"Curses, Foiled Again"

Sunday morning, August 3rd was supposed to be a family flight day. The plan was to rise early and get to Tipton around 0700hrs. Depart, head NorthWest, land at Frederick Airport, have breakfast at the airport restaurant, and then head back to Tipton.
As you can probably tell from the title, things did not go as planned. When I got up and checked the weather, I found that both airports were fogged in. The fog was supposed to lift at around 0900Hrs. That didn't create too much of a problem, we would just have to leave later in the morning when we were sure that the fog had lifted. We arrived at the airport later in the morning and I started the preflight. The rental log book indicated the last renter had fueled the plane at the end of their flight.

A little background is in order.

All of my time as a pilot in airplanes has been in Cessna 172SP's. I have operated four of the school's aircraft. Two out of the four are my "favorite." The one I soloed in and the one I took my checkride in. The third one I have neutral feelings about. I took my first intro flight in it. Then there's the fourth one. The fourth one, well, should a pilot be superstitious about his airplane? The first time I "flew" the airplane was with a co-worker on board. It was April 10th and we were set to get flightseeing over Annapolis. I ended up rotating the aircraft a little early on takeoff and mushed. I pulled the power and landed on the remaining runway. That was my first real life aborted takeoff. Ever since then I had been unwilling to rent the plane again. I had all of 0.2 Hours time as PIC in it. When it came time to book a plane for the flight it was all that was left. I was determined to have a good flight and exorcise the bad feelings about the plane. This was not to be. Back to our story.

As I preflighted and got to the right fuel take I could see that it wasn't full. Neither was the left tank. A check with the dipstick revealed 4 gallons in each tank. I wasn't about to fly on 8 gallons even though the flight was only 25 minutes. That would have been plain silly. Preflight was complete, engine start and taxi to fuel. We were already behind schedule. Stop engine, set park brake, master off, exit, ground wire, step ladder, unreel hose, and insert chip key into gas pump. "Unauthorized Key"
What? Try again.
"Unauthorized Key"
It's just after 0900 so I go inside and see if I can find an airport staff member in the OPs building. I find a guy who reminds me of Mr. Atoz from Star Trek, sorry about the geeky reference, anybody who knows what I'm talking about may laugh, and I ask him if there's a problem with the fuel. He informs me that the fuel is cut off because of an outstanding payment. This is not surprising when AVGAS has been at $5.30 per gallon. So it's back out to the plane to try and figure out plan B. I can purchase fuel myself and have it deducted from my rental, or we can decide to go another time. We decide to go another time because of all the delays we had experienced already.
Put the ladder back, roll up the hose, roll up the ground wire, master on, mixture to lean, throttle open 1/4 inch, ignition key ready.
"Clear Prop!"
Key to START, prop turning....prop turning....prop turning.
Now the engine won't start. Adjustment of the mixture, throttle, a little fuel from the electric pump, and three more tries. Nothing. The battery is starting to fail.
One last try out of desperation. It does not appear that the engine wants to start. Time for the tow bar. The tow bar that comes standard with the 172 makes me believe it was designed by the same people who make the automobile jacks that come standard with your car. They both work, but when you really need them you wish that you had something better. We pushed and pulled the plane out of the fueling area and over to the hangar. I wasn't about to tow it 1/4 mile down the field to the tie downs. Once at the hangar I chocked the wheels and wrote up the plane in the rental log.
I was once again defeated by my least favorite airplane and I found myself muttering as I left the airport, "Curses, Foiled Again!"