Chapter 264

We enjoyed a slow leisurely morning. I cooked breakfast as usual on Sunday morning. Sunday morning was the one day a week I cooked a big breakfast and we could enjoy each other's company without a rush to be somewhere else.

The hired help were running everything and unless there was a problem above their pay grade, they did not bother us. The gym, the tanning booths, and the climbing wall were still busy as ever and the aviation division was growing steadily thanks to contracts from the government agencies. The college security groups were designed to be self managed.

Even so, there seemed to plenty to do on the weekends any more. Yesterday I was in Frost Borough in the morning and then at Morton field in the afternoon and still ended up in the office. Today it was back to Morton for an important meeting.

An emergency response plan was required by the FAA, the county and DHS. Without an approved one signed by the county and the FAA, insurance would be a problem even though we had met all their other requirements.

After the breakfast we had an open discussion about the Rochester proposal and the training complication that it was going to create. It was just the six of us; Marcy, Jenny, Ching Lee, Lorrie, Vicky and me.

We beat the topic to death for an hour, coming up with a 'piece here and there' type of solution. The final pieces would come together after I made a phone call to Eric on Monday.

I wondered how we were going to throw 15 people into heavy training on the 15th and still keep the agency's involvement secret from the Rochester police officers. Only time would tell.

At noon we made our way to Morton Field for the next round of meetings. Lorrie had split up the duties of her staff. Both administrators and clerks had new assignments and duties. All of them would have new employees to train - some of them as soon as Monday.

Musical chair cross-training among Marcy's, Ching Lee's, Vicky's and Lorrie's clerks was common place. Nobody seemed to mind or complain. The only people that did not get moved around were the time keepers and Marcy's auditors. They had special access to records that we felt should be kept among a few very trusted souls.

Lorrie's aviation division was going to keep someone at the temporary office at Morton Field seven days a week, 16 hours a day and the same when the terminal building was opened.

The Florida vacation rental houses would be in full swing by Thanksgiving, including all the new ones Marcy had bought and those contracted. The new ad program for them had been hitting the papers and TV spots.

The economy for the middle class must be improving or they had pent up vacation fever. Many were obligated already and more rental cars were headed to the Naples site to handle the additional needs.

I learned later that the agency was planning on having an unknown number of people there 24x7 for research, Doppler and tower operation.

We had contacted Robert Bradbury of East Coast early in the construction phase and we had a camera surveillance system and card system installed in the terminal, our hanger, the maintenance building and fuel farm. So now it was just a matter of plug and play with the components and some computer programming.

With the heavy construction all but done, the coarse very thick base coat of blacktop on the access road, the terminal and both hangar parking lots had been put down last week. With November weather about to turn bad at any time, the whole place could be a mud pie in a day with all the traffic. The final coat had to be put down by Thanksgiving.

After that all the local blacktop plants closed from then until the end of January at the earliest, depending on the weather. There was one plant in southern Maryland that was open for emergency road repairs and potholes. Even then, to truck enough to do 2 miles of two lane road and three large parking lots was out of the question, plus it would lose too much heat - according to Tony - in the travel.