We landed in Gunnison, and it was windy and choppy, but not too crazy. We drove to Tin Cup, Colorado to look at the little church where A & C will be married July 12th I think it is. Pretty little church in a tiny town on the top of a mountain surrounded by mountains. It’s quite pretty. From there we drove over to their cabin in Pitkin, Colorado. Another slightly bigger tiny town. Went into the cabin, set some things up, and they had brought along a wedding planner today who was looking everything over and making, well, plans for the wedding. It’s an hour and 45 minute drive from the church to the cabin where they will be hosting the reception, full of beautiful terrain. From there we went over to 5B’s, a BBQ place in Gunnison, and had lunch/dinner, before heading back to the plane. I left Ethan, Amber and Atley there, and took the wedding planner home with me.
By now the winds were really kicking up, gusts around 30-33 knots, which in the mountains isn’t great. I saw some lenticular clouds, too, which are not great for promising a good ride. The wedding planner (WP) is new to flying small airplanes and was nervous. On the way out Amber kept her okay in the back, but it was just her and me now, and she didn’t want to sit up front with me. We had to stop in Pueblo for fuel, because they’re CAA and cheap. I warned her this was going to be rough. Going from Gunnison and over the mountains was choppy and turbulent, but nothing too terrible. But then we descended to come down into Pueblo. Got below 9,000’, and all hell broke loose. The turbulence was so bad we were flying out of our seats. The wings were dropping aggressively. Meanwhile the alarms are going off because I’m powered way back to be good and slow for this mess, and I silence them quickly, and spin around and half shout into the back seat “We are okay—this is very rough turbulence but it is not going to hurt us and those noises are not for anything important.” I held up my hand and said we’d be landing in 10 minutes. It was a rodeo all the way down to short final, and I wrestled it on, taxied in, shut down, turned and and laughed and said “You made it!” She said “Well, I lost my lunch.”
I said “Oh no, I’m sorry! Did you have the bag?” She said no, I just had this, and she motioned to a blanket. The tan blanket with N37KW monogrammed on it. She’d thrown up her entire BBQ lunch into the blanket, poor thing. She took it in with her and threw the blanket away. We owe Nathan/Kevin a blanket. Where the blanket had sat there was vomit still all over the seat. So I went inside while she was in the bathroom, and there at Pueblo they gave me a little white bucket with hot water, some rags, and a pair of latex gloves, and I went back out and cleaned up the seat. Dumped the water, threw away the rags and gloves (didn’t figure they wanted those back). She was so embarrassed she was sitting in the lounge with her head in her hands, and I did my best to reassure her that she is by far not the first person to get sick in an airplane, especially when it got that violent. I felt so bad for her. I had her put a little something back in her stomach because now we had a 2.3 hour flight home, and an empty stomach isn’t any better than one full of BBQ for bumps. She’s back there now resting and I think she’s doing okay. It’s still windy at Kokomo too so I’m hoping it won’t be too bad, but nothing in Indiana will be like Pueblo until you get a lot windier than this. We’ll get back to the airport around 9:45 pm. I just hope the rest of this flight being relatively smooth has helped…
The Starlink works flawless on the way out to Colorado, but has trouble on the way home. Not sure why or what difference it makes which direction I’m flying, but it seems to.
So coming back into Kokomo, AWOS said 10 miles and 1400 overcast. So I shot the RNAV 5 down to circle to land for 32, where the winds were down at 15 kts. Except it wasn’t 1400 overcast or 10 miles. I broke out and circled around at about 600’, raggedy bases, misty and rainy, dark. So circle to land at night in the misty rain tight to the runway because the visibility wasn’t that great either. The little red flag went off over my head and I was particularly careful with it. We get on the ground, and the WP in the back says “Wow, you’re a rock star! I couldn’t see anything and then here we were!” I was glad she was feeling better and doing better. :)
Home at 10:30 pm after I had trouble getting the Cheyenne up on the tug to get it back in the hangar, getting nice and damp in the mist. Tomorrow is Marco.
Pretty Colorado Pics
Dusty mountain back road
These are Tin Cup, CO
Church where Amity's getting married
Sunset on the way home
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