The Coolest Town in America

Apparently Lititz, PA was voted Coolest town in America, or so their signs say. So I've been to the sweetest and the coolest towns in American in two days. It is a very nice, quaint place, lots of character and history. I've enjoyed my stay and my tour, but I'm ready to go home.

This morning I met up with Thile, like I said, a friend from grade school that I last saw when I was 14 and she was 13. We went out and had breakfast at a nice little nook in town, then spent the day together touring around the chocolate factory in Lititz (which is not Hershey), went on an Amish Tour, driving around the back roads, over covered bridges, just back in Pennsylvania Dutch country. Stopped for a fresh pretzel and lemonade, went to a fairly large Amish market place, and told stories and caught up on what everyone is doing. My 9th grade teacher died of aggressive breast cancer, my classmate is a preacher, just all sorts of stuff that was pretty interesting for me to hear about. It was a better way to spend the day than sitting in an FBO. Not that I would have anyway with this rental car.

This time I got a Toyota Avalon, and it's a sweet little car. No key, just the fob, and it's all bluetooth. So I hooked up my iPad and my iPhone both, in just seconds, and as soon as I sat down in the car and turned it on, it would hook up my tunes and just start playing them right off my playlist. And when I plugged in places into Maps on my iPad or phone, like Hershey or my friend's house or a restaurant or the hotel or whatever, it would speak the directions over the speaker system in the car over the music. Awesomeness. And the car boogied. Our last rental car was speed limited to 80 mph. Which is lame. This one accelerated rapidly and smoothly and got with it pretty good--it got up to 80 before you knew you were anywhere close. Zippy car, and it was an automatic with the option to use it as a manual, so I did, of course, because I can't help myself. Took me a little bit to figure it out, but that was fun. The only thing wrong with this car? It was grey. I'm going to turn into a REAL princess soon and start demanding that my rental cars be a color, ANY color, besides grey/silver/white. Seriously. It's grey? Take it back. Give me a dumpier car if you must, but make it red. Or black. Or Blue. Or maroon. But preferably black. Chop chop. ;)

I didn't feel like turning that car in--I did a lot of driving around just because I could and I liked it.

After Thile left to go pick up her kids from the bus from school, I stopped at the restaurant on the airport and got that pan-seared rare tuna on salad greens that I got before, and it's still delicious, and only 400 calories for the whole plate, too. Good stuff. Wish we had that around us in Kokomo. I still had a good 3-4 hours to go before I knew my guy might be back, so I went to the movies right by the airport and watched "Olympus has Fallen", which was well done. Action adventure, tension, and the bad guys had a pretty good plan to take over the White House, by the way.

I came back to the airport, and my guy asked if I could pick him up in Maryland. I looked around, and there was not one single appropriate airport any closer to him in Maryland than the one I am currently sitting in in Pennsylvania. There's an Army Base that's private, a few heliports and a couple private strips, and one public use airport which has a grass strip and one concrete runway both 2000' long. I'd be able to get down and stopped in 2000' if I had to and my brakes held, but I wouldn't get back out. Full fuel and a warm day to boot? Not even close. So I told him he'd have to drive, which put him back here a couple hours later than originally intended.

While I waited for him, I started looking into the flight to Oklahoma I'm to make first thing in the morning. Not so sure there, yet; the forecast is talking thunderstorms and IFR. It's not super low IFR, supposedly, at least. and also at least I'll have plenty of fuel in that airplane even with a 3.5 hour flight over, but we'll have to see what we've got in the morning. These thunderstorm forecasts are impossible to gauge ahead of time a lot of times until you see them with your own eyes and can tell if there's anything you can do to go around them or not.

My flight home tonight took awhile.  The headwinds were so strong that I tried to just stay low, at 8,000', and scoot home.  That was okay for awhile, but then I crossed a front or something, gained another 20 knots on the nose and ended up with a 55 knot direct headwind.  My groundspeed for awhile there was 127 knots.  This was killing me on fuel, too.  I planned a fuel stop just in case, and then went down to 6,000', where at least I got back up to 145-150 knots groundspeed again, which was enough to get me home with an hour fuel reserve.  There was a lot of weather off to my right, but nothing in my way, at least.  My passenger fell asleep in the back within about 15 minutes of takeoff, which was perfect, as he slept through all the turbulence we had (he gets motion sick easily) and didn't wake up until I was on base to land.  Perfect.

Glad to be home.  Tomorrow's not looking promising so I may be here after all, but just in case I wake up and it's magically better than it currently looks like it's going to be, I'd better go to bed and get some sleep...