Totally amazing to get so close to Chicago and hear that they had evacuated the tower at the field we were headed toward (Midway). We are (very) happily on the ground in Champaign,IL.

We weren’t able to get out of Albuquerque last night (thunderstorms, night, mountains), but we were up early and out in the morning.

A fuel stop on Guymon, OK made us think of our friend Dean. Now we are in Kansas City where we landed on a flat tire. Everyone is fine and we are enjoying some BBQ.

The tower here at ABQ pointed out twenty knots of wind shear off the departure end. So we are delaying another half hour. We still hope to make Witchita tonight, although there will be no early morning departure tomorrow.

We have found the Natural History Museum in Albuquerque. We dodged thunderstorms on the way here. We might stop on Guymon, OK.

We made the first leg! It went great. Off to Albuquerque soon.

Returning west, we were often dodging through the clouds. We flew at ten thousand feet or so, and descending to an airport seven thousand feet below took fifteen to twenty minutes. At least, that was a comfortable rate. We could also just push the noise over and scream down, but then we would be swallowing a lot during the ride to lunch to get our ears to pop.

The ride up through the eastern portion of Kansas was a real game of storm dodging. Kansas City Center was extremely helpful. There was another line of heavy precipitation headed our way, but we were half an hour ahead of it. We were headed for Manhattan, Kansas, which calls itself “The Little Apple.” So cute. Click to continue »

Would you fly with this man?

My father-in-law, Mel, and his wife, Lilla, were in town for the month of January and wanted to spend a couple days in the Bay area. I offered to fly them up and, even faced with a slightly nervous travel companion (Lilla) and a two-and-a-half hour journey, Mel agreed.

I tried to make other plans for the time up there, so I wasn’t just an air taxi, but my cousin was going to be in SoCal for the day and my friend in Atherton was having lunch with someone from even further out of town. I tentatively planned to have lunch by myself at Half Moon Bay. The diner gets good reviews and I love that part of the coast.

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It was time for another visit to the Castle site, so I scheduled another milk run for Thursday. My friend Art was available, and since he is training for his IFR it was a good opportunity to spend some time under the hood and some time as pilot-in-command for a cross-country flight. (You need fifty hours of PIC time to get the IFR ticket. I no longer need time for anything in particular, so there’s no reason Art couldn’t be pilot-in-command.)

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