was so much fun!

I always have to include a kitty in my blog so check out this awesomeness.  I pulled little gecko Peanut out of his cage and held it up toward Pinky.  Her typical reaction:

I swear she doesn’t want to eat him – she’s let him crawl all over her.  But she gets so goofy looking when he’s in sight.  So Cute!

Today’s symptoms: Felt fairly good today.  The last few were a tad off (minimizing!!!) because of the wretched heat.  I think almost everyone with MS has a heat intolerance.  Before MRI’s and joyous spinal taps (trust me, they suck!)…they used to put potential MS patients in hot baths to see if the heat would bring on their symptoms from the heat, then voila – you have MS!  Crazy, eh? So bring on the Fall and Winter!  I can’t wait to post a pic of me laying in snowbank.

Bringing Sexy Back

Wow, Boo is really enjoying this heat!  Every time I walk into a room, she’s striking some sexy pose:

As you can see, two different backgrounds, two different days.  Oh well, she’s happy!  Mind you, she was also a little weird when I stepped out of the shower today to this:

Which then turned into this:

Ugh  Maybe she felt safe in the sink during the very brief storm we were having:

Certainly no where near enough rain to do any good for the drought we’ve been having this summer.

We have another weirdo to speak of….Mya climbed under my slightly ripped blanket.  I came in the room looking for her and calling her name.  She tried to escape through one of the holes, which got slightly more stretched:

I mentioned in my last blog that we flew up to Edenvale last weekend.  I checked their facebook page recently and found a couple links to a bunch of aircraft pics from that day, including these of Vyc (http://www.airic.ca/html/ecaf2016.html  and  http://gusair.com/htdocs/html/edenvale16.html ):

We were able to fly again two days later all the way to Welland for our joint RAA and COPA event (I like to call them COPRAA).  Our two groups meet at the Welland airport during the summer months for a social gathering and BBQ/potluck.  The item we brought was a Farmer’s Market brand blueberry pie.  I attached a note:

I don’t think anyone bought it.  Mind you, I didn’t really care because I was too busy taking a couple people up for aerobatic flights.  It was an awesome night and we flew back to St. Catharines with the sun setting:

Landed safe and sound:

We will be heading out to the airport again tomorrow for the annual St. Catharines Flying Club corn roast.  Yum!  We then hope to fly somewhere for brekkie on Sunday.

Today’s symptoms: Was not a good day as the heat just completely zapped my strength.  I was so friggen weak almost from the time I got up.  Needless to say, the air conditioner has been running non-stop all day.  Paws crossed I’ll get some strength back tomorrow!

New/Weird MS Symptom

Had quite the night last night.  I was all snuggly in my bed, surrounded by my adorable hairless kittahs, when I was suddenly woken up by this rather intense itching in my hands.  I scratched away but it did nothing to help.  The itch was so wide-spread, across the entire bottom side of my hand.  Isn’t an itch supposed be quite localized and relieved when you scratch it?  Within a couple minutes, the same sensation was in my other hand.  Then in one foot – then the other…..then the other sides of my hands.  The sensation was so irritating and uncomfortable.  After about 15 minutes of it, I went to the bathroom and stuck both my hands under cold water.  It didn’t help.  It was so intense!  I went into the freezer and rubbed my hands against the inner walls.  I took the frozen pizza box and practically sliced my skin with the cold corners….  I just couldn’t believe how overwhelming the feeling was.  After about an hour and a half, I took a full prescription sleeping pill just to knock me out.  I woke up around 7:00 am to about half the itch of the previous night.  Mike and I had planned on flying out to the Edenvale Gathering of the Classics.  I was feeling better and despite missing a couple hours of sleep, felt decent.  I figured the discomfort would be the same while out today then sitting home on the couch feeling sorry for myself.  We headed out to the airport and just the thought alone of the fun day helped to distract me from this strange new symptom.  I did some research online and it is a neurological symptom of MS.  I had never heard of this before.  I’ve heard of and experienced similar-ish symptoms, such as pins and needles, numbness and burning, but the intense itching was so new to me.  I’ve heard of the saying “I wish upon my enemy to have the worst itch ever, and arms too short to reach it”…..I now understand how wretched that would be, because right now I’m dealing with it.  I’m sure it will get better though and hopefully this isn’t an indication of a flare-up.

Ok, now back to today’s awesomeness!  It was a little over an hour of flying before we flew just East of Canadian Force Base Borden – a base I went to quite often when I was an Army Reservist.  Good ol’ firing range:

We had to fly over Minesing, a town just east of Edenvale, before heading west to our joyous destination.  There were tons of aircraft heading in before us, so we really had to keep watch.  Then the lovely Edenvale runway appeared:

Once we touched down, we had a volunteer marshaller guide us over to our parking spot:

I put my awesome new sun protector up and instantly had a few kids running over yelling “Dusty!”

After talking to a few folks, we headed out to check out the other planes and classic cars (and get out free pilot coffee):

We met up with a few folks we knew from back in Niagara, wandered around a bit more then headed back to Vyctor.  Another great time at this event:

We had another marshaller guide us out, behind a few other departing aircraft:

After taxiing down the grass runway, we got into position on the runway and headed back home.

We laughed a little at all the traffic around Toronto below us:

Great day and I must admit, all of the other things to focus on really helped to keep my mind off this rather yucky new symptom.

Today’s symptoms: Well the rest of my symptoms were decent – fatigue wasn’t too bad, pain was low, but this new “itching” symptom is really frustrating to deal with.  I guess that’s just the nature of the beast.  Paws crossed it doesn’t last too much longer!  These paws are itchy!