Plane Trip

3/2/2014

Yesterday, while a bit on the cold side, seemed like a perfect day for Jeff and I to play hookey and fly somewhere - anywhere.  When you have a beautiful day, pilots everywhere look toward the sky.  Destination?  Doesn't matter, just get up in the clouds and watch the world below you.  Luckily, our plane has a much better heater than it's air conditioning.  During the summer, there are times when you wish you could put your fanny on ice!

We took the plane out yesterday and flew to Cambridge, Maryland for lunch.  The cost of the meal amounted to peanuts compared to how much aviation fuel costs.  Our rationale thinking is that the plane is just about our only indulgence now.  Let's put it this way, I would give up my fancy car just so we could keep the plane.  It's truly that important to us.  The plane takes us anyplace we want to go and we get there fast.  My "pilot" lets me choose the kind of music I want to listen to.  It actually doesn't matter what type of music I listen to, generally only hear one or two songs before I'm making music of my own (ladylike snoring).  

Jeff is a very good pilot and I have no fears about flying with him.  When we first got the plane I used to freak out (a little, okay maybe a lot!) about the other planes flying in our vicinity.  That fear is now gone.  Jeff can see other traffic on the screen and it's the job of air traffic controllers to watch out for planes flying in their area.  We don't fly up where the big boys are.  Our plane would amount to having a gnat buzzing around them, so we stay out of each others way.  When we are close to a big airport and a plane is getting ready to fly, it's kind of neat to look down on these big birds.

One thing you don't ever want to see when looking out your window is a F-16.  If they are flying close to your plane, then you have done something wrong,  like flying over Camp David or other restricted air spaces.  

I am completely at ease when we're in the air.  If something should happen to Jeff, I know there are two things I can do.  One is to talk to the air traffic controllers who will be able to talk a non-pilot to the ground.  The landing wouldn't be pretty, but you'd at least be on the ground.

The other thing I could do is pull the parachute which covers the entire wing span of the plan and would slow down the plane's speed and allow you to float toward land.  Trust me, if I had to either of those things, I'd be scared "....less").  But even when we flew to the Bahamas over a lot of water, the ocean is after all, vast, I was completely at ease.  It's true that I looked down every so often to see if there were any of those gray finned animals were below us.   I would like very much to return to the Bahamas.  Our visit last time was cut short because of inclement weather.  There was only a small window to get up in the air and get ahead of the storm.  Most of the pilots cut short their trip to avoid bad weather.