Having your cake and eating it too Tuesday morning broke in Fort Worth with multiple frontal systems sweeping swiftly across Texas. I needed to be 300 miles south that afternoon for a family business meeting. These fast moving weather systems often pass through and then regenerate and come again. This system did that a couple of times. With the bad Wx it looked like instead of flying the VariEze for an enjoyable hour and a half, I’d be driving for six hectic hours on I-35 with 200,000 of my closest friends.
Getting ready to start the drive, the system moved east and the skies cleared and glowed a beautiful welcoming blue. Ha.
I got to spend several enjoyable hours around the house, including getting a couple of extra little things done on the plane. Not as exciting as jousting on I-35, thank goodness.
Two hours before my meeting I saddled up and lifted off. My usual headwind was in attendance, but I exhilarated anyway in the crazy freedom of, well, having my cake and eating it too.
I have always figured I had driven the trip “home” a few dozen times. But if I have averaged five trips a year, that is now over 150 trips, on the low end. Although I have made the flight down there and back dozens of times, flying always makes it a special time. In the 1980s the trip was made in a Cessna-120. And now the Eze!
Did I mention the 30 Kt headwind? Both ways. And that the Cessna-120 used about 6 gph doing 90 mph indicated, which today would have been 50 mph ground speed? While I averaged 5 gph at three times the speed for the trip in the Eze?
Heading across Texas is always better by airplane. Leaning into a nostalgic mood, I wouldn’t mind having Glen Campbell and some mild AM radio static playing in the background, as when I drove this desolate span to summer work as a teenager. But now my favorite music is a la Lycoming.
Several times I have tried to imagine how the trip will be different with an autopilot, but realize that now I can still go long enough without working the sidestick to refold maps every few minutes
- and handle the cockpit chores fine without the added complexity of the autopilot.
I know! - I’ll rationalize with the “safety” excuse.
Today on the return trip, I’m sitting up there in my front row seat, skimming just above the turbulence, occasionally circling over the hills and lakes and magnificent homes out in the middle of nowhere, nice long unmarked runways nestled in along ridgelines or in the nook of a river, amazed at God's handiwork; thinking that this is the perfect way to spend a Tuesday and Wednesday. Gotta figure out how to do that all the time…
The landing at home was sporty. A low-speed high-pass provided an idea what the runway turbulence environment was like, and the approach was made with “anticipation.” All good. Great fun.
I often hear remarks about how some person probably spent more time building than they will ever spend flying in the plane. I can honestly say that the first flight alone in my plane totally satisfied the equation for me. Paid. Done. The succeeding fifteen years are all gravy. Or icing!
I guess the phrase “You can’t have your cake and eat it too” emphasizes that you can either have the visual enjoyment of the cake - or the pleasure and enjoyment (and nutrition?) that the cake would provide if eaten, once; but you can have both.
Thank goodness the airplane gives you both.
And without the company of 200,000 of your closest friends
Bill
