Splashdown

This is the conclusion to the story of my first coast-to-coast trip, starting with Winslow and continuing in The Agony and the Ecstasy.

Hour 366

The third day of my coast-to-coast trip with Dad started blissfully: with plenty of sleep. In the high desert, the best strategy is to wake up before the sun rises and take off before the heat brings turbulence and higher density altitudes. Now safely east of all the high terrain, we slept in. The overcast kept our hotel room dark even after the sun came up. We returned to the Spirit of St. Louis airport at 9AM, refreshed and energized by the feeling that we were just a day away from our goal.

I checked the airport's weather computer. The overcast was just 500 feet above the ground and extended a hundred miles east. It would have been legal to take off, but I wasn’t convinced it was safe. If we needed to land in a hurry, or if my radio failed again, things might get a little "interesting." Even if we did take off, we wouldn't want to cross the nasty weather front that had been covering Indianapolis the night before. It had continued pushing east through the night and was now a couple hundred miles east of us.  The longer we waited, the further we’d be able to fly before reaching it. I decided the best course of action was to delay our departure.  We spent some quality time on the incredibly comfy couches in Thunder Air, the private-aircraft service station where we'd parked the plane the night before.

The confluence of the Missouri
and Mississippi rivers

By 11AM, the weather had improved considerably. The St. Louis area was nearly clear and airports along our route were reporting half-clear skies. The storm front had moved far enough east that we determined we could safely get all the way to Mansfield, Ohio. So, at about 11:30, away we launched into the scattered clouds. We were still west of St. Louis international, so air traffic controllers directed us north for about 10 miles until we were clear of their airspace. Then, we were cleared direct all the way to Mansfield. This clearance, itself, was a learning experience.

“Cardinal 97H, say on-course heading to Mansfield,” the controller said.

Heading to Mansfield? From here? That was two states away! We were barely out of St. Louis -- all I knew was the airway I was on.

“Heading is … uh … standby.” I fumbled with the GPS, trying to figure out how to get it to tell me the heading to a waypoint later in the flight plan. Finally I just took an educated guess: “About 070, I think?”

“Roger, Cardinal 97H, cleared direct Mansfield.”

Well that was new. In my time flying on the West Coast, I’d file a flight plan that followed airways, then fly on the airways, exactly as planned. In the middle of the country, where there’s less traffic and no terrain, I learned it’s common to get a direct clearance to points hundreds of miles away. I’ve since come to expect this. The best part about doing these cross-country trips is learning so many new things! I punched “direct-to Mansfield” into my GPS, wiping away the 9-leg flight plan I’d painstakingly entered before we took off.

The flight was relaxing, and mostly in clear air, but the threat of thunderstorms still hung in the air. The front we’d been behind for the past day was getting uglier, enveloping half the east coast.  As we made our way east we could see a long line of towering cumulus clouds way off to our right, reaching up to 45,000 feet and clearly visible from 100 miles away. They looked very imposing and I was happy not to be tangling with them.

In our descent we found ourselves in some patches of very bumpy cumulus for about 15 minutes. It was harder than our approach to St. Louis the night before.  The evening's stratus layer had enveloped us completely, reducing visibility to zero, but stratus is typically smooth and easy to fly in. Today, we were popping in and out of clouds and getting knocked around. I fought to keep us on course and wings-level, despite not being able to see the horizon visually. This is typical of cumulus clouds, and what often kills non-instrument-rated pilots. We got a couple of hard bumps that popped us into a 30-degree-bank, and my inner ear was, at one time, begging me to bank further over instead of leveling the wings. A big part of instrument flight training is learning how to ignore your inner ear and do what your artificial horizon says instead.

A few minutes before landing, another plane on the approach to the same airport reported going through an area of "heavy rain." A second pilot piped up, "We'd like to divert around that rain as well." A knot formed in my stomach. I longed for the same kind of weather radar they had, rather stuck inside the clouds, blind!

"Uh, Mansfield Approach, Cardinal 97H, could you clue us in what all those guys are diverting around?" I queried the controller, hopefully.

"They're all inbound from the east, 25 miles east of you," I was told. Relief washed over me as we descended through the clouds and landed. We were now within striking distance of our final destination!


Hour 369

We had a nice lunch in Mansfield and refueled. Then we checked the weather. The storm front we were avoiding had continued its journey east. It was still raining with low visibility in our destination of Ticonderoga. But we were in no rush. It was only mid-afternoon and we were a single, three-and-a-half hour flight away from our goal. We headed to the pilot lounge along with a gaggle of other pilots who were stuck there trying to get to various points on the East Coast.  I took a nap.

Two hours later we reassessed the situation. The front was curving off to the north-east, following the contour of the coast. The trip from Mansfield to Ticonderoga would take us far enough north that it seemed we could sneak in behind the front. Syracuse, NY was about halfway to Ticonderoga, and seemed like a safe alternative.  At worst, we could just land and spend the night in Syracuse, and complete the last hour of flying the next day. I decided to call the Flight Service Station and see what the professional aviation meteorologists had to say about it.

"I'm in Mansfield and am trying to get to Ticonderoga, or at least as far as Syracuse if I can. What do you think?"

"It should be possible," the briefer told me, "to get at least as far as Syracuse. But there's a second system coming in off Lake Erie, so you should stay south of Akron." He even gave me a series of waypoints to fly that would keep us out of the weather. Wow, now that's good service! "Just call us again over Elmira to see how the weather is developing," he suggested.

Dad and I launched again, with the briefer's suggested route programmed into the GPS. It was bumpy in the clouds so we climbed up to 9,000' to get above the tops. For about an hour, the flight was wonderful, as a strong tailwind from the cold front propelled us at about 172 knots (198mph). The clouds eventually enveloped us again, and as the sun gradually set, we lost visibility completely and continued solely on instruments.

Around Elmira, I tried to raise Flight Service on the radio to get an update on the weather. I tried a bunch of the local frequencies listed on the chart, but each seemed to be closed for the night.  Ten minutes of fruitless radio calls later I started to get anxious. Uh oh -- Strike One. (Well, let's call this Strike Two. Strike One was the fact that we had storm fronts around.) It was now too dark to see the storms. How close were they?

Then, Strike Three -- my primary cockpit lighting failed. My instruments are normally illuminated by tiny red lights mounted all over the panel. This system failed somewhere after St. Louis. Yikes. I have 6 flashlights in my flight bag, an overhead dome light, and a yoke-mounted light, so this wasn't an emergency. But it was another strike on the list of reasons to abort the flight.

Finally, Strike Four -- "Cardinal 97H, verify that you're still at 9,000 feet, I'm not reading your Mode C."

Oh, crap. Mode C is a feature that lets controllers see my plane's altitude. This is important for various reasons, but top on the list that evening was that the controller can warn me if I'm accidentally using an altitude that's too low. I reset the transponder several times with no effect.

As the strikes accumulated, I got more and more uncomfortable about continuing the flight. I started to look at the chart to decide where we could land. I wanted to be on the ground, no matter where we were!

I had just opened my mouth to say to Dad, "Let's just land and finish this tomorrow," when, like magic, the strikes started to unwind themselves one by one. First, "Cardinal 97H, contact New York Center now, and ask them about your Mode C -- the problem might be on our end." On your end? Why didn't you tell me that 10 minutes ago??

"New York Center, Cardinal 1597H with you level 9,000 direct Ticonderoga, can you verify you have our Mode C?"

"Uh, yeah, sure, I've got it loud and clear", this new controller said, in a tone as if I'd asked him if he knew the year was 2004.

The controller also helpfully provided us with a local frequency to get weather information, and we were able to contact Flight Service again. They confirmed that the path to Ticonderoga was clear! In fact, the second front was now moving in to Syracuse, so our desired destination of Ticonderoga looked like safer bet than our backup plan. He suggested a slight further deviation to the east to keep us out of the weather. My Mom, who was tracking our whole trip on the computer, later told us that we'd been depicted as driving exactly through the center of two parallel storm fronts. Score one for the Flight Service Station!

Using my yoke light and some new batteries, the cockpit lighting situation was also looking much better -- I had a fine view of the instruments.

And -- "New York, Cardinal 97H, I hate to sound paranoid, but can you please verify one more time that you see our Mode C?"

"Yep, I sure can," he said, sounding confident. And, just to top it all off, we were out of the clouds again! We could now clearly see lights on the ground. Hooray! This will work after all! My blood pressure returned to normal.

We flew on, breathlessly. Dad and I couldn't believe we were so close to our goal. In another 20 minutes we were close enough to hear the weather being broadcast from Glens Falls -- a good-sized municipal airport very close to our final destination. They were reporting clear skies!

By this time, we were talking to Albany Approach. After we checked in, the frequency was completely silent. It was 10PM on a Friday night; is this normal?

"Albany Approach, Cardinal 97H... radio check?"
"Cardinal 97H loud and clear."
"Great, we were just worried that we hadn't heard anything for a while."
"Yeah, it's just that time of the night."

Indeed it was.


Final Approach

20 minutes out from Ticonderoga, Albany Approach handed us off to Boston Center -- the agency that covers Lake George. The Boston controller asked us to "say approach request." She wanted to know: did we want a visual approach, or one by reference to instruments?

A visual approach would have been legal. We were in the clear; there was only a single layer of clouds high above us. But a visual approach would have been a bad idea -- I discovered that in the middle of upstate New York at night, when the moon is obscured by clouds, it is very, very dark. We could see an occasional light on the ground and nothing else. No horizon. No terrain. No ground features. No nothing!

"We'd like vectors to the GPS approach to runway 2," I replied.

Apparently I caught the controller somewhat unprepared. "Ticonderoga Airport" isn't really an airport as much as a lonely landing strip with some lights and a place to park. No buildings of any kind. The only service provided is a pay phone attached to a creaky wooden stake. Not a place that gets a lot of customers, as we discovered in a moment:

"Uh, Cardinal 97H, I'm not, uh, familiar with that approach..." she trailed off, with the sound of papers rustling in the background. "Where do you want to be vectored? I can get you as low as 4,200."

Ha!  Usually the controller knows the approach better than the pilot. Now she was asking me what she should do with us!

The instrument approach at Ticonderoga

"Can you take us to PULLO intersection?" I asked. I had the approach plate for Ticonderoga in front of me already, of course; PULLO was the name of the spot that starts the instrument approach.

"Roger, Cardinal 97H, proceed direct to... that intersection," she said.

And off to PULLO we went. We passed over Glens Falls airport. Perfectly clear and well lit, it would be an easy landing. The thought crossed my mind -- why not quit while we're ahead and just land here, right now? Well, we'll come back if there's any problem. Let's try Ticonderoga first.

Down, down into the inky blackness over AFRED intersection we descended, and further down near JADSU... just following the approach, like I was trained, trying to ignore the incredible excitement that was welling up inside of me, trying to ignore the fact that I was enveloped in total darkness making mountains invisible and with potential storms in the distance, trying to ignore the flash of light I'd seen that might have been lightning 100 miles away or maybe just a camera, trying to forget what it would feel like to land triumphantly, no, just trying to forget all that and focus on doing this damned approach correctly, getting the needle centered, trying to push everything out of my mind but that mantra -- fly the plane, fly the plane, fly the plane....

I looked up out the windshield at the black nothingness. It was like being locked in a closet. Totally featureless. Wait, except--- is that a green light I just saw? Airport beacons are white and green. Could it be?

I clicked my microphone-key 5 times. In theory, this should turn on the runway lights.

BAM! The most beautiful, perfect, gorgeous, lovely, fantastic runway in the history of aviation suddenly appeared in my windshield. It was a tiny line of bright white lights about 10 miles away.

"Oh my god, oh my god!" I started to shout. "I see the runway, there it is, there it is, there it is!"

My dad was beside himself. I had asked him a half-dozen times in the last ten minutes not to talk or distract me in any way, as this was a critical phase of flight and I was trying to stay focused. Now I was afraid that he was going to burst right out of his seatbelt with pent up excitement.

But, no, fly the plane, fly the plane, fly the plane.... in the long moments I'd spent looking out the window at the far-away runway, we'd drifted 30 degrees off course. Dammit, stop looking outside, this isn't over, just fly the plane, get that needle centered...

We proceeded on the approach, descending until we reached the minimum altitude for circling around. I wanted to land straight ahead, to the north, but my GPS was telling me that our groundspeed was 115 knots while my indicated airspeed was only 90 knots. Too fast, way too fast, clearly the wind was still at our backs! So, we went right past the runway, another mile north, then turned back to the south, still unable to see anything but the runway lights. I turned on all my landing lights, extended the flaps, and down we went again, aiming for that beautifully lit runway.

1,000' ... 900' ... GUMPS OK, before-landing checklist complete. 500' ... 400' ... Flaps 30. GPS groundspeed is down to 65 knots. Perfect. Check again that the gear is down. Green light is on. Runway lights set to maximum. 300' ... 200' ... everything seems right. I see no reason not to land.

50 feet. 30 feet. 10 feet. 5 feet.

Squeak.

It's hard to describe this moment. It's emotional even writing it down. It was sort of like the end of Apollo 13, when the ship finally splashes down in the ocean.

While we were still rolling out, I started to hyperventilate. I couldn't believe that we were actually on the ground in Ticonderoga. We'd come thousands of miles, met so many people, gotten a blown radio repaired, and battled storm fronts, high density altitudes, and the Rocky Mountains. This whole experience had seemed larger-than-life, and I had fantasized about landing at this airport for so long... it was almost incomprehensible that we were actually there.

I didn't use the brakes, but instead added a little power and let the plane roll to a gentle stop at the south end of the 4,000' runway, where the tiny tie-down area and my jubilant family awaited. They waved at us; I flashed my landing light back, pulled into a parking space, and shut the plane down. I opened the door. In an instant, while I was still wearing my seat belt, my Mom was at my side. We had a tearful reunion and she hugged me like I was the last life vest on a sinking ship.

We'd done it!

The Agony and the Ecstasy

I have to open this story with an admission: I didn’t tell the entire story of my flight out of Winslow. For every takeoff, there must be a landing, and the landing in Alburquerque would not have happened the way it did if the takeoff in Winslow had gone differently.


Hour 358

Even after the engine cooled after our frightening takeoff, the flight was not pleasant. The desert floor was heated by the unrelenting late August sun and made for one of the most turbulent flights I’d experienced. As a passenger, turbulence can be nauseating and frightening; as a pilot, it’s exhausting. During the cruise phase of a normal flight I get to sit back, relax, and enjoy watching the world pass underneath. In turbulent flight, it’s a constant battle to keep the plane on the right heading and at the correct altitude, constantly re-trimming and fussing with the throttle, rarely getting more than a few moments of rest. My stress level skyrocketed as we left Winslow, and the turbulence kept me from ever really relaxing even after the threat of mushing into the ground on takeoff had abated.

By the time we reached Alburquerque, I was ready to be on the ground. The problem was I was scared of the ground. I delayed our descent as long as possible, and made my final approach at nearly twice the recommended speed. I kept thinking, “If I have to abort the landing and go around, I want to make damned sure I have enough speed to climb out.” I’d been so frightened by what happened in Winslow that I was now irrationally hoarding energy exactly as a man who once almost died of starvation might hoard food. My approach speed kept creeping up and up -- the runway is 13,000’ long, I reasoned, so why not?

Touching down at 120mph in a plane whose normal touchdown speed is 65 certainly taught me a lesson. The moment the main landing gear touched the tarmac, the nosewheel came slamming down and the plane bounced 30 feet back in the air. I tried to coax it back down, overcorrected, landed nosewheel-first again, and bounced another 20 feet up. After a third bounce I realized what was happening and, near the top of the bounce, applied full power with the intention of going around. I then had a moment of terror: even at full power, I could not completely arrest the descent. The pilot-induced oscillation was so bad at that point that after the bounce the plane continued its trajectory slowly downward until the mains kissed the ground with the engine blazing. In an instant, I decided this was good enough, cut the power again, and focused on keeping the plane on the runway centerline as I bled off airspeed for the next 4,000 feet. I’ve flown that Cardinal for about 850 hours total now, and that landing in Albuquerque remains, by far, my worst.

Dad and I found a hotel. I had dinner with a depressed cloud over my head and fell asleep immediately afterwards, totally exhausted. During the night I had a vivid nightmare about crashing a plane into the side of a mountain and woke up the next morning with a deep sense of dread, regretting having taken the trip and wishing it were over.


Hour 359

The next day I resolved to solve the problems from the day before. Specifically:

• We'd leave as early as possible, while the air was cool
• We'd plan a short segment so that we'd be able to take off without full fuel, lightening the load.

Between the cooler air temperature (i.e., thicker air) and less fuel (i.e., lighter plane), the climb should be much easier. Of course, Dad was fine with waking up early, because he was still on East coast time and didn't want a repeat performance of Winslow any more than I did. We picked Dodge City, Kansas as our destination. My pilot friend Morten, who was also based at Santa Monica, had coincidentally been there the day before on his way back from OshKosh. He'd called to tell me it was a nice place to stop, and I also wanted to be able to say it was "time to get out of Dodge." Even the FAA has a sense of humor: the instrument approach has an EARPP intersection.

We were at the airport by 7am, where I put only 10 more gallons of fuel in the plane. By my computations, we'd still have fuel to make it to Dodge with 90 minutes or even 2 hours to spare.

I filed our IFR flight plan and by 7:40 we were holding in position at the end of ABQ's wonderfully long, 13,000 foot runway. I throttled up to full power and held the plane on the runway for as long as I possibly could -- we accelerated past the plane's normal rotation speed, called "Vr".  Then past Vr+5, Vr+10, Vr+15... by Vr+20 the plane was begging to be let into the air. I released the forward pressure I'd been holding on the yoke and we leapt up into the piercingly blue, crystal-clear sky. We climbed at 700 feet per minute! That's almost ten times faster than our climb out of Winslow. In fact, it's not unreasonable performance even for a sea level takeoff, home in Santa Monica!

My mood instantly changed. Ha, ha-- now I'm getting the hang of this!

Our trip over the remainder of the Rockies was wonderfully uneventful. The early morning air was completely smooth; we sailed over the mountains at 11,000 feet as if we were being carried along on a cloud. I was in fine spirits, happy about the trip again, and really enjoying looking down at the fantastic scenery. In two hours time, the Rockies gave way to Kansas and the Great Plains. Minute by minute we could see the terrain dropping lower and lower under us. Before we knew it, it was time to land in Dodge City, after penetrating a tiny layer of scattered clouds. I brought us in for a nice landing, which was quite a relief after my terrible performance in Albuquerque.

We taxied to the parking area, and I shut the plane down. But, oops, one more minor task--we had to cancel our IFR flight plan. In other words, we had tell Air Traffic Control that we were safely on the ground. If you don't do this, they send out a search and rescue party. I powered up the avionics, and on my #1 radio, started to announce, "Kansas City Center, Cardinal 1234H is on the ground in Dodge City, canceling IFR..." until there was a fizz and a pop and I realized my radio was completely dark.

Wait. What? No radio? Please tell me this isn't happening.

I turned everything off and back on again, hoping in vain that I'd flipped some switch the wrong way, but the sound of the "fizz.... pop" was all too distinct in my memory. The #1 radio was dead. My good radio! Arrrgggh!

Dodge City may be a great place to go if you want to see a re-enacted gun fight, or get cheap fuel, but it's not a particularly good place to find someone who knows how to fix a KX-155. Now what?

Well, first things first: after contacting ATC using my other radio, we had some lunch. The fine folks at the Dodge City airport lent us the crew car. We had a nice Mexican meal in town, and stopped by the local auto parts store to buy a fuse and some screwdrivers. Back at the airport, I took my radio out of the panel and confirmed that the fuse was blown... but, replacing it just resulted in another blown fuse. Something was wrong. And the nearest avionics shop was 120 miles away in Wichita!

But how do we get to Wichita with clouds in the sky and only one working radio? And a marginally crappy radio, at that? Its front panel looked more like a 1940s gas pump than like a piece of avionics.


Hour 362

After some soul searching, I decided to try the flight. My GPS was still working, which had been my primary source of navigation anyway. The #2 radio hadn't given me any problems. It was old, but sturdy. I had a backup handheld radio in my flight bag. And, although there were some clouds, they weren't that thick, and were a few thousand feet above the ground.

I was -- again! -- very nervous before the takeoff, but once we were in the air, I could tell the single-radio flight wouldn't be a problem. I was careful to write down all frequencies on a sheet of paper, instead of depending on my fancy but dead #1 radio to remember them for me. The clouds started to thin out, too.

Our trip to Wichita had an unexpected benefit: my homesick Cardinal got a chance to see its birthplace! The Cessna factory is near Wichita, KS, and we passed right over it on the way.

We were down through the clouds long before we reached the airport, so did a visual approach that didn't even require the radio's navigation functions.

After about 10 minutes of taxiing (Wichita is a big airport!) we arrived at the avionics shop that had been recommended by the folks in Dodge City. There, we found a kind gentleman who had about five lifetimes' worth of avionics experience piled on work-benches and bookshelves. At any moment it seemed his office would burst, covering everything within 100 yards with a strafing fire of half-assembled radios and stray transistors.

Luckily, this disaster was averted, and in 45 minutes our radio was repaired and back in the plane! We felt really energized and still had a couple of hours of daylight left, so we decided to press on with a third flight. Our first thought was to get to Indianapolis, IN, but a large weather front was between us and them, so we decided instead on St. Louis, MO.


Hour 363

We were in the air by 6pm. Since we were finally in areas of much lower terrain, we could cruise along at 7,000 feet instead of the 11,000 we'd been using for the earlier segments. At this lower altitude the engine has all the air it needs to develop full power. Plus, we had a nice tailwind, so the plane was scooting along at 165 knots (190 mph) most of the way. The sky was clear, our radio was working, our spirits were high -- we felt unstoppable!

By the time we got closer to St. Louis we were rapidly closing in on the cold front ahead and the bad weather that went with it. The further east we went, the more the weather was expected to deteriorate. Our intended destination of St. Louis International was reporting low visibility and light rain. 20 miles closer to us the smaller Spirit of St. Louis Airport sounded much more promising with a comfortable 2,000' between the clouds and the ground, and no rain. We advised ATC we'd be diverting to Spirit Airport.

Under control of ATC, we made our initial descent, and soon found ourselves sandwiched in between two solid layers of clouds. Then, in one magical moment, the setting sun came down below the upper layer, and joined us in between -- turning the clouds above and below into a stunning orange.

Finally, the sun set, leaving us in the dark. I activated my various cockpit lighting systems. And then on to the further excitement for the flight: an instrument approach that kept us in actual clouds for about 30 minutes. Many pilots do this routinely, but I learned to fly in Southern California, where an "instrument approach" usually means spending 2 minutes in the marine layer just before you get to the airport. Spending 30 minutes tooling around in the soup was a new experience for me!

We got vectored to the ILS. We had to take the "long way around," since the airport was landing to the west, and we were initially heading east. We had to go about 10 miles past the airport, do a slow turn back to the west and intercept the final approach course. Finally, the time came for our final descent on the electronic glideslope, and we broke out of the clouds at about 1,900'. By this time, it was dark, and a fine mist further reduced visibility, so we continued on the instrument approach. At about a 2 mile final (i.e., 2 miles from landing), we saw the beautiful line of sequenced strobe lights leading us right into the runway. And to top it off, I made a gorgeous landing.

As we shut down the plane and waited for a taxi, I reflected on the fact that days like this were really what made flying magical. There are certain sights and experiences that seem to be reserved for pilots only. I feel lucky every time I get to see one. During the minute and a half when the sun was with us in between two solid cloud layers, Dad and I were, most likely, the only two people on Earth who could to see it. Where on the scale of human experience do you put having your own personal sunset? I can only describe it crudely and say it was fucking awesome. If you’re a student pilot stuck in your training, or you’re still on the fence as to whether or not you should start, I have three words for you: get up here. You won’t regret it.

Winslow

Hour 27

I drove to the airport with my neck craned upwards. There was a low overcast. Before I’d started learning to fly, this only meant my bike ride to campus would be cooler. Now, it meant something else: I was in for a day of ground school.

I was getting close to my first solo flight, so Gary decided to drill me on emergency procedures.

“Let’s say you’re on the ground, trying to start the engine, and the engine catches on fire. What do you do?”

I knew this one! I’d always been a bookworm and had read most of the Cessna 172’s Pilot’s Operating Handbook over the past few weeks.  This exact scenario had been in the chapter on emergency procedures.  I proudly showed off I’d done my homework.

“You continue cranking the engine, so if it starts it sucks in all the flames and puts the fire out,” I confidently recited from memory.

Gary looked at me.

“Are you insane?”

I was crushed. I hated letting him down.

“Really? I could have sworn-- let me find the page, I thought it said--”

“I know what it says. But here’s what I say. I’m in a metal tube surrounded by 40 gallons of gasoline, and it catches on fire … do you know what my procedure is?  I get out of the fucking plane. I am not going to sit in there like an idiot watching the propeller crank while I’m strapped into a plane that is on fire. My plan is to get as far away as possible and maybe, after I’ve done that, try to find a fire extinguisher.”

It seemed so reasonable when he put it that way.

“Here’s another one. Let’s say your engine has failed and you’re gliding in for a landing, and right before you reach the ground you realize you’re going right in between two trees. What do you do?”

“Maybe pull up, try to balloon over them and then come back down?”

“No. You go through. Maybe the trees will rip the wings off and it’ll slow you down.  Maybe if the wings get left behind there will be less fuel at your crash site to catch on fire.”

That was definitely not anywhere in the manual.

“Listen, here’s my point. If you’re in an airplane someday and something goes wrong, I want the first thought through your head to be ‘This plane now belongs to the insurance company.’  It’s just a piece of metal and it can be replaced. You do whatever you need to do to make sure everyone in the plane walks away. Don’t you dare ever try to save the plane. It belongs to the insurance company. What do you care what happens to their plane? Just save yourself and your passengers.”

That conversation sticks out in my memory more than any other I had with Gary during the year he was my instructor. I bought my own plane a few months later, and in the nine years I’ve now owned it, I’ve never given it a name. I always refer to the plane as “it;” never “she.” I do this because of what he told me on that cloudy day. I resist gaining any emotional attachment to my metal box.  It’s just a machine; in a tight spot, it isn’t even my machine. Some insurance company owns it.

It would be a few hundred hours before I’d be tested on if I’d really taken Gary’s advice to heart. Hour 355, to be exact.


Hour 355 - Coast to Coast, Day 1

In August of 2004 I embarked on the trip that most American pilots contemplate at some point: a trip from coast to coast -- the ultimate cross-country! My dad has always loved small planes and was excited to come with me.

My plan was to first cross the Rockies in Albuquerque, head east-northeast for Cleveland, then track parallel to Lake Erie to my final destination of upstate New York.  I spent a long time picking out exactly which airports to stop at on the way. In my fantasy trip, we’d take off from Long Beach and get fuel in Winslow, AZ; head east until the Rockies ended, then east-northeast and spend the night in Liberal, KS; stop for fuel on the 2nd day in Quincy, IL; spend the second night in Youngstown, PA; and finally reach Ticonderoga, NY on the third day. I spent hours selecting those airports with a huge map of the U.S. on my floor, putting together flight plans for every one, and even picking Victor airways in between.

What a waste of time. Don't bother remembering any of those cities because we didn't stop in any of them after Winslow.

The night before the trip I packed all my bags and weighed everything. My big suitcase for 2 weeks away, a survival kit and 8 gallons of emergency water, my laptop, a heavy box full of charts and approach plates, and all the other random odds and ends added up to nearly 100 pounds. With my dad and his small bag the plane was still 150 pounds below its maximum gross weight -- plenty of leeway.  Or so I thought.

The morning of the trip was hot. The temperature was in the 90s on the ground. I’d planned our first leg, from Long Beach to Winslow, at 11,000’ feet; those last few thousand feet, the plane was climbing just a couple hundred feet per minute.

Heading east we tracked directly over Interstate I-40. Looking down and seeing it was emotional. In 1998, my good friend Ben and I both relocated from the East Coast to the West at the same time, so we took an epic cross-country road trip together, driving nearly the full length of I-40 together until we got to L.A. I would never have believed that in a few short years, I'd be on an epic cross-country trip back East, 2 miles above that same spot, in my own airplane!

We passed over the Colorado River, easily visible as a thin strip of lush, green land looking very out of place in an otherwise arid desert.
We saw a race track in the middle of nowhere.  According to the Phoenix sectional, it was the "Ford Motor Proving Ground" -- perhaps a place to secretly test new cars, away from the prying eyes of competitors?  Another few hundred miles put us over Sedona, where the scenery changed from flat and colorless to breathtaking. Ben and I stopped in Sedona to go swimming during our 1998 road trip, but I don't think I ever fully appreciated how beautiful it was until I saw it from above.

I didn't have much time to admire the scenery, though, as I was concerned about our landing in Winslow. I'd been watching the weather there daily and the wind seemed to really kick up every day at around 1:30PM. The time now was almost exactly 1:30. Also, Winslow airport sits almost 5,000 feet above sea level. Since the temperature was 90 degrees, the "density altitude"---or, equivalent field elevation at a standard temperature---was reported at an alarming 8,100 feet! With such thin air, the performance of the engine is lousy since it is starved for air. Also, the plane is going much faster along the ground when it lands, since there's so little air to keep it aloft just before it stops flying.

Luckily, we got there just in the nick of time; the wind was completely calm. We lined up for one of Winslow's 7,000 foot runways and started our descent. The landing was stressful, but a "greaser" -- one of those landings where you're not sure that the wheels are even on the ground. (I was not able to repeat this flawless performance for the remainder of the trip.) As expected, the plane kept on rolling and rolling for a few thousand feet before finally coming to a stop. Just before touchdown, the GPS was indicating our groundspeed at about 100 knots, or 115 MPH. We taxied back to the self-serve fuel pumps and refilled our half-empty tanks.

I checked the weather in the little pilot lounge and discovered the first of many unplanned deviations we’d have on this trip: thunderstorms were starting to develop just east of Albuquerque, right on top of the airway to Liberal. We waited in Winslow for about 3 hours, hoping the storms would pass. Looking back on that decision even two weeks later, when the trip was over, I think I was being too conservative. The storms were isolated; it would have been easy to take off and just deviate around them. But at the time, I wasn't confident enough to try it since I'd never done that before---especially near the Rockies, where the options for deviations are more limited due to high terrain.

Finally we decided to just fly as far as Albuquerque and climbed back into the airplane. I was expecting the takeoff from Winslow to be a bit hairy, since the density altitude had remained unchanged at 8,100 feet. And, the plane was heavy, since we'd fully fueled in preparation for a flight all the way to Liberal. The wind hadn't picked up at all, so no help there. I used my best high-density-altitude takeoff technique: We taxied out to the end of the longest runway and did a full-power runup to find the best-power mixture. I took position on the runway and advanced to full power before releasing the brakes. The plane lurched forward at first, but then picked up speed slowly. I waited until we'd reached a speed about 15 MPH faster than the normal liftoff speed before letting the plane leave the ground.

The plane lifted off without hesitation, but then climbed ever...so...slowly into the air. We inched the air at an excruciating 75 feet per minute. We watched a few houses pass below us, close enough that I felt like we could reach out and touch them. The plane seemed to be supported purely by willpower. The cockpit was tense and wordless. My eyes stayed glued to the airspeed indicator, making sure that we maintained sufficient airspeed to keep flying, despite my overwhelming desire to yank back on the yoke and pull us higher into the air. We seemed so close to the ground, I delayed retracting the landing gear and flaps... I was not yet sure we were clear of obstacles.

We were at full power, and since it was now nearly 100 degrees outside, the engine started to overheat. The cylinder heads, which under normal operation should not be run over 380 degrees, shot up to 400, then to 420. The engine wonks on the Cardinal Flyers discussion group would demand that I level the plane off, reduce power, and let the engine cool before continuing the climb.  Every other time the engine had gotten hot, that’s what I’d done.  But as I watched the terrain features pass closely below us the situation felt dire.

“This is not your airplane right now,” Gary said to me through the sands of time. “If you’re in fear for your safety then forget the plane.” We were only about 1,500 feet over the ground.  I was scared.  So I let the engine overheat.  Not my plane.

We continued our slow climb.  A few minutes later, Dad noticed something: the landing gear and flaps were still out. Oops! I’d originally deferred retracting them, and with the tension had then forgotten about them.  I cleaned the plane up and transitioned to a cruise climb. The engine started to cool and we made our way slowly and turbulently to Albuquerque.

Looking back, even without my poor pilot technique, this was bad planning: I should never have planned a route that required a full-fuel takeoff in the middle of a summer afternoon in the high desert. I should have accepted that we'd be stopping sooner for fuel, so that we could take off from Winslow with 3/4 or even 1/2-full tanks. "We're 150 pounds under gross, surely that must be light enough!" I'd thought. Well, the plane was light enough that we were most likely safe, but heavy enough that I was sweating.

There's an old saying in aviation: "The only time you can have too much fuel is if you're on fire." Well, apparently the real saying is, "...if you're on fire, or you're taking off on a hot summer afternoon from a high-altitude airport" but that was too long to fit on a bumper sticker.  Live and learn!

Fourth of July

Hour 195

I shut down the plane, my shirt back darkened from having sweat through it.  Having finished my pilot's license, I was now well into my secondary training to fly only with reference to instruments. I’d just finished three practice instrument approaches with my instructor, Gary. Nature's supreme sense of irony dictated it was a clear day: there’s no better way to make sure the sky is blue than to go up in the air for instrument training.

Instrument flying is much different than flying visually. Each airport has its own procedures published for instrument-on landings. In small planes like mine, we can't fly all the way down to the runway on instruments alone. The airport's approach procedure dictates the minimum altitude to which you can descend safely on instruments. If you come down to minimums and can't see the runway yet, you have to abort the landing. At airports with the most precise landing systems, the minimum allowed altitude might be as low as two hundred feet above the ground.  Airports with less precise equipment or nearby obstacles might require pilots to stop their descent sooner, at 500 or 1,000 above the ground.  No matter what the published altitude, the rule is the same: if you come down to minimums and can't see the runway, you have to abort the landing.

During instrument training, I'd wear a hood that restricted my view to nothing but the plane's instruments. Right before reaching minimums, Gary would tell me I could take the hood off.  This would simulate descending through a cloud deck and finally breaking out the bottom of it. It's surprisingly tiring: it takes a lot of concentration and hard work to keep the plane right-side-up, navigate to the correct destination, and talk to controllers on the radio, all just by reference to some gauges and lights.

I’d just spent an hour training by flying under the hood and was exhausted.

“Workin’ pretty hard today, were you?” Gary said, noting my sticky clothing as we walked back to the flight school.

“No, it’s not that at all. It’s just so hot up there,” I said.

“Oh yeah? Why isn’t my shirt soaked then?”

I laughed -- he’d caught me. Mental note: wear light shirts for flight training.

“It’s hard, I know you’re working hard,” he said. “But it’s worth it. Someday you’ll be up there, and there will be clouds, and you’ll be able to use your instrument ticket to get home. And let me tell you something, if the weather is low, and you come all the way down to minimums and then pop out of the clouds with the runway right where it’s supposed to be...”.  He got a faraway look in his eyes for a moment, then looked back at me.

“It’s better than sex.”


Hour 326

“You should come out! We’re having a barbeque for the Fourth of July!”

We’d gotten the same offer two years in a row. Last year we hadn’t really considered it, but this year we were excited. My girlfriend, D., worked with a woman who lived in Chino. With traffic, it was nearly a two hour drive from Santa Monica; how she ever survived that daily commute on LA freeways I’ll never know. The year before, the prospect of spending that much time on the road for a barbeque didn’t seem all that appealing. But this year I was an aircraft owner.  Once we found out she lived a few miles from the Chino airport? Of course we’ll be there!

The afternoon of the Fourth was a mild, clear day. We made the quick drive over to the airport, preflighted the plane, and started to head east. The sheer size of Los Angeles is just amazing, and I really never appreciated it until I started flying.  Most cities have a tightly packed downtown area that quickly becomes greener and more suburban.  LA, in contrast, is just mile after unending mile of dense city.  We stayed fairly low, at about 2,000’, to avoid entering the restrictive Bravo airspace around Los Angeles and followed Interstate 10 inland.  After a few minutes we reached the interchange with I-5, my landmark that it was safe to start heading further south.  I punched Chino into my GPS.

As a precaution, I was getting a service known as "flight following" from the air traffic controllers at SoCal Approach. It's an optional service that pilots can use to have controllers track them on radar, even in situations when it's not required. I nearly always get flight following: it makes me feel safer knowing someone is watching me, I have someone I can talk to instantly in case of emergency, and I hear about updated areas of restricted airspace and hazards such as skydivers. My plan was to squeeze in between the Los Angeles Bravo and the small region around El Monte’s airport that requires permission to enter, known as its Delta airspace. Flight following was an extra pair of eyes on radar warning me if I went astray.  Plus, if I did violate the Los Angeles Bravo, the impact would be minimized since I’d already be talking to its owner. Controllers get much more upset over violations by someone they’re not talking to than someone they are.

It was a perfect day to fly. The air was smooth and it wasn’t too warm. Staying that low, my Cardinal’s engine had all the air it needed to develop full power, so we were fast. Even in straight-and-level flight, the airspeed indicator was creeping into the yellow.

D. and I had a guest in the plane.  One of her co-workers also lived in Santa Monica and wanted a ride. She was soaking it all up. “So you can just fly up here however you want?” “How fast are we going?” “How many airports are there around here?”

The barbecue was great fun. I didn’t drink, of course, but I was never much one for beer anyway. Everyone wanted to hear the story of how we’d flown out there. As 9pm approached and the summer sun set, our hosts dropped us back off at the airport on their way to see the Chino fireworks.

“Are the fireworks going to hit your plane?” they asked.

Well that was certainly a good question! When I'd called the government weather information service that morning, the briefer hadn’t mentioned anything about fireworks being a hazard. I called back to get updated weather before returning home. He still he didn’t mention anything about fireworks, so I asked.

“It’s Fourth of July, do I have to be careful of fireworks shows?”

“There’s nothing in the NOTAMs about it,” he said, referring to the NOTices to AirMen that are issued when an unusual aircraft hazard exists.  I think fireworks usually don’t go above about 3 to 400 feet.”

Well that’s a relief.

I got out my night-flying kit -- flashlights of every size and shape -- and preflighted the plane. The three of us climbed in.  We launched into the balmy, cloudless evening air and into a sight I will never forget:

Fireworks. Fireworks everywhere.

Even on a normal day, flying over LA at night is quite a sight. Ground lights seem to stretch out to infinity as the packed city spreads in every direction. But that night there were thousands of people celebrating on the one night when explosives are socially acceptable. Everywhere we looked, every moment we looked, there were literally dozens of fireworks exploding somewhere below us. It was a dynamic, undulating carpet of bursting color that moved as you watched it. It was just stunning. Both my passengers spent the next 20 minutes with their noses pressed against the plexiglas.

“It’s just … oh my god, J. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

I had to pry my eyes off the ground and remember to fly the plane. I tuned one of my airplane's radios to the Santa Monica Airport's information frequency and the halting, computerized voice of the automated weather station brought my carefree evening to an end:

“Santa Monica Airport, Automated Weather Observation, 0604 zulu. Wind calm. Visibility 10. Sky condition, overcast, six hundred...”

The marine layer had come in. It had come in right at minimums. This was getting interesting.

Van Nuys was just 6 miles to the north and was usually a good backup - they had an ILS, a precise landing system that would let me descend all the way down to 200 feet, well below the clouds. Plus, the Santa Monica Mountains in between the two airports usually kept the marine layer at bay. I checked the Van Nuys weather on the radio and found they were reporting clear skies. I decided I’d try the approach at Santa Monica, maybe even try it twice, and then go to Van Nuys as a backup plan.  We still had four hours of fuel.

“We might end up at Van Nuys,” I told my passengers. “I’ll get us a cab back to Santa Monica if we do. But we’ll try to land at Santa Monica first.”

I told the controllers at Flight Following I wanted to change my flight from visual flight to an instrument flight plan, which they granted. I already had the approach procedure for Santa Monica at hand. We were still flying in completely clear air -- even 20 miles away, the marine layer was out of sight.

“Cardinal 15H, 3 miles from BEVEY, turn right heading 250, maintain 3,000 until established, cleared for the approach,” the controller said, giving me my final instructions for our descent to the airport.

Then I saw it: a thick layer of clouds below, in a crescent shape ending about 8 miles inland.  The airport was right in the center of it; there was no way we’d get in visually. I intercepted the final approach course and started down.

“OK guys. I need your help. We’re going to be going right down to minimums, and my eyes will be on the instruments. So look out the front and let me know when you see the runway.  It should be ahead and to our right. I’m not going to talk since I’ll be concentrating on flying.”

The clouds were just a couple of hundred feet below us. I checked the GPS. The status panel had gone from ARMED to ACTIVE -- we had the computer’s blessing to shoot the approach.

“We’re going in.”

We reached the cloud tops and continued down. The plane sank into a thick fog. The wingtips were barely visible and the strobe lights reflected brightly back into the cockpit.

“Whoa,” our passenger said.

We were right on course. I’d done this approach dozens of times in training … but usually wearing a hood.

“One thousand,” I said out loud.  We were at 1,700’, with a thousand feet left to go before we had to abandon the approach.

I worked on keeping my breathing even. The air was silky smooth so the approach was going well.  We were still going right down the center.

“500.”

We passed the last waypoint, called CULVE.  I immediately chopped the power back to idle -- this approach was really steep due to the skyscrapers in Century City and Westwood.

“300.”

The cockpit was totally silent other than the even sounds of the engine. We were still in a thick soup.

“200.”

In my peripheral vision, I thought I saw a flicker of black ground beneath me. I tried to push it out of my head and just keep watching the gauges.

“100.”

“I see the ground!” our back-seat passenger said in an excited whisper.

D. was up front. She was still peering out the windscreen.

“50.”

I had my hand on the throttle to avoid overshooting. I was about to move it when--

“I see it!”

We popped out the bottom. The runway was ahead and to our right, exactly where it was supposed to be. The city lights were all around us and a carpet of low fireworks heralded our arrival.

Fan...fucking... tastic.

I landed moments later and pulled the plane off the runway. The moment we stopped, even before I could retract the flaps, I burst into laughter.

It was my first approach to minimums. Gary had been right again.

Epilogue: Flying on July 4th can be exhausting, stressful, and a lot of fun. If you do it in a high traffic area, make sure you keep your eyes outside for other aircraft. Beware of "moose stalls".  Here's a picture we took last July 4th over Seattle -- the Space Needle is visible at top right.

The Window, The Bottle and the Door

Hour 83

We were on our final approach to Santa Monica, two miles from touchdown, and I was sweating. It was a sunny afternoon in May. A few minutes earlier when we’d slowed to approach speed, the reduced airflow through the cabin vents had turned the cockpit of our Cessna 172 into a sauna. I was concentrating on keeping the runway threshold at a constant point in the windscreen and running through the before-landing checklist in my head. My instructor, Gary, was at my side.

Fuel selector … both.
Carb heat … on.

The PAPI, a set of red and white lights next to the runway that warns pilots if they're too high or low, was showing three white and one red.  I'm too high, I’ve gotta get down there...

Flaps … full.
Seatbelts … fas--

My concentration was interrupted by a sudden whoosh of air in the cockpit.  I looked over and, to my horror, Gary’s window was open!

“Am I allowed to open the window like that?” he asked. I was now on short final. My blood pressure started to rise.

“I-- I don’t know.”

“Is the plane still flying?” Gary persisted.

I started to feel overloaded. “Let’s talk about this on the ground.”

“Good,” he said.

We landed. Once the propeller stopped, Gary turned to me.

“Listen carefully. Lots of things are going to happen to you up there. Maybe a window opens, or a radio starts acting funny, or a light doesn’t work. That stuff isn’t dangerous by itself. What’s dangerous is that they distract you.  Pilots get into trouble when they get distracted by a minor problem and forget to fly the plane. Your first job is to fly the plane. Don’t panic. Just fly the plane.”

Gary was right. I would later read about many accidents caused by pilot distraction.  Perhaps the most famous is Eastern Airlines Flight 401.  Shortly before landing on a dark night, the crew couldn’t verify that their landing gear was down and locked.  All three pilots in the cockpit diverted their attention to solving the problem. None of them noticed that the autopilot had been misconfigured and the plane gradually flew itself into the Florida Everglades.  Burned-out light bulbs can’t crash planes, but they can distract pilots from their duty fly one.


Hour 142

Vegas, baby!  In my own private plane!  Could there be anything cooler?

Several months had passed since the window incident. I was now a private pilot and well into my instrument training. I was also an airplane owner! After months of searching I’d finally brought home a Cessna Cardinal RG.  I’d already gotten 10 hours of instruction with Gary in my new craft, but my insurance required me to fly another 10 hours solo before carrying any passengers.  I planned some short trips on my own, the last of which was to Vegas and back.  It’s not a fun city without friends, so I hadn’t planned to stay -- just fly up, get a bite to eat at the airport, and fly home.

My plan was to land at Las Vegas International which lies at the center of a mass of complex aerial rules and restrictions known as  “Bravo airspace.”  Learning to fly around LAX, I’d gained plenty of experience flying near such areas … but in it?  That I'd never done. I reviewed the charts and mentally prepared to tangle with complex and unfamiliar airspace and its controllers.

It was a sweltering Saturday afternoon.  The weather was perfect, but the instructors standing around the flight school had a concern.

“Make sure you’re hydrated before you go up there,” one said. The route from LA to Vegas goes through the Mojave Desert.  “You don’t want to get light-headed or pass out while you’re flying!  And make sure you have extra water in case you need to make an emergency landing.”

Wise advice, it seemed.  I drank a bottle of water.  Then downed a second just to be sure.  For good measure, I also filled a sport bottle with ice water and stuffed it into my flight bag. I lifted off from Santa Monica and pointed the plane towards the mountain pass to Palmdale.  The plane was operating beautifully -- let me tell you, there’s almost nothing that beats flying 165 m.p.h over a highway while the cars underneath you are stuck in traffic.  I settled in at 7,500’ for the 90 minute flight. Vegas, baby!

As I reached the desert I realized a slight flaw in my flight planning.  All that water was having the obvious effect.  I had to pee. It’s not that bad, I told myself. This can wait.  I’m only an hour away from landing. Vegas!!

Over the next ten minutes my body informed me, no, this wouldn't wait an hour. I tried to focus on the sectional chart but my mind kept wandering to Niagra Falls and the giant Bellagio fountain.  I’d be tangling with Bravo airspace soon but couldn’t even think straight!

OK, I thought.  What are my options?  I looked down and found the only one: my sport bottle.  Step 1 was to empty it.  The only place to do that seemed to be into my stomach. Have you ever tried throwing back a pint of ice water at a time when your bladder feels one turbulent bump away from rupturing?  It’s not easy!  I finally managed to do it, feeling like an overfilled water balloon.

All right.  Almost there.  Now for Step 2: refill the bottle. The air was smooth and the radio was quiet.  I might just be able to get away with this!

I carefully trimmed the plane until it flew straight and level without control inputs. I took my hands off the controls tentatively -- nothing seemed to happen. All right, J., you can do this. I opened the bottle, ever-so-carefully unzipped and got myself into it. The relief that followed was indescribable.  Euphoria!

Relief quickly turned to panic. The bottle seemed to be filling at an alarming rate.  Was it possible that my bladder actually had a larger capacity than this bottle? I really didn’t want to find out empirically.  I’d owned this plane for 3 weeks and I sure wasn’t going to let my own pee geyser erupt from this bottle all over my upholstery!

Alas, the bottle was opaque. I willed myself to stop peeing, pulled myself out and peeked in the bottle to check how much space was left.  This cycle repeated several times, one hand holding the bottle and the other holding myself to prevent pee from spraying everywhere like a loose firehose.  I had no hands free to fly the plane.  The situation was … let's just say: delicate.

The third time through this dance I realized something alarming: my gonads were cold.  Oh no!  Cold gonads must mean there was a fluid leak.  Crap!

Then I noticed something else: a hiss.   Ssssssss.......  What was that?  I realized I was cold because of air, not liquid. Where was this airflow coming from?

A moment later, this question was answered.  SssssssssssssPOP.  The latch had not been secure.  My door popped open!

Oh.  Holy.  Hell.

My indicated airspeed was about 120 m.p.h. and turbulent air was rushing around the cockpit.  It was also the first moment in my life I remember being afraid of heights.  I sat for a moment, dumbfounded.  My heart raced.  Both hands were still occupied holding my bottle and my junk.  What the hell do I do!?

Don’t panic, Gary’s words echoed through my head.  The plane still flies fine with the door open.

Oh god. Ok. Let’s figure this out.  First thing’s first: I decided that this was not an emergency.  Flailing around would make it one -- let’s avoid that. The only thing that would make this an emergency, I reasoned, would be if I somehow fell out of the plane. I used my non-bottle hand to verify my seatbelt was secure. I also checked behind me to make sure there was nothing loose in the back seat that might depart the aircraft.

All right. I decided I was safe. What next?  I needed both hands to close and latch the door.  My hands, however, were occupied with Operation PeePlosion. So, I reasoned, the correct next step was to finish peeing.  I would look back later and see this as having been my first major executive decision as a pilot-in-command.  With wind whipping around my feet I filled the remaining third of the bottle, sealed it up, and set it on the floor like a boss.

Finally, with both hands now free, I tried to close the door -- no luck.  The wind was too strong.  I throttled back, slowed the plane down to about 75, and was able to slam and latch it at last.

I made my way into Las Vegas, landing on runway 19R and shutting down in front of the executive terminal where all the fancy private jets land.  I grabbed the bottle and hopped out of the plane to use an actual restroom and find some food.

I took 20 steps and froze: it was Las Vegas.  It was a Saturday afternoon.  Playboys and party girls were descending on the city.  There were two private jets parked in front of me; they literally had red carpets running out to them.  Fashionable men were emerging from the aircraft with women on their arms -- blonde, leggy women in skin-tight clubbing dresses and immaculate makeup.  They were ready for a night on the town.  I was standing there in a ratty t-shirt, unshaven, and holding a warm bottle of my own piss.

I couldn’t do it.  I turned back.  I found a quiet spot on the tarmac near my tie-down and emptied the bottle onto the ground.  I hoped it would be discrete, but …. I guess I hadn’t had enough to drink after all.  The pee was a radioactive shade of yellow.

“Well, at least this can’t get any more embarrassing,” I thought to myself.

Wrong.

“CLEAR!”  Someone parked in the next row shouted a warning and started up their turboprop.  The propwash started to propel my giant ocean of shame downwind, spreading it out over the tarmac and spraying flecks pee all over me and my plane.

I looked up to see a lineman giving me a icy glare.  He shook his head sadly and drove off.

I returned to Vegas a couple of weeks later.   It doesn’t rain there very often so the ramp was still stained yellow. I hope it's gone by now, but if you're ever there and see a yellow patch, raise a sport bottle and toast the day I learned how to keep my cool.