Got a call from the guys at Midwest about some upcoming work recently.  Asked if I wanted to come out and ride along for the jobs, one of which was in the Chicagoland area and the other was over in Indiana.  Let me think about that for, oh, I don’t know, a microsecond.  Sure, I will be there.

There is one downside to these jobs and that is that they mean an early start.  The night before Jim texts me to say the weather is looking pretty dodgy and do I still want to come along?  Predicting weather is not something that I can rely on so I was still in and if the weather screwed things up, then we scrub it and have another go some other time.

I made the early trek down to their base but before I left I checked the weather radar on the computer.  There was an evil looking line of storms marching up across the state.  Looking out of the window, the tops of the surrounding buildings were shrouded in mist.  This wasn’t looking promising.  We would see…

When I walked in, Jim had already been talking to the O’Hare controllers since one of the lifts was under their approaches.  With the storms coming, it was already clear that we would postpone the first lift until the storms had gone through.  As for Indiana, that was looking unrealistic since the south end of the lake is the most unpredictable for weather and it was a long run across even to get to the job.  We hung out and waited.

The storms never appeared!  They stalled a way off and the mist lifted a bit.  In the end, it was good enough to go so Jim, Phil and I loaded up and headed out.  Joe was on the site so he had to sit there and wait it out.  I suspect he was glad we finally showed up!  We ferried out to the site and set down.  I hopped out while the long line was attached and Jim make quick work of the two picks.

For the journey back, I climbed up to the second seat.  The cockpit in the S-58T is right on top of the airframe so you have a great view of things.  Shame the weather meant it was not a great day for sightseeing!  The transit back to base was a fun run and then we all headed off for breakfast.  Not a bad way to start a day!