Two Pilots & an LSW: The Longest Sunday

Our hotel room in Pitkin, CO, where we are staying for this extended weekend, is quaint, old-fashioned, newly remodeled but had to maintain certain strict historical criteria. There is no air conditioning in it. In the mountains, it gets chilly at night even in July, so you can open the one window in the room to let some fresh air in, but there's also not much breeze, so the inside of the room doesn't cool off a ton. They do have heated floors and radiant heat off the ceilings too, since winter is a lot more brutal up there with field elevation over 9000'. All that to say, it was a little warm in our room per how we normally keep it at home. There is also glass over the top of the door by the vaulted ceiling, and the night before, they didn't turn down the hall lights, so that light shined (shone?) down right on our bed, all night long. I sleep with black-out curtains on my window and no night light. That bright light kept me awake, the heat kept me awake. I went wandering down the hallway at 2 in the morning, when I had to wake up at 4:20 am, to try to find a light switch, but the lights are not controlled by a light switch, and it was for naught. So I got a couple hours of fitful sleep this night, which is always lovely right before a really long day.

Steve got guilted into going with me, so we got up at 4:20. My smart watch let me know that 4 of my health parameters were out of norm for me. My heart rate was high, my O2 levels had dropped to 80, I had only gotten a couple hours of sleep instead of my norm, and my respiratory rate was higher than normal. Then it said "Some of this may be explained by high elevation or alcohol". Well, it wasn't wrong about that for some of it, for sure.

We drove the 45 minutes to Gunnison airport from Pitkin, CO, in the early morning dusk, which is prime deer time. We drove pretty slowly through the winding narrow roads, did see one deer off to the side, but it didn't run into our way at least. I get out there, and not only had they not topped me off like they were supposed to the night before, they didn't even know they were supposed to have topped me off. Fortunately they were free and did it Right Then, so that we could still leave on time. Amity and Clay got there just after 6 am, we loaded up their bags, and we were wheels up at 6:24 am, when we had been aiming at 6:30. That was pretty darned good, actually!

It was a 5.5 hour flight out there, and we did it non-stop. The newlyweds slept in the back, and Steve and I flew there. The weather was fine, the rides were smooth, and it was uneventful. It didn't start out that way, which I'll talk about for Saturday's update, something I found out after the wedding, that had changed. There was a Presidential TFR, a whole series of them, right on top of Newark and Teterboro, and I couldn't go into there. So I went into Caldwell, which just happened to be a millimeter outside of the inside ring, was still in about 3 of the bigger rings, which we could get in and out of. And it was still only a 35 minute drive to Newark to catch their airline flight to Spain. (Airlines can go in and out of the Presidential TFR's inner ring, but we peons cannot.)

All that to say, coming into Caldwell, it was busy. It was Really busy. They told me to expect the RNAV 22 and they sent me to the Initial Fix, which was at a kind of extreme turn angle from where I was coming from. Modern avionics can start that turn way early and line you up and make it work, but you don't cross over the fix itself, you turn way early, or you blow through the course big time. The TFR inner ring, which I'm not allowed to touch, is RIGHT on the other side of that fix. I get closer and closer and they do not clear me for the approach. Here comes the decision--either I keep going towards the fix like I'm supposed to, which means I will blow through the approach and enter the TFR area, which I'm not supposed to do, or I do what else I'm not supposed to and turn and start the approach without being cleared, but stay out of the TFR which I'm not supposed to enter. Get it? I let the airplane start its turn. She barked at me that I was not cleared for the approach and to turn to a heading of 090. I said okay, and I did it, and there goes the approach. She tells me to turn to 190 to get established on it, but now it's too far gone, and she says I can turn to 225 to recapture if I need to, and I say okay, and finally she asks if I have the airport in sight and when I say I do, she clears me for the visual. SHE screwed it up, not me. They wait to the last second out there all the time, but this time she waited too long and botched it all up. I half hoped they'd give me a number to call because I was gonna argue that one.

Anyway. We landed, we delivered Clay and Amity to an Uber, and they headed off to Newark to head to Spain, on time, safe and sound! I topped off with gas, because our next leg was a doozy, going from NY all the way back to Gunnison, Colorado, with headwinds.

But NY wasn't done with us yet. We hop in the plane, fire up, get my clearance, which is massive, and taxi out, where...we sit for 54 minutes. I actually started a timer after 5 minutes. We were #3 ready to go in line, and we sat for 54 minutes before being allowed to take off. Meanwhile we are burning gas that we don't have a lot of excess to burn in the first place. I wanted to call them to send a fuel truck over to top us back off before we left. We finally take off, and they kept us at 10,000' and then 12,000' for 45 minutes. This means we are sucking a ton of fuel, again.

Meanwhile, the conversations going on with ATC are brutal. NOW it's busy. One airliner or corporate jet guy, don't remember, requested when he'd be able to get higher. “Expect 10,000 for your final” “Are you serious??” “Did they not tell you that when you got your clearance?” “No they did not!” “We are saturated and that’s as high as you’re going to get” “Well that’s not going to work!” “Would you like to turn around and land at the airport?” “Well, let me talk to dispatch and I’ll get back to you” “In the meantime, contact NY at 1xx.xx and advise them”. Dang, man. Big ole jet going somewhere at 10,000' unexpectedly is going to double, triple their fuel burn. Unreal. I worked my way up with different sectors until I got up as high as I can go in this plane in that direction, 34,000'.

Every calculation I did said we did not have enough gas now to get to Gunnison. Enter another problem. Gunnison closes at 7:30 pm, and when they close, they shut the lights off and you can't land, the whole airport is closed. I was right now going to land at 7:26 pm. I don't have time to land for fuel anywhere else without spending the night somewhere else. Then I watch the headwind get worse, and now I'm not going to make 7:30, either. I email them with Starlink and ask if someone can stay the extra few minutes I may be (if I can make it). I calculate fuel every 30-60 minutes on this 6+ hour flight, and it's not enough, not enough, not enough, and then the headwinds start dying. And then they shift to a slight tailwind. And here we go, picking up speed and range. And now I'll make it...barely. Maybe. If it holds up.

I've also got storms now. Going around two sets of them, and the third sitting in between me and Gunnison, all around Gunnison, but Gunnison itself is VFR and clear, it says. I'm so tight on fuel that if I have to shoot a lengthy approach, I'll go below my personal minimums of reserve. I can always stop in Pueblo if I have to, so I have a back-up, but this whole thing is...

I go around the storms, break out of the clouds in the mountains, with lightning off the right, shafts of rain all around, turbulence from the mountains, hunting for the airport in the VFR conditions, and I find it, and land, at 7:23 pm. Before they close. Steve was pretty interested in the end of that one, too, because it was, well, interesting. Winds were gusty, over the mountains, it's always a...ride. This was a 'good' one. When we shut down, I put in all the control locks, plugs, pitot covers, and we're all out the door by 7:39 p.m. Find out the next day, when we left to come home, that they charged us a $300 "call-out fee". 1) I landed at 7:23 when they were still open 2) Nobody had to be 'called out' 3) we walked out 9 minutes past 7:30. Out. Rageous. I still want to contact someone in charge and complain. But Ethan has a home out there now, we're going in and out of there all the time, it's by far the closest airport, and you don't want to burn bridges too bad, you know?

So anyway, we leave the airport at 7:39 pm their time (9:39 pm our time), I drove Ethan's car that Amity and Clay had come in, Steve drove our rental, and we went straight out to Ethan's place, where the rest of the wedding party was eating hot dogs, brats, mac and cheese, and had Grilled Peaches with ice cream and honey and a little granola drizzled on top (Deeeeelicious), before going back to our hotel room and just crashing. We had eaten a candy bar all day, and had almost no liquids, because...we spent 12.6 hours on our butts in the air alone. So, 12.6 hrs flight time, dealt with huge airspace, weather, fuel, mountains, TFRs, all of it, and left our hotel at 5:15 am, didn't get back to it until 10:30 pm. That's a long day, my friend, a very long day.