Our first flight of the year is in the books! (Okay, not technically – Steven hasn’t put it in his log book yet ha ha pilot humor)

And we had a new passenger – Troy!

Since it was so cold out (10F when we left, 15F when we got back a few hours later), we got to preflight in the hangar, woo hoo!

We booked the plane early (6:30-10:30) to give ourselves enough time to fly, borrow the club car, get breakfast, and come back on time. We flew to the same place we took Dad – Watertown, WI – and went to the same restaurant.

We had beautiful clear skies for flying. We encountered no other traffic (visually or on radio) on the way in, probably because it was so early. I’m glad it was so quiet – the plane WiFi was not working (but did on the way back) so I didn’t have any live info on ForeFlight to see traffic there. Good practice for me not to use it!

The quiet radios gave us the perfect chance to chat without worrying about missing anything. Plus, the flight there was longer than the return, giving us even more time to talk.

Anyway.

We landed right before 8:00, got the club car right away (I had called to request it the day before) and were sitting down with hot drinks by 8:20. More chatting and eating, then we drove back a little after 9:00 to preflight and fly back.

At breakfast Troy asked us about scheduling the plane and if it’s annoying to have it back at a certain time. I said it’s definitely taught us to be more flexible and Steven immediately said “but it’s still annoying.” Ha. It will be nice when we have our own plane and don’t have to watch the clock as much for that reason.

Our flight back was faster – we had an almost 30 mph tailwind and hit a ground speed of 139 kn (160 mph).

There was a lot more going on on the radios on the way back, and I was glad the WiFi was working again so I could reference ForeFlight from time to time.

And we landed and that was that!

Okay that was not ALL of the flight. I left out a lot of details to try to make this short (and to not embarrass ourselves).

We love taking passengers up with us and we’re so glad Troy worked it into his busy day of watching his son play like a million basketball games. Sharing this passion is one of my favorite things – pointing out landmarks, explaining the process, and watching people’s reactions to seeing Steven fly and realizing just how skilled he is. And it’s always a bonus when they tell us we make a great team (thanks for that, Troy!!!!).