choppergirl
Well-Known Member
A free room next to a local airport just fell into my lap, what should I do with it???? Did my little orange arrows mention it has spiffy pool?
~~~~
I spent today helping clean a 59 y/o old ladies house just to help her out, because her house was getting out of hand. Just something I did to be nice, not to get paid or anything. She can't climb ladders any more to get the spider webs, etc. Cleaning, it's one of my wizard skills. I'll probably go back to do some basic hammer and nail stuff for her to fix some cabinets and so on, because she got very excited her house made so much progress in one day. My dad did kitchen cabinetry after being an ATC, so I picked up some elementary woodworking skills.
Anyway, to make a long story short, she's lived there for 11 years and has an extra room she has never, ever used for anything, which she said I could have if I wanted and do something with it, and she gave me a house key. All she's ever used it for was for storage, but what's in there is a little pile in the corner that can just be put in the huge walk in closet in the room in 20 seconds flat (a ladder, a shop vac, a few boxes, an old tower computer). Her house is very spartan, so there's no chance of ever needing to pack a bunch of stuff in there in the future. She lives alone and it's just a wasted empty big corner room she has no use for in the house. Anything I did for decorating and furnishing that room would probably be a posh palace by comparison. I like enriched environments with lots of visual clutter.
The room has an awesome view out the window going down a hill of a $$$ cement pond (Clampett speak for below ground swimming pool).
And its only 0.75 miles from the front door of the lobby of a local air port, to the front door of her house (we clocked it with her odometer). See picture above, with close up of pool insert. She drove me to the airport to point out a plane she knows a local guy homebuilt, and she was naming names left and right. Small towns, everybody knows everybody. I was skeptical, because it just looked like a tricycle Cessna type private plane to me... maybe she was thinking homebuilding = restoring. Well, hey, okay, I do, that's what I'm doing, so I'll give her that.
So, I wasn't planning this at all, but... I'm not one pass up free office space next to a local airport even though I have no idea what to use it for. Would you?
There are ultralights 3-4 parked at the airport full time that fly out of there. An ultralight flying club meeting place? A flying club meeting place? The local EAA chapter is 30 miles away. Or just a cool private remote office for me, decorated with aviation posters and magazines and hanger stuff?
This airport is the next closest airport (25 miles from me), to the closest large municipal airport to me (13 miles from me)... with 15 miles as the crow flies between them. The absolute closest airport to me is the local EAA chapter airport (7 miles from me) which is considerably smaller than these two huge (to me) grossly under-used traffic wise small town municipal airports.
I'm thinking... maybe... fly my plane in a meadering way around from my home base airport in that airports general direction, park at airport and tie my plane down, ride a sacrificial bicycle I keep locked to the airport fence to my "office", take a swim, get my tan on, get a cool soft drink out of the fridge, check my mail and doodle on the internet, post to HBA, then ride my bicycle back, get in my plane, and fly a lazy zig zag pattern back... fly around and land there in the morning, hang around, fly around and then back later in the day in the evening...
Sort of my version of the $100 hamburger, only the hamburgers are free and the gas to get it (including wild meandering exploratory squiggly path that eventually takes me there and back) is less than a gallon or two. She actually cooked me a hamburger and steak fries today after I left. That's my kind of price...
So to start, I'm thinking, some retro aviation posters on the wall, a book shelf, some free comfy couches, a table in the center with all my aviation books and magazines on, and a free desk from craigslist with one of my surplus computers on... use her wifi, and run a network cable 5 feet over a bathroom door right into the router back to a desktop computer. Oh, yeah, maybe a full time Network Cam pointed at the pool out the window in the direction of the airport, if I can snag on for cheap on ebay... so I can check on it from home...
Also, maybe out up my own second mailbox there, so I can get "officey mail" there.
So, I guess my question is, if a free office w/ no rent ever next to your local big airport fell into your lap, what would/could you do with it? I can't park a plane there, (or afford hangering my plane there), or taxi it from the runway, but.... still...
I don't have to pay a pool boy or shock a pool or anything... (!)
Last edited:
