We were in Kansas City this past weekend for Steven’s friend’s visitation and funeral. I’m glad we could go, especially to hear everyone share stories. Steven has been friends with these folks since kindergarten, and they have a really special bond. I love being a periphery member of the group and getting to spend time with them.

And that’s all I am going to write about that! It feels crass and disrespectful to talk much about it.

INSTEAD, I am going to tell you all about getting to Kansas City and back home. Because it was an adventure!

We wanted to fly private (meaning Steven would fly us and we’d have an instructor with us). Commercial flights were stupid expensive and actually comparable in price (it didn’t end up that way but more on that later), then add in driving to the airport, parking cost, all the time you waste there, blah blah blah. I felt like this was the ONE time that flying private might be the same cost?!

Steven’s instructor Josh wasn’t available, but Josh asked around if anyone else wanted to go with us and another instructor said she would. Yay!

So then Steven was watching the weather all week to see how feasible it was for him to fly. We didn’t know we were flying ourselves there until the day we left! Not knowing how we were getting there was a really good exercise for me to learn to be more chill.

Gosh this is already too long. Yikes.

We got to the airport around noon on Friday and Steven checked the weather again (when I say he checked the weather I don’t mean he went to accuweather.com – he looks at a bunch of different reports and sites. Maybe when he reads this he will send me more details on what those are and I will update this section), then did preflight on the plane, then we did an hour long weather debrief with the instructor going with us. It was clear where we were in Chicago, but there was weather sitting over Kansas City that had the potential of creating storms. So we planned to head that way and reroute if need be. There was LOTS of contingency planning.

We left at 2:33 and I instantly had that dumb grin on my face I get when we fly. We had planned to go up to 6,000 feet but we had to stay below the clouds so we did most of the flight at 2,500 feet which meant I had my face plastered to the window for most of the flight.

Flying through a break in the clouds – only to come back down later

Crossing the Mississippi River

About an hour outside of Kanas City they checked the weather and saw clouds on the radar they did not want to try to fly between to get to Kansas City, so we diverted to an airport north of Kansas City in St. Joseph. Womp womp.

Landing in St. Joseph

I called the St. Joseph FBO (fixed-base operator) at 4:58 to see if they could get us a rental car and they said Enterprise closed at 5:00 but they would see what they could do! Eek! But they delivered. We landed at 5:26 and a rental car was there waiting for us. (I still think it’s so cool I can text and call from the plane at low altitudes.) So after we did all the post flight stuff we drove down to Kanas City – a 50 minute drive. Ugh. Ha.

When we flew in Friday the weather looked promising for leaving Sunday, but then it got iffy Sunday due to temperatures and a low cloud ceiling that created an icing risk on the plane.

We drove up to St. Joseph Sunday morning anyway – we wanted to fly from there to Kansas City (MKC) so Steven could see what landing there was like since he plans to in the future. And we brought his dad along for the ride! We left at 11:36 and landed around 12:05.

This flight was unique because the tower let us fly through the Bravo airspace around the Kansas City International (MCI) airport (not the one we were going to – we were going to the downtown airport – MKC).

The downtown Kansas City airport is pretty cool because it’s right by the downtown (derp) – so there is a neat view from the ramp and when you take off.

Steven’s brother, him, me, Steven’s dad

Flight instructor, Steven, me, Steven’s dad

We had time to kill because of weather and the icing risk, so we went to lunch then came back and took off at 4:11.

We flew right over the city. It was so neat! I’ve been visiting Kansas City since 2002 when Steven and I started dating so I recognized a lot of what I saw.

Our plan was to head toward the Quad Cities in Iowa then reevaluate if we could go all the way to Chicago or if we needed to stop somewhere to wait for weather to clear up. When Steven and the instructor checked the weather, there was still a low ceiling and icing risk, so we rerouted to Waterloo, Iowa (ALO) where my snister would pick us up and we’d spend the night there. It’s another airport Steven plans to fly to in the future, so even though we would have liked to fly all the way home, it was good to get the experience.

Landing at ALO at 5:55

Note – my snister was also in Kansas City for work this weekend, with her husband and kids, and our parents. I actually got to see her and her husband briefly at the Saturday visitation (they were friends with the friend who passed too) but didn’t see the rest of the family and we were all kind of bummed about it, but it made absolutely no sense to try to fit it into all of our packed schedules.

Snis and me

So it was a wonderful treat to spend the evening with them all! Oh! But I was going to say, my snis got home around 4:40 then left a little over an hour later to pick us up at the airport. When I get home after a trip I just want to unpack and relax, not have people in my home, but us staying the night on such short notice did not phase them at all! Thanks so much snis and fam!

We did another weather check before we left ALO to make sure if made sense to spend the night and it did. We felt better when we talked to another pilot who was doing the same.

So yeah, we hung out at Christina and Will’s and got to see everyone! Yay!

Dad, me, Mom, Steven. My poor parents – they got back to my snister’s and just stayed there. They must have been so beat too. 

We were planning on being home early afternoon Sunday, but also knew there’s always a possibility your flight plans can change so we had what we needed to stay an extra day and work a bit (and I was able to set up cat sits and cancel my strength class). Even when we do a day trip we take what we need for a potential overnight. This is just the first time we’ve executed that backup plan!

I started work at 6:30 am Monday (Ick! I wanted to just take it off but had a 7:30 meeting I only saw the night before when I emailed my supervisor at 11:00 pm) and ended up being on calls until almost 9:00, then wrapped up, hung out a bit with the fam and we left for the airport around 9:45.

My snis has been sending us a Christmas Countdown pic each day and I got to be in this one with Ella!

The weather looked good to go, yay, so the FBO got the plane out of the hangar (we put it in there so it wouldn’t have frost on it – it was already starting to frost over when we landed Sunday night), Steven did preflight, and we left at 11:12.

Snister loaned me a blanket – the heat is either ON or OFF in the Cessna 182 and it was cold when it was off

It was really neat to fly out over my hometown and see a lot of familiar landmarks, and my childhood home, etc. I will spare you those pics because they only mean anything to me, ha.

Crossing the Mississippi

The instructor had filed an IFR (instrument flight rules) plan for this flight. The other three flights were all VFR (visual flight rules). They used the IFR most of the way there then canceled the plan and went to VFR. The sky was clear until we got to scattered clouds around Chicago.

Landing at UGN

Back at UGN!

We landed at 12:46 and did all the post flight stuff and I was back home and at work at 2:00.

And kind of exhausted and over it.

I’m still glad we went this way though. We learned a lot about flying in cold weather. A LOT. And Steven got to practice with an instructor that has different techniques than Josh.

It’s just too bad that all those diversions added up quite a few extra hours and made it a lot more money than we predicted! (We rent the plane per hour it’s running). Oops. We learned about that too, ha ha. (also, *cry*)