Home is Where the Cats Are

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”

— Augustine of Hippo

Sitting in front of the fake fireplace, admiring the shroud of clouds obscuring the top of the ridge that separates us from Watkins Glen.

Glad I didn't have to fly through that stuff to get into ELM yesterday.

It's my sister's birthday today, three years my junior and overburdened these days taking care of an unwell parent. No way we could've predicted these times back when we fought like banshees on long car trips across the country. Everyone gets old, although Katie's visage doesn't ever really change. Just goes to show that spending too much time in the sun is a bigger deal than cigarettes. She's an alabaster chimney.

Saturday morning we took our coffee one last time on the porch in Perry. The visit ended on a sad note, as two ducks rather than three ran up and uncharacteristically ascended the steps to quack at us through the screen door. There should have been three. Another casualty of our coyote infestation.

George flagged us down as we were backing up the truck, to say hello (he'd been home sick all week) and goodbye and to promise we'd get the rest of the to-do list dented by Memorial Day.

Saturday's goal was Knoxville. We loaded up the Columbia at FPY and took off into a glorious, cool morning. The plane accelerated so quickly I almost oversped the flaps on climbout.

Peg discovered the blue tooth feature on her fancy headphones, and jammed out to music and watched movies as the Georgia countryside rolled by.

I planned a relatively low flight (5,000) because of headwinds, but the air traffic controllers bumped us up to 8,000 to clear the mountains just to the southeast of Knoxville. Great flight planning, Donk.

For some unknown reason, we decided to fly into Knoxville Downtown Island Airport rather than McGhee Tyson Field where Issac would be landing just as we arrived. Island Airport is tucked onto an island in the Tennessee River just east of town, with a relatively short runway. I had a hard time finding it until we were almost on top of the field, and figured I'd set up a right downwind. When I announced my intentions on the radio, some other pilot in the pattern snipped, "Columbia, we are a left pattern." I knew that, wise guy, but rules are sometimes made to be broken. Rather than getting chippy with my new pattern mates, I banked into a big, lazy 270 degree turn to the left, entered the pattern his way, and landed.

A bennie of general aviation, one of many, is getting to your destination and having the rental car there waiting with keys at the counter. Then you get to drive the car right up next to your plane, for the bag toss from cargo hold to trunk. This time around we had a Nissan Armada, a real bus of an SUV, but a blessing with all 6' 6" of Issac planning to ride around with us.

We meandered up the Alcoa Highway to McGhee Tyson, picked up Issac and headed back toward downtown Knoxville for, we hoped, a little tapas, wine and conversation.

Turns out it was graduation weekend there at UT, so we made several false starts before finally finding a rooftop bar with a couple empty seats and a limited menu.

I had thought the next stop would be to give Issac a look at the plane, but P announced a trip down memory lane, for her at least, and we tramped down the hill to the Chesapeake Restaurant, a place frozen in time since P left here in the early 80s.

The bartender was likewise frozen, a guy who looked like Wolfman Jack who'd been tending bar there since college graduation in 1983. Turns out the college was the University of Florida, and he played three seasons at inside linebacker for the Gators.

"So, you were there for Buck Belue to Lindsey Scott!"

His face sank a little. "Yes. A painful afternoon." I felt sorry for bringing it up.

From there we drove back toward Farragut to meet with P and Issac's three generations of family at a restaurant with a nice view of the river. Did I mention it was not only UT graduation but prom night?" Good luck finding a table, anywhere. P and Jo texted back-and-forth as I drove toward first one restaurant and then another, finally settling on the deserted porch of a slightly run-down, brightly painted Mexican restaurant out toward Maryville somewhere.

P and Issac had a great visit with their kin, although I'm pretty sure those kids are the reason for this morning's sniffle. Our immune system has been in a masked bubble for a year, and that lack of challenges made it inevitable we'd catch a cold from the first kids we met.

The next morning Issac arranged a visit with his grandmother. We sat on the porch and admired the manicured backyard and rolling Tennessee hills beyond. It really is a beautiful place. I mostly looked worried--checking the weather as soon as we awoke, I saw an arc of badness forming between Knoxville and Corning. Heavy rain. Turbulence. Icing. Damn.

Finally it was lots of hugs, a quick trip to the Hilton Garden at the airport to drop off Issac, more hugs, and a dash down to the plane for the next leg of the trip.

The climb out of Knoxville was unremarkable except for the tailwind, which was whipping along behind us at better than 50 knots. Our groundspeed at cruise was approaching 300 miles an hour.

Then again, it was hurtling us down the magenta line to something ahead that looked a little like this.

The flight was a shade shy of two-and-a-half hours. With about an hour to go, we disappeared into the soup, encountered a little turbulence, and watched the rain start to run up the windscreen. I was heartened that it was moving--when it stops, you've found ice, and the panel was telling me we were right at the freezing layer, then slightly on the wrong side of it.

I flipped on the deicing equipment, just to be on the safe side. Rivulets of antifreeze dribbled over the wings.

We started down the RNAV approach into ELM, and popped out of the weather about six miles from the field to relatively still air and slate-gray skies. It was a much easier arrival than I'd feared.

After loading up the pickup truck, we drove into town for a late brunch at the Quincy Exchange, then up the hill to the Solarium Apartment and the cats.

They were obviously happy to see us. We all sat in the solarium watching it rain.

Overall, the weekend was a great proof of concept. Five hours in the air got us from Perry to Corning (aided by tailwinds on that second leg, of course). We traversed some lousy weather. We managed a nice visit with family. All good.

Time for final preparation for a big day of depositions. And so it goes.