John & Anne Wiley

2010/07/22

First Hop

Filed under: Random — John @ 13:55

We did indeed get out of SBA yesterday, and last night we slept at an airport. This morning dawned foggy and we’re waiting for it to clear so I decided to take some snaps to share. Here’s our trusty Tripp waiting next to her cousins.

8029 First Morning

8029 First Morning

That’s her on the right, sporting her newly cleaned and repaired cover. We wonder how long it will last, given all the money and time we invested rather than just pay $300 for a new one. Sure looks better! After all the work, it would be nice if it looked new though. 🙂

Santa Barbarians might recognize this airport, since the first leg of our flight was from SBA to IZA. Yes, we slept in Santa Ynez to get ahead of the heavy fog forecast for SBA. That makes our first hop about 15 minutes. Only eight thousand plus miles to go! Sure is a fun way to start the trip though, in a familiar and friendly place. We have some fun memories of the tree at the left in this photo with Molly and our friend Scott’s great photo of it (plus a really cool shot of a P-51 flying close to it on takeoff).

8030 IZA Morning

8030 IZA Morning

So last night as we shut down, one of the instruments was making a horrific noise and vibrating enough to shake the panel. I’m going to confirm my initial guess that it’s the Turn Coordinator, and my recollection that it’s not required for day VFR. If correct, we’ll probably pop the breaker and placard it “Inop” so we can look into getting it fixed or replaced along the way. I’m hoping we’ll find some affordable electronic replacement at Oshkosh, but two “A” words that don’t seem to spend much time together are “aviation” and “affordable.”

In case you’re wondering why we stopped so close to home, it’s all a matter of planning and organization. Well, more accurately our insufficient amounts of both. We weren’t actually packed and ready for flight until well after dark just as the fog was creeping toward SBA from downtown. Being dark with only 2/3 of a moon, we decided to play it safe rather than cross the mountains. So think good thoughts, and maybe we’ll get started once the fog burns off about 9am.

Warmth

Filed under: Aviation,Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,NxNW Adventure,People,Random,Relationships — John @ 00:01

It looks like we’ll be taking off today despite a bunch of last minute glitches. Of course, we haven’t gone to the airport yet to make sure Tripp’s ready and willing to carry us beneath her sturdy wings.

As we ripped through lists in the last few days an especially heartwarming thing began to happen. Friends and neighbors spontaneously offered to keep and eye on our place. It feels so good to receive their caring in this way! The first time it happened the warmth of this offering swept over us in a wave. As others have come forward, we’re swimming in warm seas of support. It’s not the increased chance our modest home will be intact for our return. Much more, the experience of being cared about and that people “have our backs.” Wonderful!

The other theme of warmth we’re exploring today, is what the weather looks like on the first leg – north to Yellowstone. We’ll be lucky to take off before dusk, so today’s hop may be short. Maybe just to Kernville airport at Lake Isabella, unless we decide to fly by the light of the half moon and land in the dark somewhere in the desert of NV or UT and hope for a hotel. For a glimpse of the warmth, here’s a contour map of Celsius surface temperatures from this afternoon. Hopefully the high desert locations will cool down in the evening!

AfternoonSurfaceTemps

Afternoon Surface Temps

Could be worse I guess, since those purple areas are about 100-110F. Maybe the white part is on fire?

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