"John Ousterhout" wrote in message The weater here sucks
(thunderstorms). It looks like we'll be
traveling at 0 ft. agl again this year. OTOH, the useful load is over
a ton (lots of beer) and the 260 hp V-8 only burns 4 gph at cruise.

I was going to send my regards over the unicom from FL330 as I passed
overhead, but a 4 hour ground hold for O'Hare stymied that effort. An hour
and of half of holding over Louisville (at somewhat more than 4 GPH) ended
with a divert to Indianapolis. We parked on a hard-stand (amongst 27 other
diverts) with a full load of pax and lousy air conditioning. The tower
controller was working alone and he was slammed when ORD Approach finally
released us all at the same time. His words to us were, "No flight plan on
file". We finally landed at ORD and one of the 4 brakes overheated. That's
when I was thinking about PJY barbeque (because all the restaurants in the
terminal were closed). Leaving ORD for LAX, we ran along the south side of
that line of storms. It was definitely a powerful display from Mother
nature.

Maybe I'll make it next year.

D.