This is going to be a dense, turgid narrative given that I'm supposed to be at work right now in the home office in Wyldswood. So much has happened, so much going on.
Friday afternoon our plan was to fly back to Wyldswood after P got off work. On time, on target, I left the Solarium apartment with cats in cat carrier and the truck bed full of bags and the like. Then just as I was pulling into the Guthrie parking lot Slane, who wasn't feeling well, shot diarrhea all over the inside of the cat carrier. First I heard it happen. Then I saw it, sloshing around on the floor. Then I smelled it.
On this particular afternoon P was running late because of a meeting, so I sat for a time in the parking lot with the windows down, cats forlornly standing in the lake of excrement and shooting daggers at me through the bars. P also wasn't looking at her phone, so no one was responding as I was getting surlier and surlier. Probably best. Finally I started driving home to clean the cats while I was waiting, but about a mile from the apartment P texted that she was ready to be picked up. I drove back to the hospital under ominously dark skies, with a sheet of rain forming just a couple miles to the west.
I swung through and picked up P, then we raced to Premier Aviation, where the guys had pulled the plane out of the hangar for us. We all studied the skies gravely as P took the stinky cat carrier and its stinkier cargo to the ladies room to clean up the boys for the flight to Florida. Within a few minutes I'd filed a flight plan, done my walkaround, and loaded the plane as cool downdrafts told us we only had a few minutes to pull this off before all hell broke loose and the clouds dumped their contents. Checking on P in the bathroom, I encountered a horrifying aroma, not quite poo and not quite bile. I gagged a little. She was wiping down the floors with a wet paper towel, and two wet cats peered through the carrier door, bereft of any remaining feline dignity. I was happy Premier rarely had female guests who might use the ladies room--this space would need a few days to air out.
Shoving the cat carrier into the cargo hold, we made our way to the runway with alacrity, and took off just as the first rain bands swept across the airport fence. Turning south, we tried to pick our way through moderate to heavy showers using Nexrad, but the data lags by a critical three minutes or so, and we flew into a couple cells that knocked my skull against the ceiling and sent the iPad floating across the cockpit. P was not amused. New York Center was extremely helpful to the one crazy GA pilot out braving this stuff. Eventually, the clouds parted, the Blue Ride appeared below, and P went to sleep.
We had hoped to get into Spartanburg Downtown Airport before they closed at 7, but the delays in leaving Corning and meander through the weather got us there closer to 7:30. I found the self-serve pumps, P found a porta-potty, and the cats tried to escape when P let them out of the carrier over behind a hangar. I had tried to send an email to the FBO while enroute, letting them know we were delayed and would like a passcode to get into the building and use the bathroom. At 10,000 feet there isn't much in the way of cellphone coverage, however, and it's hit-and-miss sending emails.
To my amazement, however, this one must've gotten through because the nice staff had left a note on the door with the code for the little key holder next to the entrance. Soon we were inside, with cats meandering around the ladies room while I sprawled in a chair and flight planned the next leg.
Which, as it turned out, wasn't so simple. The same line of thunderstorms has been draped across north Florida and south Alabama and Georgia for days now, and the weather briefer on the phone explained the cells had popped through the tropopause, meaning they no longer needed ground heat for convective lifting, and likely wouldn't dissipate overnight. And these were big, ugly storms, in a line nearly 300 miles across. We decided to give it an hour or so before trying to leave, and hope for the best. I made plans to turn and drop into Macon if we couldn't breach the wall of weather.
We climbed out of Spartanburg in sheer darkness, lightning flashing off to the east but not much weather between us and the blob of green and yellow on my radar roughly 200 miles to the south. I watched the blob creep closer, pondered the black south Georgia pine barrens below, and wondered where we'd land if the motor quit. In daylight you could always find a farmer's field, but more likely than not those pitch black places below us were planted pines and not pastures, so gliding into them mean likely death or serious bodily injury. I tried not the think about it, making a mental note to flight plan a little higher next time so our glide ratio would give us a reasonable shot at floating to an airport.
Before too long we were maneuvering through the first rain bands as we approached Valdosta. They raked the plane and shimmered in the wingtip strobes, but the air was mostly smooth and we could see downtown Valdosta below us. Contrary to the weather guesser's warning, the storms had in fact fallen apart in the cool night air, and by the time we were approaching Madison it was mostly clear.
I flew a straight-in to Runway 18, made a serviceable landing in the dark (one weakness of the Columbia is a myopic and inadequate landing light, so finding the asphalt on a moonless night is no picnic), and soon we were tied down, unloaded, and on our way to the farm. It was after eleven now, and we both were exhausted but wired from the trip.
While I unloaded the truck and breathed in the happy, humid air of Wyldswood, a chorus of frogs shouting their greeting, P took on the unpleasant duty of stripping naked, shutting the cats in the shower, and bathing the bad smells off of them with our wonderful smelling Moulton Brown body wash.
Afterward we let them roam the porch, where they contemplated us with utter disdain, ungrateful for the fact that they now smelled pretty wonderful.
We poured ourselves a cocktail, and patted ourselves on the back for overcoming some real adversity in pulling off this trip. It was now pushing one a.m., but we were both pretty wound up from the adventure, and sat on the porch talking and watching Dean shake the water off his paws while Slane looked for a place to hide. I doubt we lasted a minute when our heads hit the pillow, falling dead asleep with the promise of a long weekend to recover.
Time to get to work now--it may be a holiday, but my inbox over the weekend filled with the product of lawyers behaving boorishly, sort of our tribal idiom I guess, and I need to fire back a little before we head over to the golf course, weather permitting.
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