And We're Off...At Some Point

Thanksgiving is being spent with John's family this year. We have an every-other winter holiday every-other year schedule going on. This schedule was started before John and I had our own family and it mainly concerns splitting time in the airplane. John's co-owner and he worked out a year to year schedule that covers who gets the plane when. It's almost as elaborate as a custody agreement.

This year is our year to have the plane for Thanksgiving...

I began this post first thing this morning in my living room. I am now at the kitchen counter of my in-laws house in Idaho.

Going by small plane has a special set of restrictions. Most often weather related. Sometimes weight related. But, usually it's the weather. We don't go as high as a commercial flight, so clouds and wind are very real stopping factors for us. Add in the seasonal joys of ice and rain and you have to be flexible with your travel plans. I packed yesterday. I packed for a week. All three of us in our large suitcase. I was planning on being able to go whenever we could. The flight is about 3.5 hours...the drive? 14. We really wanted to be able to take the plane.

Yesterday, John and sister Ari-belle replaced a wonky generator in the airplane. It took about 5 good hours of work. Then and oil change needed to be done. John didn't have a filter...so there was some more work that needed to be completed before we could away. But in checking the weather last night, it looked as though a fairly bad front was on the move over the mountain ranges we would have to cross. It didn't look like we would be able to get going until Tuesday.

We woke up this morning and looked at the weather again. Nope. Didn't look like good flying weather. We were fogged in on our end with rain over here and nice cold, icy, clouds in between.

So we did what any normal kids would do. We talked about driving and then headed to breakfast. As we were finishing up pancakes and omelets at our favorite breakfast joint, John whips out the iPhone (ed. note: I love the iPhone. I want one someday. But for now I am content to bask in the glory of my husband's.) and again checks the weather. And what do you know? A nice six hour window of smooth, albeit windy, flying has opened up for us. We scramble for the house, gather up the last of our things and hit the road to the airport. John finishes up the work on the plane, all looks good and we strap in.

The flight was better than John had expected. Fairly smooth until the last 40 minutes or so. Maia did great, we have a couple of cute pictures of her "flying" the plane that I'll post later on. She played a bit and mostly napped. She hated her headphones so I let her keep them off, but she had her ear plugs in and her headband on, so she was still protected from the engine noise.

All in all: Wheels up to wheels down took us 2 hours and 55 minutes. In the car we would have barely left California in that amount of time.

So we are here and ready to relax. It'll be nice to have a week to spend with John's folks. We don't get up here enough. If we had more flying days like today...we would get out more often. We had a very lucky break, and I for one am very glad for it.

Posts will most likely be kind of slim...surprise surprise...while here. The folks are kind of in the boondocks and only have *gasp* DIAL UP INTERNET. With a wire and everything. I will continue to NaBloPoMo.

And I'll tell you all about my pie. Well, my future Thanksgiving pie, that is.