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But back to New York- I was so relieved to finish that marathon! After some rest, Dave, Steph, and I flew over to Teterboro, by way of the Hudson River Skyline tour. It's a pretty amazing thing if you ever get a chance to do it- just follow the instructions on the terminal chart, use the proper frequencies and communicate when/where it tells you to. We flew it at 1,100' (the Bravo airspace starts at 1,300' in the area) and that worked out well. We were still below the tops of some of the buildings! Take a look!
Coney Island!
Teppan Zee (?) bridge, on the north end of the tour area
Headed south- check out the cliffs! There's a fire there, too- a helicopter was scooping water into buckets and fighting it
Reporting point- George Washington Bridge!
Manhattan!
Reporting point- the Colgate Clock
Reporting point- "The Lady"
Check out the World Trade Center! It's huge!
(Right around this point, Dave's TIS system in the plane started to lose its shit... "OBSTACLE OBSTACLE PULL UP PULL UP!!!!!!!!") Yep, got it.
Empire state of mind?
Look- Central Park!
So that was pretty much the most amazing thing ever.
Steph and I limped out of the plane when we got to TEB- we were totally out of our element there.
Word of wisdom? Don't fly a single engine piston airplane into Teterboro.
They didn't have chocks small enough for our 182, and of course no tie-down ropes. Everything there was big private jets and we sooooo did not belong. But there we were, so we made it work. We were standing in the lobby of Atlantic Aviation with our bags, leaning painfully up against the luggage cart waiting on our hired car. We looked disheveled, tired, and painfully ouf of place among the other finely dressed and coiffed clientele.
And then, guess who showed up? Breezed through the door fresh and dewey off a flight in their private jet from Las Vegas?
Beyonce and Jay-Z. And their weird-named baby.
Me and Queen Bey? Yeah, we made eye contact.
At least that's how I'm telling it.
She probably just glanced over at us, the Great Unwashed, and hurried on into her awating Escalade. She was carrying baby whatsit, and her hair still managed to blow lightly in some unseen, off-stage fan. Her makeup was impeccable. And she was a lot shorter than I would have thought.
Anyway, that was our only brush with fame. We headed over into Manhattan, and arrived at the Yotel, just on the other side of the Lincoln Tunnel. Burgers for dinner, then we all hit the sheets hard. (Srsly, google "Yotel." It's the weirdest place I've ever stayed.)
Monday morning we went over to the 9/11 Museum. Took the subway, it reminded me of the episode of How I Met Your Mother where Barney runs the New York Marathon, then cramps up and gets stuck on the subway. I was praying that wouldn't happen to us, because...gross.
The 9/11 Museum and Memorial was very well put together and at the same time really damn depressing. I took some photos but the bulk of the exhibits and artifacts were in a no-photo area. It was amazing the amount of stuff they had on display- even actual footage of the planes hitting the buildings...stuff you can't see on the news anymore. You have to really distance yourself from it all if you want to make it through the whole thing without crying. Btw, every display room had boxes of kleenex out for the taking. I took some photos of the main gallery area, some of which are pretty disturbing so scroll at your own risk:
One of 2 pools where the original towers stood. All victims' names are carved along the sides
Sorry for the sideways photos- I rotated them but they won't stay.
So after the WTC, we really wanted to cheer up so we got some real New York Pizza somewhere in the financial district, then got a cab to Tavern On The Green where were got absolutely shitfaced the rest of the afternoon. For real, Dave and Steph went through 3 bottles of wine, I had a sangria and 3 $30 glasses of champagne (which, btw, was delicious). We ate some overpriced fancy food, ordering with abandon because we were all absolutely hammered. The waitress bought us a round of iced coffee and poured us into a cab where we made it back to the Yotel and spent another 2 hours at the bar. We needed that. Between being sore, Steph having a few more breakdowns over missing her Boston time and the depression from earlier in the day, plus the craziness of the flying in the days leading up to it all, we needed to relax. It was a glorious night.
Soooo.... the next morning... Steph was hungover as hell, Dave was tired, I was a little tired but otherwise alright. We headed back to Teterboro, flight plan to First Flight, NC loaded up and ready to go. It was going to be close to a 3 hour flight so we filed for 10,000' and used the oxygen canulas- a little more O2 couldn't hurt us, especially after the previous night, right?
The flight down the coast was pretty uneventful. We got the Teterboro 9 departure and were on course in no time. XM radio kept us company as we headed south.
First Flight airport is where Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hill is where the Wright brothers made the first flight in an airplane. Aviation history!
On approach- the green space to the left of the runway at an angle is the field we'd be visiting soon
monument at the top of the hill- walking up the hill with legs that don't work sucked major ass, btw
This is it! The open field used to be just sand, but it's where the first airplane was flown! Amazing!
The Wright Flyer had no wheels (too much sand!), so it lined up on this rail with skies basically to keep it going straight
Granite markers for the 4 flights made that day. We didn't walk all the way down to the 4th, and 800-something feet. Too hurty.
After that pit stop, we flew 5 miles away to Dare County airport for fuel and food. We found some good barbecue and then loaded back up to continue south. We made one more fuel stop just south of Charleston, SC. It was a quick one for some 100LL and a leg stretch, but we were anxious to get home. The flight back was beautiful!
We got some excellent IFR time once we got off the coast. It was smooth, patchy in parts, but you'd never know once it got dark. Every now and then we could see some lights twinkling off to the right from the coastline. We hit some pretty rough stuff once we got in to Florida- there were thunderstorms in the area so we took a vector back west and broke out of the clouds over Deland at around 3,000. From there, straight shot into ORL! We landed literally 10 seconds before the tower closed.
This has to be the most amazing, educational, multi-faceted cross-country flight I've ever had the privilege to do. I learned so much- my teaching and training was thoroughly tested, and I have a re-enforced confidence in my abilities and decision-making as a pilot. We encountered weather neither one of us had ever experienced before, terrain that was new to us, and airspace and flight planning that would rightfully intimidate even an experienced flyer. It was a great trip, and I'm damn confident in Dave's ability to pass an IFR checkride now!
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