Two Pilots & an LSW: The Journey

I'm not sure I have the energy for this whole story! Ha.

So, the pizza arrived around 10:45 pm, it was cold and greasy and had messed up the box. I ate one piece, and left the rest for the cleaning crew, so I could get to bed and try to sleep. Which I did not do. Even with the melatonin, I fell asleep but woke up about three hours later, and could not sleep, in part because I knew I had a super long day coming up and I needed to sleep. Finally around 5, 5:30 am, I gave up, got up, took my shower. Still no food at that hotel, so no breakfast. I grabbed the shuttle out to the airport while it was still dark, and preflighted, and got everything ready, and when the sun cracked the horizon, I fired up and took off for Amarillo, Texas. I'll be honest, I was a little tense on this flight. Kaylee had called me, upset, because she'd had a nightmare that I'd died in a plane crash. Well, THAT'S great. In part it's because of her friend who just lost her mom to a murder/suicide. Kaylee said it made her think about losing me and she couldn't handle that. But it was nice to have that in the back of your mind when you're flying an airplane that has broken more than one thing on you already, over the mountains. But before I got to the mountains, I got to Amarillo. Amarillo by morning, to be precise. I couldn't get that song out of my head. :) There was a big highway that went most of the way on my route, and the ground was flat and wide open. So I got a little less tense as time went by because I had a lot of options. I learned on this leg that the fuel had transferred out of the left tip tank but not the right, so I had a fuel imbalance, which was noticeable on landing (of course). I couldn't see into the tip tanks at all, and the fuel gauges aren't accurate, so I didn't know for sure what either tank was doing. When I landed in Amarillo, I checked the tanks and had them fill up the one that had transferred, even though it was extra weight I didn't need to climb high and I couldn't drain it out, but it was better to do that then have the imbalance.

My Amarillo stop was a quick one. There was a crowd of people in there and not a mask in sight. The signs were on the doors, but everybody in there was not having it. One guy walked in wearing one and looked around and said "I guess not, huh?" and took his mask off and everybody there laughed. I got gas, turned around, and launched again. There wasn't any food there, I hadn't eaten yet, but it was still fairly early and I wanted to keep plowing through.

Next stop was "Double Eagle" in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Cool airport, I went over a series of mountains to get there. You could see right where the terrain suddenly got less friendly, but there was still a road available through the mountains here and there. This was an uneventful stop too. I got gas, paid the bill, and launched again. The more I kept moving, the better my chances of getting the plane to CA before dark, and be able to get my flight home.

The winds had picked up quite a bit. I had a decent headwind, and it was getting rough, both in the air, and the terrain under me, and I had to go up to 12,000' to clear it. The airplane was on the struggle bus to get to 12,000', especially with the high density altitude to start with. I think this airport had a 6000' field elevation, which is pretty good. I leaned it out pretty far for takeoff, something we don't have to do a lot of here in Indiana.

Because of the strong headwinds that had kicked up, I had to change up my fuel stops. I had planned on about 3 hour legs, but I only have 4 hours fuel available because I can't use the tip tank fuel, so I have to stop every three hours. So I had to shorten up my legs. I had originally picked out all big, Class C airports to go to, where I knew they were open 24 hours and had services, maintenance, etc. on field. Just in case. Well, my next to last stop was in Bullhead City, Arizona. It was a tower controlled field and had a Signature Flight Support, which is a nationwide major FBO chain. A good guess that they'd have services. ATC dropped me on top of the airport at 12,000', and I had to circle around to get down. The winds were gusting to 28 knots, and the airport was surrounded by mountains, so the wind flow was interesting. I had the gear transit light come on again. I verified that the gear was down as best I could. Throttle back didn't produce the horn, I could hear it come down, I had the three in the green, and the emergency gear extension didn't move. So I still landed as softly as possible because, well, that would suck. Whew. All was well, so it was probably just the same electrical problem they had earlier. Not too big a deal. I taxi off, and am slowly taxiing up to the ramp to figure out where to park, and my plane suddenly lurches left, stops hard, like I ran into something.

Now up to this point, I'd not eaten, I'd not slept well, I was dehydrated, I was forming a headache, and I noticed my eyes were getting a little blurry on the frequency changes and reading the numbers. I only had one 3-hour leg left, and plenty of daylight, so I was going to work harder to find some food and drink at this stop. (Last stop they had a restaurant...which was closed for Covid). Anyway, I suddenly worried that me starting to fatigue had caused me to run into something I didn't see. I shut that plane down and got out of it so fast that I almost fell out of it, looking in front of the plane, at the wheels, etc. I was so relieved to not see a thing. Then I realized that it meant something broke. The plane wasn't moving. It wasn't a locked brake, it was worse than that. They tried to tow me out of the way, and they couldn't roll the plane at all. So they had to jack it up and haul it away.

I spent the next several hours texting and calling a *bunch* of people. The owner, The seller. Steve. Nathan. John R. Dustin. The FBO. A nearby hotel. Back and forth and back and forth. There was a MBros flight Monday I was supposed to take and now I was stranded. How did I get home. I couldn't make it to CA to get to my flight he already bought. He wanted me to stay in case they could get it fixed and I could still get it to him by dark. They didn't have a mechanic on field, the one they used rage quit and when they called him said he was never coming back to this airport again because he's in a peeing match with management. They asked him who could help a stranded pilot and he said "Nope" and hung up on them. Well...nice. I have a room, I don't have a room, I don't have a rental car. I don't have a way to get anywhere. Calls and texts. And I still haven't eaten anything but peanut M&Ms and water. My head hurts. I'd been at 12,000' for several hours and that didn't help either.

The owner called airports all around looking for a mechanic, and found one nearby who agreed to come by and look at it. He had no tools, he just agreed to look at it. He said it was frozen wheel bearings, or destroyed wheel bearings. Even showed me where the metal particles were. That answered the question and took me out of limbo, because up till now I was surrounded by non-stop texting and calling on all the irons I had in the fire all at the same time. Now I just needed to find a way home. Vegas was the closest airport, almost 60 miles away, but they had no rental cars, the lady said no Uber. Dustin had someone who could maybe come get me but he wasn't answering. A friend John was too far away to get me in his plane. The owner had already bought a flight out of CA for tonight, and he was trying to maneuver to get me out of Vegas. He did his part, but I was still trying to get there. Finally I tried Uber anyway, and a guy said he'd do it. For $250. Ack!! But I had no choice. I took the Uber. Grabbed my suitcase, took everything out of that airplane, left the keys in it in a pocket, and walked away. I don't plan on flying it again. I'm done, as of Bullhead City.

Had that wheel frozen up like that when I touched down 3 minutes earlier, it would have been a much more serious problem. It was a hard jolt just taxiing very slowly. At 90 mph? They're going to replace that wheel. What about the other wheel? What else sat too long and corroded and is about to be a problem too? The other stuff that happened wasn't major, other than the corrosion in the fuel distributor that could have hit more than one cylinder at a time and didn't, but it was all fixed. But then the gear light again, still nothing, but still. And then this. It was my final straw. I'm done. I was tense going over terrain, I was tense just flying it around. And just when I'm relaxing because I only have one leg left to fly, I come one touchdown or two to three minutes away from having a likely aircraft damaging incident. The airplane's name is Alfred, and Alfred and I are going our separate ways for good.

The Uber driver, when he showed up, I was hunting for my mask and he said "We have a 90 minute drive. If you don't mind, I'd really rather not deal with the mask. I don't have Covid. Do you?" I said "Not that I know of, but I haven't been tested lately to be fair." He said "I'm willing to risk it if you are." Yes, I am. We strike up a conversation, and we have a lot in common. I knew I'd like him when he started playing 80s music. ;) He's a year older than me. We were talking the whole way, but now my head was killing me. He asked if I was allergic to Excedrin. I said no, and he had some, but I didn't have anything to take them with. He had a water bottle he'd been drinking out of. I was desperate, so I did it, and said "Now if either of us has Covid the other is probably hosed, you know." He said he didn't care. About 30 minutes later he found an area and asked if I wanted to pull off and get food. YES. So we stopped, went inside, I got food and drink, and with the Excedrin, that really helped. By the time we got to Vegas, I knew a lot of his life story, we'd laughed, we talked manual vehicles, his upcoming job interview, even politics, and we agreed on most of that, too. When I got out of the car at the airport in Vegas, he got out too, and came around and gave me a goodbye hug. And I let him. We genuinely hit it off and had a good time, which for a tired, stressed out introvert with a pounding headache from no food, dehydration, no sleep, stress, and bright sun in my eyes for hours, was really impressive. :D So I tipped him a fairly gross amount even though the ride was so costly, and wished him well.

There was nowhere to try to sleep in the Vegas airport. No comfy seats, no head rests. You know they do that on purpose to dissuade homeless people. Loud machines clanging and banging, music, tram going by, the gambling machines in there, and announcements every few minutes about how the federal government mandates mask wearing. They were serious about it there, so I had a mask on from the time I got to that airport around 5 or 6 pm, the whole time we boarded, the entire 3 + hour flight to Atlanta, the 2 hour layover in Atlanta, the flight home, the airport journey there. I wore it from 5-6 pm through to about 9:30 am, straight. And I hated it so much that on the one flight I turned my head to the window and pulled it off my nose and hoped I didn't get yelled at. "Even if you have been fully vaccinated, and/or had a recent negative test, you must wear your mask". Ugh.

I tried to sleep on the plane. I was so tired that I think I did manage to doze off here and there, but you know I can't really sleep in planes. So...to sum up, I'd gotten about 3 hours the night before, and now a cat nap or so in an airplane on the way to Atlanta. Once I got to Atlanta I ate breakfast, eggs and bacon, and watched "Castle Rock" on the monitor for the 1 hour flight. Chuck came and got me down in Indy, and brought me chocolate donut minis and a Diet Mt. Dew. That's what friends are for. ;)

It was a long day, a long flight and the day merged into Monday, which I'll write about next.

The Mooney on the way to Springfield

The next two are me in the Bonanza on the way to Tulsa, trying to beat the sun.

The first moment the terrain changed and went from flat to starting to be not flat.

It is kind of pretty though

Hello, bigger boys.

These next two are Albuquerque, New Mexico. You have to come over these pretty tall ranges and drop down in the valley to land.

There's the city built up on the back (or front?) side of the mountains

Alfred the Bonanza on the ramp at "Double Eagle".

Now we're moving into more interesting and colorful terrain.

Arizona

This doesn't look like much, but when you're coming up on it, at 12,000', and it doesn't look like you're going to clear it, it gets your attention. Also, see the big road down there? I did. ;)