Well that’s definitely the latest we’ve ever departed for a flight – 9:41 pm!

But Kim, isn’t your bedtime before 9:00 pm? Yes, yes it is. Flying is something I’ll stay out past my bedtime for, though!

So let’s back up. Last Thursday was the AC/DC concert in Minneapolis. Our plan was to fly to Waterloo, Iowa (near where my family lives) on Wednesday, fly to Minneapolis with Dad on Thursday, fly back to Waterloo on Friday, then back home on Saturday.

Best laid plans and all that. The weather wasn’t cooperating for a Wednesday departure – the clouds would be too low where we live, and snow and rain was predicted. And we didn’t want to do the entire flight on Thursday.

I went to work Tuesday thinking we’d be driving the next day. Womp womp. But then I got an early morning text from Steven saying “the weather looks great today. I am working on an alternate plan to leave tonight.” So I got excited and gave my snis a heads up we may arrive a day early but VERY late. The Steven told me someone else had the plane reserved so it likely wouldn’t work. Womp womp. So I told my snis that.

Then in the afternoon Steven told me he was going to talk to Chris, the Chief Instructor, about ideas for leaving that day, and before I knew it, the flight reservations were moved around and we were good to go! Thanks Chris! So I updated my snis again. Ha. My poor snis. I am mostly used to how unknown and unscheduled things are with flying, but it’s new for her and she was very patient and understanding with my lack of a schedule for the entire 5 days!

The problem with leaving Tuesday night is that I don’t get home from the office until 6:00 pm, and I had a nail appointment at 6:15. I asked Steven if he wanted me to cancel it and he said nah.

So I studied the flying route and airports on my train ride, went to my nail appointment, then went to the bank, then got us dinner. I arrived home at 7:55, packed and got the house ready for the cat sitter in 30 mins, and we were out the door at 9:00. I ate part of my burrito in the car. I was too jacked up and hyper to eat much though.

All that rush rush rushing is the opposite of the mindset we want to be in when flying. We don’t want to have “get-there-itis” – that’s when mistakes are made. We want to be calm, thorough, and in a mindset to make good decisions.

So once we got to the airport I slowed it down and we went through our normal process. Things are a bit trickier in the dark – Steven has a special red light he uses to see things in the cockpit (there’s lights in the dashboard but they aren’t great). And there are other risks with flying at night, like not being able to see “safe” places to land (if an airport is not available) in the case of an emergency. But other than that it’s normal flying with one giant perk – LESS TRAFFIC! (And another perk is that it’s easier to find other planes because they have their marker lights on.)

Oh! And it was so late the tower was closed at our airport and the one in Waterloo. When that happens, pilots get on a common frequency and communicate there.

Steven uses a suction cup ipad mount on longer trips and it fell off his window as we were departing! He caught it and gave it to me, and when we were at our cruising altitude (6,500) I figured out how to get it to work and showed him, then I got to fly for a minute or two while he put it on his window. The whole point in mentioning that is so I can share I got to fly. Ha ha.

We didn’t encounter any other planes on our way out from our home airport in Waukegan (we usually do) and didn’t see any other traffic until we were near Rockford, IL – and that was just UPS and American Airline planes that weren’t close enough to be a factor we needed to worry about.

And we didn’t see any other traffic after that. I mean, it was past 10:00 & 11:00 pm for the majority of the flight. Why would many general aviation planes be out flying that late LOLOLOL.

Something interesting (???) – this Cessna does not pull fuel evenly from the left and right tanks, so Steven manually switched back and forth from left and right rather than leaving it on “both.” So he was monitoring that closely, along with all the other gauges, like RPM, blah blah blah.

But yeah, easy peasy flight (says the passenger). We landed at 11:46 and parked the plane on the ramp. No one else was there. Steven had called the fixed-based operator (FBO) earlier in the day to ask them to put the plane in a hangar (we were expecting some weather) in the morning and NOT to fuel it.

My snis picked us up (thank you snis!) and we got to her house past midnight and were asleep around 1:30 am. I mean, we had to finish the last episode of White Lotus!

My sleep has been so wack lately – I have to get up at 4:00 to go to the office and I’m not getting enough sleep. I’m glad I got to sleep in Wed-Sun!!! I needed it!

I was going to write about our Wednesday, but this ended up being really long… oops. So that will be another post!