Anniversary Adventure

This weekend, I planned a flight to Fernandina Beach, near Jacksonville. Susan had a meeting scheduled for Saturday morning, so I planned to leave after she got home in the early afternoon. As it turned out, however, the weather did not cooperate, so I re-planned for this morning.

As usual, I got up early and checked the weather and other flight information. The plan looked solid for a 10:00 am departure. I was thinking it would be pretty cool if we took off early enough to see the Atlas V rocket launch from the air. But I knew that plan was a bust as soon as I started to back out of the garage. To the Northeast, I could see the telltale smoke trail of a United Launch Alliance rocket launch. I was convinced that the launch was scheduled for between 10:00 and 10:30. I guess I converted the UTC time to local time wrong. Oh well, its not like there’s a shortage of launches to see around here.

After arriving at the hangar, I started going through my flight bag to pull out the necessary items. It was then that I realized that I left my iPad at home. I was frustrated with myself for making such a dumb mistake, but I considered my options: 1) Continue the flight as planned, but without the iPad, 2) Go home and get it, then continue the plan one hour later, or 3) Cancel the flight entirely. We decided to go home and get the iPad.

If you are wondering why this was so important, let me explain. When I started flying, there were no iPads or moving maps. I used a paper map, landmarks, and time/distance calculations to track my flight. That was plenty good enough back then because I didn’t know anything better, and there were plenty of obvious landmarks in the Seattle area. As time went on, the GPS and moving map were introduced into all the planes I regularly flew. The Commander had a hand-held GPS mounted on the yoke. I became very comfortable knowing my position with extreme accuracy. Flying in Florida is quite a bit different than flying near Seattle. There are many special use airspaces to be avoided and I’m not back to the level of comfort that I had back then. Soon, I will be comfortable enough with the radios to ask ATC for the status of the air spaces and ask for permission to fly through some of them. Until then, however, I choose to avoid them, and that requires precise location knowledge.

At home, I checked the weather again. The forecast near Jacksonville was calling for thunderstorms in the area about the time we would be getting ready to leave. With the loss of the hour, we decided it wouldn’t be worth it for such a short stay. We needed a new destination.

I decided to go the opposite direction. I planned a flight to Okeechobee for lunch. They have a nice restaurant and were open until 2:00. I wrapped up the planning, and we drove back to the airport.

The flight down was quick and uneventful. There were a few planes in the pattern, so I joined in and landed on runway 32. After landing, I headed for the FBO. I wasn’t sure where the restaurant was, so I was busy thinking about what to do once I got there. While I was thinking, I heard voices on the radio, but didn’t really pay attention. I pulled into a nice spot and started shutting down. At this point, I noticed a follow-me golf cart nearby. The driver got out and guided another plane to a spot near me. It was then that Susan told me that he was asking me if I wanted to park or get gas. I remember hearing part of that, but I didn’t realize he was talking to me. After he finished up with the other plane, I went over to ask if he was talking to me. He said yes, but where I parked was fine.

The restaurant is inside the FBO building. We went in, were led to a table, and sat down. The place was nearly full, which is obviously a good sign. Susan ordered a tri-salad (made up of egg salad, chicken salad, and tuna salad), and I ordered an egg salad sandwich.

After lunch, I decided that I didn’t want to go straight back to Valkaria. I looked at the map and found Airglades Airport nearby. I’d never been there before, so I added it to the return route.

After a quick landing a taxi back, we were back in the air. Our final destination was Valkaria. The flight was fine, but my navigation app, Foreflight, started crashing every couple minutes. Each time it crashed, I had to restart the app from the iPad Home screen and select the map view again. This was both frustrating and dangerous. First, it required me to look at the iPad instead of out the window for extended periods of time, and second, it was no longer showing me nearby traffic. This is clearly an issue that I need to get to the bottom of quickly.

Back at the airport, we topped off the tanks and cleaned up the plane in the hangar. For my birthday, I was given a gift certificate for a single scoop of ice cream from a shop in Sebastian, so we headed south on Old Dixie Highway. The road travels very close to the rail line and we've used this route before to spot trains. As we drove, I noticed that both the north-facing and the south-facing signals were green. That meant that two trains were heading our way. I stopped and parked outside Grant Station and waited. Before long, we saw the northbound train approaching. A few minutes after it passed, the southbound appeared.

Back in the car, we continued south to Sebastian. There were so many flavors to choose from. I chose Peanut Butter & Strawberry Jam, while Susan chose Lemon Ice. Since we were down South, I thought it would be nice to go visit some places in Vero Beach. I typed "Cravings" into the GPS and continued south. We parked and started walking toward the park on the beach. At the park, we took off our shoes and started walking north on the beach. We passed by the famous Driftwood Resort, then continued up the beach to the pier and back (3 miles round trip).

When it was all said and done, I can say we had a very pleasant anniversary.