I watched the sun rise from 19,000' today on the way to Asheville, North Carolina. It was a smooth, clear morning. The only quirk on the flight is that when we left, our destination was fogged in and below minimums. (I told you so by the way.) But this was a mandatory bid meeting, meaning he HAD to be there and signed in by a particular time, or the trip was for nothing, so we left as scheduled and hoped the visibility would come up even 1/4 of a mile in the next two hours. I didn't figure it would that early in the morning, but you never know. The good news is that there was an airport nearby that wasn't in that valley, and it was VFR, as were several others nearby, so there were options. As we got within 10 minutes of the airport, it was still reporting below minimums. I told him we could go take a look if he wanted, but the airport is surrounded by mountains on every side, some of them quite tall, and we are not going to goof around down there. Not that we goof around anyway on a minimums approach, of course. He elected to divert to the other airport, where he didn't have a rental car set up, and was a farther drive to his meeting, which was an excellent decision, and so we did. Hunting down another car and driving further put him back some, but he made his mandatory meeting with seven minutes to spare. The trip home was severe clear all the way, and when we got about 15 miles out, we canceled IFR and worked on some single engine stuff. It wasn't hugely realistic as I was very careful and gentle with the engines, which took awhile to set up properly and such, but he hadn't done any of that in the 340, just in a Seminole, so we both wanted him to do some in the 340. We also talked about some real world application stuff outside of multi checkride prep. Why you don't always just arbitrarily climb like crazy for blue line when you're cruising along at 10,000' and 165 knots, for one example. :) Anyway, it was a good flight, we had a couple of good lessons in there in a few areas, and it was a pretty day to fly, especially once I didn't have to shoot an approach down in a valley down to minimums...
Our original airport is in the gap there, in the valley, under the fog layer. There's a 6100' mountain off the screen to the right too.
Here is where we ended up, nice and pretty and clear.
This was a little restaurant right on the airport field. A tiny café with a total of five tables, two of them outdoors.
This was the gent who runs the place. You place your order, and see that stove behind him? This building is tiny, and the other wall is just on the other side of that stove. He takes your order, then turns around on that old stove and fixes whatever you order. And it's delicious. The man can cook. I had a Cajun grilled chicken sandwich with cheese for lunch, and it was one of the best I've had.
At the FBO, this sign is in the entryway when you walk in.
You take the white pen and sign the wall, and the whole room is covered in signatures, which is pretty cool. I added my name up there too. Why not?
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