This week I had a UPS run to
Tillamook via Astoria all five days.
The flying was beautiful VFR weather for all legs for the first three
days. It was quite relaxing. On Tuesday, I even did some hiking over in
Cape Mears State Park just south of Tillamook.
I hiked about six miles through trails leading from the cape area down
to the beach. I sure was tired when I
got home that night and fell asleep at 2000.
Then yesterday
occurred. I think it was payback for
all the easy flying and nice weather I had early in the week.
The morning flight was nice
and I arrived in Tillamook to go to the motel.
Now let me explain the concept of crew cars. We have cars parked at most of our layover airports that we can
use to drive to the motel for the day.
It’s nice not having to call a shuttle and be able to get around when we
want to. Now, most of our crew cars
pretty much suck. They are old, lots of
stuff doesn’t work (i.e. fuel gauges, electric windows, engines) but the crew
car here in Tillamook takes the cake.
It’s an old Ford LTD gas-guzzling monster. The left rear window is permanently rolled down, smoke comes out
of the vents if you drive it more than 10 minutes, the heater doesn’t really
work, and I discovered Thursday morning that the left windshield wiper isn’t
even there. A real treat to drive to
the motel in the rain barely being able to see. I’m very thankful that we have higher standards of maintenance on
our airplanes than our crew cars!
Then I flew back. First, I was delayed 20 minutes out of
Tillamook to wait for a late international shipment. The weather quickly had turned to crap over the day as a cold front
approached the coast. I took off into
IFR conditions, made my stop at Astoria, and arrived home an hour late due to
all the ATC vectoring and delays.
Rather than describe the flight to you, here is what AMF 4010 normally looks like, with a
normal ILS into Astoria and a scenic VFR flight down the coastline. The red track line is my route of flight in
the morning.
Now this is the flight home. Look closely - my favorite part is the
S-turn to get onto the ILS approach at Portland.
I was annoyed at the time
while getting bounced around in moderate turbulence and carrying a little less
fuel than I was comfortable with, but when I got home to tell Stephanie about
it I couldn’t stop laughing. The
madness didn’t stop with the landing – they had to land me on the wrong runway
due to traffic separation so I had to taxi
all over town for 10 minutes, with multiple “Hold short of the taxiway for
a heavy 767” instructions just to get back to the UPS ramp. That’s air traffic control for you. They do their best.
I don’t much care for the
Tillamook run because of the short flight time (averaged 2.4 hrs) and the fact
that the cheese town literally stinks, but it wasn’t too bad for just a
week. I did really enjoy getting home
at 1900 every night. Next week I look
forward to a bank run to Medford (AMF 415).
The following week will be three days of Pasco, WA (AMF 422), and two
days of the monster 5.5-hour Ontario, OR run (AMF 413) which I hope to bid when
the next bid period starts on March 26.
