#7.1: Flying across the USA - Days 1 and 2

Day 1: Wednesday, October 21

Day 1 dawns, well, early. I’m not an early riser by choice, but I need to get going and so I force myself to wake up and I’m glad I do - this is the Alabama morning. And very pretty it is. 

Alabama dawn

I get to the airport in good time and when I set off the air is glassy smooth - always much appreciated by pilots. I fly west along the shoreline from Gulf Shores to Mississippi. Bizarrely, when I land at a little airport, the guy leaning on a fence and watching me taxi in is someone I met at the aviation show in Oshkosh last July who greets me by name. 

Ocean Springs airport

My next leg is to New Orleans, where I land at nearby Lakefront airport, famed for its Art Deco architecture. 

Lakefront Airport

They park me next to some interesting company too. 

Bluebird the M24X next to an L39 jet

I refuel and go into the office to pay. “Are you going to do the river tour?”, the lady behind the desk asks. I confess I don’t know what that is. The airspace above New Orleans is tightly controlled, being right by a major international airport, and there is a “corridor” along which smaller aircraft can fly, providing they have clearance. I know about this and am planning to request it. But it turns out that less public, and a lot more fun, is the “river tour” where they route you right along the Mississippi through the center of the city. And they don’t give you an altitude restriction. I am amazed to hear this and of course request to do it. They are very accommodating and I enjoy a wonderful flight checking out the Superdome, flying right over the French Quarter and seeing the whole downtown. I am amazed that this is possible. 

New Orleans, Superdome in the background

As I travel westwards, I come to the New Orleans international airport. I feel it would be rude if I don’t at least ask if I can land but they are busy and say no. Fair enough. 

At Lakefront I managed to find a restaurant where I got some takeout for lunch, so I carry on to the northwest. Now I need to fly for another four hours or so to cross Louisiana and eventually land in Texas. I don’t really know what I expected flying over Louisiana, but that day I cross almost the whole state from the south-east to the north west and I’m surprised by how empty the majority of the land appears to be. Aside from Baton Rough and Alexandria, both of which I pass, a lot of it seems unpopulated. As before, I marvel at the experience and the view of the country that is possible by gyroplane.

A lengthy last flight leg for the day gets me into Tyler TX, where I decide to stay for the first night and get very lucky. I call a hotel that looks nice but online says it has no availability, and ask if they can fit me in. I have to leave a message so I assume that’s the end of that, but three minutes later I get a call back from Bert (turns out to be short for Bertrand - his mother was French), who not only finds me a bed but offers to pick me up from the airport as he wants to see my aircraft.

Bert drives me back to his charming and very characterful B&B called the Rosevine Inn in Tyler. He offers me a beer and then says that we should go out the back as his wife has her girls’ night on Wednesday and there may be food. The “girls” are great and fascinated by the crazy idea of flying a gyro that far. 

Girls’ night out

They recommend a good place for food within easy walking distance. At the bar I get talking with a guy called Steve who is also intrigued by why I’m here. After finishing his drink, Steve leaves and my food arrives. As I start eating, a young guy sits down next to me, and then I realize that Steve is back, sitting on the other side of him. The young guy turns out to be Steve’s son who is interested in aviation. I talk to him for a while, before discovering that Steve has picked up the bill for my food and drink. Very friendly folks they have here in Texas!

They also seem to take Halloween alarmingly seriously and I do wonder what has happened to some of their previous guests. 

Bert’s “garden”

You may have noticed that quite a lot of my descriptions of today have little to do with aviation directly. But this is in part exactly why I wanted to do this trip - I’ve discovered that I have good experiences when I travel like this and don’t just stay in boring corporate locations. Now I’m looking forward to tomorrow and heading into the wilds of west Texas. Where there’s mostly oil and wind, I gather. 

Day 2: Thursday, October 22

Greetings from the wilds of Texas, where I’ve been learning a whole new vocabulary. Quite apart from the need for subtitles when anyone here speaks (and they feel pretty much the same when listening to me, apparently), they just use a lot of words I’m not familiar with. I just ate at a restaurant where they offered such things as “Dirty rice” and "Hush puppies”. Aren’t those shoes? I know they used to be. But back to today.

This morning I leave my friendly hosts at Tyler after a slap-up home-cooked breakfast which they eat with me – great! Then they take me to the airport (no Uber needed) and I’m in the air shortly after 8am. The flying is lovely and the countryside very varied. I know from past experience that it will change a lot more as I go through Texas, but for now it looks green and lush. 

I need to head due west to Abilene, but that’s a flight of 3.5 hours - too long for comfort in one go. So I’ve already planned to land at a little place called Cisco, which turns out to be pristine but completely deserted. I get fuel there, as I’m sure it’s far cheaper there than it will be at Abilene. Then I fly through the Abilene area, which is a busy Class C airspace (same category as Oakland or San Jose) with an airbase right next to it. Fortunately, ATC is very helpful and make it straightforward to transition. Flying over the airbase I can see all the military planes parked on the ramp.

 By now it’s nearly lunchtime so I decide to stop at Sweetwater. This turns out to be a good decision because there’s a technical college right next door with a cafeteria open to non-students. Not only is the food good but it’s very cheap. And they offer a food group I am partial to, and which I had not been sure I would encounter in Texas - salad. 

When I get back to the gyro and check it ready for flight, I’m horrified to realize that I haven’t put the fuel cap back on the gas/petrol tank before leaving Cisco. This is a serious matter in aircraft as there have been cases where the speed of the airflow rushing past the aircraft has actually siphoned the fuel straight out of the tank. I quickly check my fuel level and am relieved to see that this has not been happening, but I’m appalled to have made such a rookie error. (That evening, I tell my gyro partner Caroline about it, and she immediately and correctly diagnoses why it happened. In the open cockpit gyro, we put the cap on the front seat - easy to access and impossible to then forget to put it back. But with the doors on Bluebird, I hadn’t wanted to unlatch and open one to put the cap on the seat. Instead, I’d left it on the right hand side tire/tyre and then put the fuel hose back before attempting to put the tank cap on and that was my mistake. We live and - hopefully - learn.) 

So now I have a choice - retrace my steps back to Cisco and hope to find the fuel cap on the ground, (adding 1.5-2 hours to my journey) or call ahead to my hosts for the evening and see if they have a spare. I choose the latter and fortunately they do, so I continue on. My poor little fuel cap is probably sitting forlornly on the ramp at Cisco wondering what it’s done to deserve this and whether I’m coming back. I hope it finds a good home somewhere…

I continue onto Lamesa and I’m glad I do as the turbulence is building in the midday heat and I can am encountering updrafts of up to 750ft/min. It’s possible to fly through (or up) these, but it’s not nearly as relaxing as when the air is smooth. I land at Lamesa to be met by husband and wife Matt and Pam Snell, who are fellow gyro enthusiasts and dealers. Matt and Pam are amazing people. I met them at Oshkosh and when I planned this trip, I contacted them to see if I could stay with them en-route.

Matt looks like he just stepped off stage from a ZZ Top tribute band, and he has about the strongest Texas accent I’ve ever heard. Together he and Pam run multiple different companies, own several thousand acres of Texas (including their own place with three runways, which they graded themselves), have a cattle ranch, dig water wells for their neighbors, and run an airplane and helicopter training and repair facility. Then in the afternoons, …

Matt and Pam had generously offered to put me up in a house on their property where I could stay as long as I liked. This now turns out to be very convenient as sudden thunderstorms are blowing up along my route in Arizona and New Mexico, making my proposed plan to get to Albuquerque the next day dangerous and no longer feasible.

According to the latest forecast, if I stay another 24 hours, it should have blown itself out and be flyable tomorrow.

Rebel Red's Gyros in Lamesa

Instead, Matt has me fly one of his gyros in the afternoon - he’s also an instructor and is concerned that I have not yet had time acting as an instructor in the right-hand side seat. (There’s a good reason for this - in my current gyro there isn’t one - you instruct from the back!) So it’s great to have a chance to try that out on someone other than a new student! He also has a hangar full of toys and offers me the chance to fly some of those too…