I'll be home for Christmas

As the holidays approach I'm reminded of twenty years ago. I was working in Detroit. It was time to head home to the DC suburbs for Christmas. My girlfriend was in Dayton. Having worked half the night, I caught the early flight. A quick hop in a Convair 580 from Detroit Metro to Cox Dayton. I slept like a log the whole 40 minutes. The 580 had big comfortable seats. At Dayton I found my car covered with snow in the long term parking lot. It was a huge 4 door 1972 Impala which I bought from my girlfriend's neighbor for $225. So I got it running and headed south toward Morraine where my little faded PA-28 was tied down. Girl friend was at work and watching the clock until she could get off for the super long weekend. We were both watching the weather as it snowed all day. On the way to South Dayton I stopped at a mall and a liquor store and bought gifts. I got some gloves and a really nice brush for cleaning snow off the wings. My last stop before Morraine was at the gas station. I filled my five 5 gallon plastic gas cans with regular. They only took up about 20% of the space in that Chevy's trunk. But with the holes and the rust, the fumes were pretty bad and that's why I got gas last, and near the airport. The exhaust leaks and shakey body made for a scary drive to the airport. The car was literally a bomb. At Morraine it was eerie. It was misty and cloudy and snowing lightly and damp. I unloaded the gas cans. I poured the 25 gallons in the tanks. We were still not quite full. That's OK. I'll make another fuel run later. I looked the airplane over. It was all in one piece. I brushed the snow all off in the hopes that the airframe might dry itself off a bit. Also I just wanted to get that big chore over with. I looked everything over as I went. I was the lone soul on the drome. I took a break and went to the FBO. They were actually open. There was one guy there. I bought two quarts of oil. I had coffee and a candy bar. The FBO guy was kind of giving me a look like he was curious if I was actually going to go flying. He had seen me pour auto gas in the plane, and clean off snow. And my plane wasn't the sassiest on the field. It needed a paint job. It needed an engine overhaul. It needed a new interior. It needed avionics. I went to their little flight planning alcove. I called flight service. I had been watching the weather and flying in it for the last 3 days and I just wanted to verify that nothing much had changed. And get some winds and freezing levels. The whole east coast was severe clear under a high that was slowly moving out to sea. If I flew 80 miles east, I'd be out of all of it with nothing but winter visibility of fifty miles and tailwinds. But the sooner I left, the better. It would be getting dark and the weather would be headed toward the coast. I headed out in the Chevy back to the gas station. This time just ten gallons. The "White Castle" had some sort of coffee deal where you could buy a thermos and they would fill it for you, so I got that and a bag of hamburgers. When I got back to the plane, Girl Friend was there. We put a car cover on her little Z sports car. I poured in the ten gallons. Put in a quart of oil. I had a roll of that metel foil 200 MPH tape that you peel the paper off of. I taped up the cooling fins where a winterization plate would go. I did a little extra as I knew I'd be high and cold. We had about an hour and a half of daylight left. Pity I could not file IFR, I just didn't have the radios. I pulled the prop through about a hundred times. We loaded up our stuff and our dinner and our coffee and our Christmas presents and Girlfriend's little pets. I did a little cold start ritual - primer- fuel pump- and prayer and she fired right up. We taxied out in the gray mist and snow and you couldn't see the taxiway. It was slow warming up. I couldn't get the windshield to defrost. I got the loran on and wanted to get it up as soon as possible. Got safely to the runway which was not plowed. Somebody had run a truck down the runway earlier and we could see those tracks. And the FBO guy had turned the edge lights on. I could see almost nothing out of the windscreen. I warmed her up some more and sampled both tanks. Mag check was great. Alternator was putting out. I knew the windshield was not going to clear off on the ground. I also had some snow and frost on the airframe. But it was cold and we were well below gross and once we got going it would all sublimate. I made an announcement on unicom and sat in position and hold. I did another mag check and ran up to full throttle and away we went. What do you do with flaps. You want to get off that runway with the snow dragging your wheels. But you don't want your flaps getting wet snow blown in the prop wash on them which will then freeze and mess you up. I tried to stay in the truck path and kept the flaps clean until I had sixty MPH. I pulled on two notches and leveled off just above the runway in ground effect. I bled down to one notch as soon as I could, still just above the runway. Then climbed her out in that one mile visibility. I left the one notch out and throttled back slightly to save the engine and let the oil warm up. I was immediately on my heading of 110 degrees which was a wag of a no wind heading. My VOR was weak to non-existent and of course the LORAN was not up yet. At 1000 feet I bled up the flaps and flattened down to a 200 fpm climb. Slowly up and fastly downrange we climbed. I guess we were in the clouds. But snow really restricts visibility too. I guess we were illegally VFR. I was praying to the Lycoming gods for that little 0-320 4 banger to just keep on hummin' and if it must quit let it not be in this IMC crap which we will not be in for long. As we climbed we could see breaks in the clouds and let ups in the snow. The windshield finally cleared off. I had the cabin heat and air vents adjusted. Girl Friend was comfortable. This was getting better. The airframe still had snow debris on it, but we weren't picking up any ice. I just kept her slowly cruise climbing. It was pretty smooth except for some in and out of clouds bumps. The LORAN was picking up the chain and I asked Girlfriend to please fly while I got the LORAN talking to us. I wanted the groundspeed almost as bad as I wanted our position. Columbus sailed under our left wing and I confirmed it with the weak VOR signal. The weather was thinning and I could see glows of lights below. No ice now and we were between layers at 5500 ft. and I could kind of relax. Girlfriend kept flying and doing a nice job. I got out the coffee and the burgers and we ate up some of the 400 nautical miles we had to go. The LORAN was working well and had us at 125 knots and coming up on the Ohio river. I thought we would be out of the weather by now, but we weren't. I didn't care as long as we were between layers and no ice. I really wanted to climb into the tailwind, but I was afraid of ice if we got back into clouds. Snow was on and off and when there was no forward visibility I had to fly because it was a lot of work for Girlfriend to fly solid gauges. She could do it though. She was a pretty good pilot for having had only a few lessons. So I took the controls and I knew we had to be in the clear soon. So I started climbing. I wanted 9500 feet. We went through some clouds. We picked up some ice. All at once we flew out of a wall of clouds and snow. We were surrounded by stars. We had a horizon. I could see towns below. I could see the Ohio meandering down from a glow of Pittsburgh to a town below our right wing which must be Parkersburg and on down to Huntington and Charleston. I looked at the altimeter. 9500 feet. I looked at the Loran. 155 knots! I told Girlfriend we would be there in an hour and twenty and it was all downhill. I had just worked my butt off for two hours and now it was just a joy ride over my old stompin' ground. I wanted to show Girlfriend something so I turned all the lights off. Out at 12 oclock high was a gigantic Orion lying on his side. The star Betelgeuse was shimmering red and bright. I told Girlfriend to look at Orion's sword. The middle star is a nebula. While she star gazed I glanced over the left wing and followed Ursa Major to the Pole Star. It was behind the wing a bit and I figured our nose must be roughly 105 degrees east of north. I put my pen light on the whiskey compass. It read about 107 degrees. I set the DG accordingly and snapped off the penlight. Then I showed Girlfriend the glow of a distant Huntington, her Alma Mater. I turned the panel lights back on. Girlfriend shut her eyes for a while and I had the rest of the coffee. The viz was so good I couldn't tell what town was what. Is that Martinsburg or Front Royal. Frederick or Hagerstown. The Terminal Control Area was being renamed "Class B". Shelves of airspace over Washington, Baltimore, Dulles, Andrews. I wanted a perfect energy managed decent into Laurel. Laurel was a little 2000 ft. strip in the middle of the big Baltimore Corridor. I could see dozens of airport beacons all underneath this airspace shelf. And as we got lower, Christmas lights too. And searchlights. I just let down into Laurel with my transponder off and didn't worry about the airspace. I could see the few airliners and they were far from me. I called Laural on the unicom expecting no one around. I got Laurel all right. They were having a Christmas Party and we were right on time. Champagne was waiting for us. My brother was waiting to take us to my condo. I got an altimeter from them as the baro was high and light winds allowed us a straight in. Flew a straight in 30 mile final over a sea of lights. I cheated. I got down early so I could keep the power up and not super-cool the engine. Party goers were out on the ramp to watch us land. We stayed about an hour but Girlfriend and I wanted to get to my place for a private celebration. My brother was really kind about just dropping us off. Girlfriend and I had lots of secret plans. There's a Christmas song about "we'll face unafraid, the plans that we made, walking in a winter wonderland". We were comfortably unpacked at the condo and Girlfriend was just about asleep. I had the weather on and the guy was talking about a big front coming our way that had left the lakes and was at the Ohio valley. In an hour it would be Christmas Eve day. Girlfriend said "Lloyd do you think we're going to have a white Christmas? " "Well, I happen to know a little about this particular system. And I guarantee a White Christmas."