[as the] Radar Sweeps

After picking Chris up at Henderson [HND], we continued on to Sandia. Over northen Arizona there was enough weather ahead that ATC diverted us to a more northern route than I had flight planned. Even at that we did a fair amount of cloud dodging and requested [and were granted] a block altitude from 11,000 to 13,000 feet to permit avoiding the rising tops. When we could no longer do that we descended and went under the building layer to 11,000 feet. It was a bit bumpier, but not too bad. As we approached the Albuquerque area there were isolated thundershowers that we were able to circumnavigate - they we easily visible, ATC helped with reports of intensity from their ground-based radar and with pilot reports from other aircraft. As we approached Sandia I called up on unicom, “Aero Commander 11D just west, inbound for landing, runway 27″. Tina, who runs the FBO on the field, replied with “We have been expecting you!” Sandia has a runway that is a mile long, but only 35 feet wide. I had never landed on a runway anywhere near that narrow, so the mantra on final was “Stay lined up, land on the centerline, land on the centerline, …” I did. Right on it. Well, more like in it. The landing was very…um…firm. As in embarassing, but safe. But it was on the centerline. ;>)

Once fueled, Teri and Ed stopped by to say hi and Jorge Gonzalez, who owns the other Aero Commander on the field, came by and introduced himself. Great guy! It’s going to be nice to have a neighbor like that - his lot is directly across the street/taxiway from us. Jorge offered to put 11D on his property, so he got in and taxied right to his hangar and we put 11D just off the apron in front of his hangar.

One of the unusual aspects of Jorge’s hangar can be seen here: the tail of the Shrike was a little too tall for the hangar!

Now, it’s off to Oshkosh!

Instead of a pitstop at Flagstaff, looks like the first stop will be HND [Henderson, NV], to pick up Chris Wall. In 2000, Chris and buddy Dan Dominguez flew Dreamcatcher, an Aero Commander 560E around the world: WorldFlight2000. Two years ago Chris helped me acquire 11D and then flew to Oshkosh with me.

From HND we go directly on to Sandia Airpark Estates for a quick tour of the airpark and some fuel. Good rule of thumb: if you are going to buy a lot on an airpark, try to make sure that the FBO on the field sells 100LL at the cheapest price in the state - Sandia is very close the lowest. Depending on timing and weather we may just push on to UES [Waukesha, WI] the same day.

Things are coming together: critical items at work are taken care of, packing has started, charts are loaded in binders, first few legs planned. Realized today that this will be the longest trip Ellen and I have ever taken together - after 32 years together! Note to self: don’t wait 32 years to do this again.

$1.25 of Hard Drive Space Costs Me Hours

The logistics for a trip like this are, pretty obviously, non-trivial. Lining up the vacation time from work was taken care of months in advance, just to be sure. Today was to be Vacation Day 1 for planning, prep, packing, double-checking everything. That didn’t quite work out: a last minute request from Sales for a presentation to a BIG customer, hurry-up roadmap planning meetings for next-year’s products, strategic partner tap-dance planning. But to top it off, a firedrill to reduce the amount of space we use on the email server. The deadline was two weeks from the notice. Well, with this long trip planned I had about 48 hours [with lots of other things on my mind], to shave about 2.5GB of email off the server. Let’s see: a 200GB hard drive costs $100 today - $0.50/GB. My “overage” that is so troubling to our IT is 2.5GB. So I’m using, quite literally today, $1.25 of disk too much and if I don’t repent for my sins and remove the offending email [which I frequently need to search from potentially anywhere in the country at any time], my email service will be shut off. I dutifully spent hours on Vacation Day 1 dealing with this crap. The solution cost the company far more than the problem. Doesn’t anyone do the math anymore?

Moving Through the Logistics

I did, however, manage to get the plane washed and presentable, charts ordered for delivery tomorrow, and received the folding pedals for the Montague folding mountain bikes that Ellen and I recently got. The ones I chose are actually OEM’d to Hummer and have the Hummer logo, but they are Montague bikes. I really enjoy the irony of owning a Honda Insight hybrid and two “Hummers”. The pedals save about 4 inches and I think that may be just enough to permit loading both bikes into the baggage compartment - we’ll see tomorrow.

Cars, Hotels, Places to Visit, Music to Hear…

As of right now, we have rooms booked in some but not nearly all of our destinations. The tough one, Oshkosh, has been reserved since March. With a little luck most of this will be nailed by end of day tomorrow. A couple places, though, like Sandia, may be tough. Still have to call the SPLC and make sure they will be accepting visitors when we are there. And I haven’t started to try and find out what music we might be able to catch at some of our destinations: Nashville, Memphis, Lafayette, Austin. This will really be the fun part.

Prepping for a Real Cross-Country

Well, I am about to launch on a cross-country trip that will take Ellen and me from the West Coast as far East as Rochester, NY, South to Montgomery, AL and many stops in-between. It struck me tonight that a TravelBlog was as good a subject to start with as any, so here goes…

The Itinerary [Subject to Wx and other realities]

Mon Jul 25: SNA-FLG-1N1

Tue Jul 26: 1N1-MHK-UES, drive to Oshkosh, WI

Wed Jul 27: [at EAA AirVenture]

Thu Jul 28: drive to Waukesha

Fri Jul 29: UES-DPA-LSE, drive to Lansing, IA

Sat Jul 30: [Lansing, IA]

Sun Jul 31: [Lansing, IA]

Mon Aug 1: LSE-BKL-7G0

Tue Aug 2: [Rochester]

Wed Aug 3:[Rochester]

Thu Aug 4: [Rochester]

Fri Aug 5: [Rochester]

Sat Aug 6: 7G0-LOU-M88

Sun Aug 7: M88-PDK

Mon Aug 8: [at ATL office]

Tue Aug 9: PDK-MGM-AWM

Wed Aug 10: AWM-LFT

Thu Aug 11: LFT-AUS

Fri Aug 12: AUS-1N1

Sat Aug 13: 1N1-SNA

This is the ideal plan. Wx will change things, and we want to be back by Fri the 12th at the latest. Hmm. Gonna have to cut something. We’ll see.