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Ari
As mentioned in another thread before my trip, I flew over 1,000 miles to California just to see a movie. Someone mentioned an ongoing dossier about me, so I figured I’d mess that up a bit with some facts. Here’s the story of how and why I made the trip. It’s a long post. Long enough that the forum software forced me to shorten it. TL;DR: Airplane, weather, and terrain photos will follow in separate posts.
I fell in love with flying when my Dad got his PPL in 1989 and, two weeks after his check ride, took me and my sister for a local flight in a Piper Archer II that he bought into. I was 7 and immediately began pestering Dad to get me signed up with a CFI to start learning how to fly. He promised he would get me some flying lessons when I was old enough to solo. At some point he also taught me the importance of keeping promises, which he may have come to regret. His logbook shows that he also took Grandpa up a couple of times and Grandma up once. Incidentally, Grandma had skipped school at times to get some lessons in a J-3 Cub when she was young. Mom was brave enough to fly with Dad just once, so we never became the family that travels by GA.
We lost Grandpa to cancer in early 1995 and Dad got mysteriously sick shortly afterward. Years earlier, an AME had caught a clue about what was going on (enlarged spleen), but despite follow-ups the cause did not come to light until Dad was on death’s door. He ended up having a perfect storm of rare conditions that led to a 1:00 a.m. phone call saying that, based on an exploratory surgery they had just completed, he had between 2 hours and 2 months to live. It’s normally a 3-hour drive from our house where we took the call to the hospital that placed it, but our neighbor didn’t mind that he got a ticket while driving the rest of us there in closer to 2 hours that night. Dad eventually opted for a surgery that had a chance to give him some more time, even though when he asked the surgeons what the survival rate for the procedure was they nervously looked at each other before answering that he would be the first. We celebrated Dad’s 39th birthday in the ICU that spring. Every birthday after that one, he counted from that day as it was the beginning of his second lease on life.
And he got that second lease, obliterating even the most optimistic prognoses the doctors gave him for both life expectancy and quality of life. Dad never went back to an AME after he got sick and let his third-class medical expire. He sold his share of the plane. I frequently and quite unfairly mentioned his unfulfilled promise about flying lessons over the years. But we went boating, hunting, motorcycling, to concerts, trying various bourbons, learning how to make hard cider from his apple trees when Mom got tired of making apple pie and applesauce, and all sorts of other things over the years. Just not flying. We also ended up working together starting in 2011 when the economy in my hometown was going gangbusters and I was ready to move back from my erstwhile sojourn hither and yon.
Around 2014, Dad learned about the since-adopted Light Sport rules and bought a 1941 Piper J-3 Cub. While he worked on getting his tailwheel endorsement in the Cub, I took advantage of his having bought a plane and made a promise all those years ago. My first flight in the Cub was in late 2014 and then in the summer of 2015 I started flying regularly. I soloed in the Cub that fall, then started renting a Piper Cherokee to finish my PPL in early 2016. I added the instrument rating in 2017, started to build an RV-14 in January 2018, and got my CPL in 2020.
My sister and her family used to live “close” to us, just a 5-hour drive, but decided to move much farther away just before Covid hit the world. Dad and I decided that it would make sense to get a traveling airplane, something fast and big enough to keep the family close despite the distance and pandemic. In early 2021, we landed on a Cessna 310 and I got my AMEL rating in the plane.
I’ve taken the plane on a few big trips since then. A couple “worth it” examples come to mind. In April 2021, I flew from ND to MS with my dog (with a stop in IA to pick up a care package from my sister’s in-laws), picked up my sister’s entire family (sister, brother-in-law, nephew, and two nieces, ages at the time from 3 to 9 years), and flew to Arizona where Mom and Dad were evading winter. We celebrated Easter and Dad’s 65th (or 26th, by his count) birthday together, then I flew my sister’s family back to MS and finally flew home. It was about 4500 miles all together, although the longest I flew on any day was about 1200. This family gathering would not have been possible without the 310. Dad and I also flew down to visit my sister’s family for Labor Day weekend that fall, about 2200 miles round trip.
I fell in love with flying when my Dad got his PPL in 1989 and, two weeks after his check ride, took me and my sister for a local flight in a Piper Archer II that he bought into. I was 7 and immediately began pestering Dad to get me signed up with a CFI to start learning how to fly. He promised he would get me some flying lessons when I was old enough to solo. At some point he also taught me the importance of keeping promises, which he may have come to regret. His logbook shows that he also took Grandpa up a couple of times and Grandma up once. Incidentally, Grandma had skipped school at times to get some lessons in a J-3 Cub when she was young. Mom was brave enough to fly with Dad just once, so we never became the family that travels by GA.
We lost Grandpa to cancer in early 1995 and Dad got mysteriously sick shortly afterward. Years earlier, an AME had caught a clue about what was going on (enlarged spleen), but despite follow-ups the cause did not come to light until Dad was on death’s door. He ended up having a perfect storm of rare conditions that led to a 1:00 a.m. phone call saying that, based on an exploratory surgery they had just completed, he had between 2 hours and 2 months to live. It’s normally a 3-hour drive from our house where we took the call to the hospital that placed it, but our neighbor didn’t mind that he got a ticket while driving the rest of us there in closer to 2 hours that night. Dad eventually opted for a surgery that had a chance to give him some more time, even though when he asked the surgeons what the survival rate for the procedure was they nervously looked at each other before answering that he would be the first. We celebrated Dad’s 39th birthday in the ICU that spring. Every birthday after that one, he counted from that day as it was the beginning of his second lease on life.
And he got that second lease, obliterating even the most optimistic prognoses the doctors gave him for both life expectancy and quality of life. Dad never went back to an AME after he got sick and let his third-class medical expire. He sold his share of the plane. I frequently and quite unfairly mentioned his unfulfilled promise about flying lessons over the years. But we went boating, hunting, motorcycling, to concerts, trying various bourbons, learning how to make hard cider from his apple trees when Mom got tired of making apple pie and applesauce, and all sorts of other things over the years. Just not flying. We also ended up working together starting in 2011 when the economy in my hometown was going gangbusters and I was ready to move back from my erstwhile sojourn hither and yon.
Around 2014, Dad learned about the since-adopted Light Sport rules and bought a 1941 Piper J-3 Cub. While he worked on getting his tailwheel endorsement in the Cub, I took advantage of his having bought a plane and made a promise all those years ago. My first flight in the Cub was in late 2014 and then in the summer of 2015 I started flying regularly. I soloed in the Cub that fall, then started renting a Piper Cherokee to finish my PPL in early 2016. I added the instrument rating in 2017, started to build an RV-14 in January 2018, and got my CPL in 2020.
My sister and her family used to live “close” to us, just a 5-hour drive, but decided to move much farther away just before Covid hit the world. Dad and I decided that it would make sense to get a traveling airplane, something fast and big enough to keep the family close despite the distance and pandemic. In early 2021, we landed on a Cessna 310 and I got my AMEL rating in the plane.
I’ve taken the plane on a few big trips since then. A couple “worth it” examples come to mind. In April 2021, I flew from ND to MS with my dog (with a stop in IA to pick up a care package from my sister’s in-laws), picked up my sister’s entire family (sister, brother-in-law, nephew, and two nieces, ages at the time from 3 to 9 years), and flew to Arizona where Mom and Dad were evading winter. We celebrated Easter and Dad’s 65th (or 26th, by his count) birthday together, then I flew my sister’s family back to MS and finally flew home. It was about 4500 miles all together, although the longest I flew on any day was about 1200. This family gathering would not have been possible without the 310. Dad and I also flew down to visit my sister’s family for Labor Day weekend that fall, about 2200 miles round trip.
