Posted Mon Jul 11 21:40:42 PDT 2022
For some reason, I always think that Los Angeles and the Bay Area are farther apart than they are. It only took me 3.8 flying hours to make the trip, though I suppose I was aided by a substantial tailwind, which helped a lot.
I woke up half an hour before the alarm today, which is coming to be a habit. However, I wasn't feeling rushed: the LA basin is subject to morning fog, and the forecast last night was that it would occur again. So I didn't figure getting there too early would be advantageous. No point in busting my butt to get there at the crack of dawn, only to have to wait two or three hours for the fog to clear off.
So it was a relatively lazy exit from the hotel in Pasadena, and I didn't actually get the motor started until after 10. (If you're wondering why I'm so specific about the time I started the engine, that's because in order to keep track of loggable flight hours, I use my watch and record the start and stop times, writing them down on my little notepad. The plane doesn't have an hour meter, which I'm mildly annoyed at.) But the launch from El Monte was straightforward, and before long I was climbing through the seemingly permanent layer of smog over LA, and into the mountains to the north.
I initially climbed to 8500 feet to cross the mountains, but found myself creeping upwards, as always mildly paranoid about what happens if the engine stops running; more altitude is always better, since it gives you more time to react, more distance to glide, and more time to get the engine restarted. I ended up at 10,500 feet, and stayed there for the rest of the leg to Tulare.
The way I plan a stop is kind of mercenary, but seems to work. I scroll the map about 100-130 miles in the direction I want to go, and pick an airport that's close to that. Then I go to AirNav and look at local fuel prices around that airport. I pick the cheapest one that's also reasonably close to my intended path of travel, and which isn't more than about 30 miles beyond the one I picked as a starting point. Then I put that in to the flying app as my next destination, and get a flight briefing from wherever I am to that destination with cheap fuel. It feels a little bit hacky, but seems to work well.
Tulare is a little working airstrip in the middle of farm country. Crop dusters are tied down all over the ramp, and the sound of an impact wrench echoed across the tarmac to where I was sitting. I've stopped there before, on my trip to LA a few years ago. On that occasion, I made it moments before the sun went down (Norbert is not allowed to fly after sunset), and ended up camping on the 95° pavement. This time, it was cooler, and I stopped long enough to get fuel and eat a quick snack before I was on my way. I was pleased to see the new bathroom facility near the pumps.
Then it was back into the air, and a left turn for Hayward. Traveling through the central California valley is an exercise in sameness. The landscape is utterly flat, and covered in a pattern of squares of green and yellow, with the occasional blue of an irrigation pond, or snaking path of a long-tamed river. The air is hazy with distant wildfire smoke. Fortunately, today, the air was also quite smooth, and the biggest challenge was keeping the airplane slightly cocked as it few through the air, to keep that pesky landing wire from vibrating.
I found a sweet spot that was neither too left-rudder, which would set the landing wire vibrating, or too right-rudder, which would set the left aileron slave strut oscillating. It was possible to fly there for quite a while, but it was also easy to look up and find one or the other of those two things vibrating.
It was much easier to deal with, though, now that I have my fancy butt pillow: I got a pillow off that online shopping site we all love to hate (but which is frequently the only option) that has a tailbone cutout, and although it pushes my head a bit more into the rough air coming over the top of the windshield, it makes flying so much easier. I was shocked how much less tiring it was to fly when I wasn't constantly trying to shift and reduce the pain on my tailbone.
I made it to Hayward in very good time, thanks to the south wind that was pushing me along. That was pretty neat. I crossed over the mountains at the San Luis Reservoir, so I at least had a roadway under me as a last-ditch place to land if the fan up front stopped blowing. Fortunately, as ever, it ran fine, and after dropping down and down to get under the increasingly crowded airspace around the Bay Area, I was headed toward Hayward.
At the last minute, the tower decided I had to get out of the way for a much faster plane that was coming in behind me. Unfortunately, the controller's voice was at exactly the same pitch as the air rumble I hear in the headset, making it very hard to hear what he was trying to tell me. We figured it out, but it took a few tries.
However, I made it down on the short runway, and turned off to find my parking. I knew I'd be meeting a friend from Twitter, and wondered if she'd be waiting for me as I landed, since she said she would be following the flight on the tracker. It ended up that we met after a short break, which worked well for me, since it gave me a chance to use the bathroom and sit still for a few minutes.
Then, I got to meet Kaiya and her husband, who were awesome. She brought me to a friend's house after we stopped for boba tea (which I'd never had before), and we had a delightful evening talking aerodynamics, LARPing, airspace requirements, SCA lore, and eating Thai food.
I was reminded strongly of The Enormous Room by ee cummings. Not any specific event in the book, but rather the delight that he has in every new thing that happens to him. Every new person is a source of joy and happiness, even people you'd think would be difficult to deal with. I didn't have anyone rubbing me the wrong way, and it was easy to fall into that mindset of just having each new experience be a new delight as I met all these new people. This is a notable thing for me, since I've had a hard time dealing with meeting new people, particularly in groups like this, in the past. It's not something I've been specifically working on, but I've been feeling it this whole trip: each new experience has been a source of delight (though some of the negative thoughts around things like screws wearing divots in landing wires took some distance before the delight became apparent).
Finally, I've had an offer I can't resist from a fellow Biplane Forum person, to help me get the engine's oil changed. I'm supposed to change it every 25 hours, though I'm pretty comfortable stretching that a little bit, since I'm literally flying every day, which is the best possible scenario for keeping the engine happy. So, early tomorrow, I'm getting a ride back to Hayward to change out the oil, which will keep the engine happy past our return to Seattle.
The question of the plane's name came up again in coversation with Kaiya and her husband. We have a new suggestion, of Globulon, but I rejected that one as being too silly. My top contenders are Florence and Myra. Kaiya likes Florence as well, mostly because of the Florence + the Machine references available (and the plane would be, of course, Florence the Machine).
Ok, early day tomorrow to get the oil changed, so I shall sign off now.
Copyright © 2022 by Ian Johnston.