I felt a little bit like a fool this morning, trying to figure out what people were saying to me, but their accent was so strong, and it was obvious I was an out-of-towner. I hate that. I don't want to be "that guy", but I swear I couldn't understand a word a couple of them were saying. They talked to me nice and slow like I was the village idiot, and finally we resorted to hand signals. That worked.
I got breakfast before they shut down, got checked out of the hotel, got my rental car returned, got the airplane topped off with gas, and then spent almost 3 hours sitting in a hard folding chair in a tiny room in an FBO with no vending machine, no wifi, no TV, no real chairs, and very dirty floors, waiting for my guys. But I wasn't happy with where I was. The day's conditions left me concerned with my options. I had almost no wind to help me on takeoff, I had a 2999' runway, the winds that did exist were down the runway that had me pointed at nothing but trees, it was getting hot and muggy, and I was full fuel and three people. Pulling out the book told me it should be okay, but I didn't feel okay, I had no margins and it was just too close with 3 of us. So after about an hour I sent a message out asking the other two to meet me at a different airport, that I was going to go out of there alone and go pick them up somewhere else. I found out then that one of them wasn't coming with us, and it was just the other Multi-Instrument pilot and myself. I felt better and the numbers were much better without that extra 200 pounds in the back, but since the other guy going with me is also a pilot, I told him exactly what we were looking at, and told him he's a big boy who knows what the risks are, whereas the other guy was just relying on us and that I wasn't comfortable with what I was looking at with #3 too, but with 2 I felt better, but it's still a risk, which he's aware of, and I'd either meet him at the other airport if he preferred, or he could go out with me. He chose to go out with me, and I talked him through the short field takeoff and climb out, and after we were up he said "Okay, I see why you didn't want the other guy on board out of here too." Even in a single engine airplane there's nowhere to go if you have a problem on takeoff. I briefed what we'd do should we have an engine issue, which was to maintain blue line and try to outclimb the trees, and if we couldn't, then we would settle and land into the trees, under control. She performed per the book and as expected and we were on our way home for a long, 4.4 hour flight with headwinds headed east. At least it was smooth and VFR and just fine...
I did learn that a local guy had a Navajo painted with the exact same paint job as the 340. He showed me pictures, and I'm serious, it's the SAME paint job. When I landed in there, another guy thought it was this guy's airplane, and then he said he wondered who on earth was flying the Navajo in there as nobody around there had the "guts" to fly the Navajo in there. I told him they were just too smart to operate out of there if they didn't have to, it has nothing to do with guts. He then told me that a lot of single engine guys won't use their airport too, with one guy in particular saying that 3000' is too short for his comfort in his C-150. Now c'mon, you'd have to be totally messed up or incapable of any kind of airspeed control to not be able to get in or out of there in 3000' in a C-150, man, that's just weak..
The T-6 is back together, and when I got back I briefly entertained the idea of going up quickly, but the winds were 25 knots. Since 1) I was tired and 2) I was hungry and hadn't eaten since breakfast and 3) I haven't flown it in 7 months, I figured maybe this wasn't the place to start. So instead Steve dropped Kaylee off at play practice and we met up at Chili's for dinner. :)
New Orleans from the air. :)
Driving back into New Orleans...
It's...interesting...the things you see on the highway in Louisiana. ;)
This is harder to see, but there are strings of beads hanging in the tree branches here. Down one of the roads I wandered on, there were beads hanging on wires, on trees, all over the place, like sparkly decorations scattered everywhere.
I couldn't help but stop here briefly. I didn't get a chance to see a lot, but I was glad to get to go by. :)
In the French Quarter of New Orleans, just one of the more festively decorated places.
Narrow roads in the French Quarter
This is the restaurant where I had dinner, sitting on the narrow, old balcony. If one was afraid of heights, like the guy behind me, one might spend the time stomping on the floor to make sure it was solid, which just made it rattle, which just annoyed the rest of us and if it WAS weak, would have just weakened it further. ;) But it was a nice view and as the streets filled with people, I enjoyed doing a little people watching from here.
My table...
The Superdome, taken while I was talking on the phone, holding my handheld camera, and driving in some pretty good traffic.
Canal St., there were a lot of people living right on the canal here, houses on stilts, some decrepit and ancient, some new and fancy, a mixture of rich and destitute. It's very beautiful.
This is the full fuel service...they tug your airplane over to the old fuel pumps and top it off for you. It's a lot of work for them, but they don't get many twins out there to worry about...
This was the FBO...no wifi, no vending machine, bathroom's around the corner, you can't see that the floor is dirty or that the desk is made out of cork wood, but I got the gate code from them, sat in the uncomfy chair to the left of the photo, and waited until it was time to go. :)
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