Two Pilots & an LSW: Mountain Mama

Tuesday, August 13, 2019

Mountain Mama

I was so tired yesterday that I actually just went to bed around 10 pm. That's super early for me, but it's a good thing, because at 1:40 a.m. our power went out thanks to a huge line of noisy and bad thunderstorms. Our bedroom fan kicked off, and the house was dead quiet. I assumed the power stayed out, but at some point it kicked back on and I didn't know it, but still didn't have the fan on in the room, so I was mostly awake from 1:40 on. My alarm went off at 4:45 a.m. and boy did I not want it to.

There was weather I'd been watching from the day before, partly the weather that went through and took out our power. When I got up, the wad was still there, but the trend was for it dissipating, and the forecast wasn't bad. So I got ready, got out to the airport by 5:45 (yeah), we launched at 6 am, and as we were climbing out, saw that the trend had reversed, and the weather was now back to big, and growing bigger. I couldn't go south around it, couldn't go through it, and couldn't go over it. To the north I'd have ended up in Pittsburgh. So...we landed in Ohio just at the edge of it, shot an ILS in, which the controller messed up big time on vectors, blowing us through it and dumping us on it, but that's another story. Anyway, landed there and waited about two hours. After it had moved far enough along, we took back off and headed for W. Virginia. The way there was clear, but low ceilings had moved into the mountains. So we ended up having to shoot an RNAV approach down to minimums into this strip on a mountain. One side has a big drop off, the other side has little mountains off the end. As we broke out of the clouds and came down, there was a mountain right off my right wing on landing. Sure wouldn't want to mess up on that approach.

The airport courtesy car was broken. They are in the middle of nowhere, and nobody delivered up there. I asked the FBO guy if there was a way to get lunch, and he said no. Well, we were going to be there until 4 pm or so. No uber. Nada. So I'd packed my customary peanut butter crackers, which I enjoyed, and a Coke Zero, and some water, and some jelly beans. And that's what I had to eat since I had a bowl of cereal for dinner at 6 pm the night before. When D came back, I asked him to bring me food, and by the time he got there, I was almost sick to my stomach. It was hot, no air conditioning, there was one chair, which smelled, there was no computer, but at least I had my iPad. I couldn't sleep because...one chair in a tiny room where everybody goes by and in and out. The flight home I ate the Wendy's D brought, and my stomach decided it was unhappy with that, and I just didn't feel good all the way home. Finally now a few hours later my system settled down and got more agreeable. The weather was good for the trip home, fortunately.

A funny thing was that D was supposed to meet his wife at his pastor's house for dinner at 6:10 pm. He was running late, and about in a panic over it. He pointed the nose down and dove for the runway like nobody's business, hopped out of the plane, threw his stuff in the truck, and was gone. Stopping for food made him later, but flying home with cranky un-fed me was just as unpleasant a thought to him as being later for his cranky wife. ;)