#7.2: Flying across the USA - Days 3 and 4

Day 3-ish: Saturday, October 24

Yesterday I didn’t continue the trip as there was bad weather over the Southwest of the US. I get a vivid demonstration of just how bad, when I arrive at my destination for today - Deming, in New Mexico. The airport manager, who kindly gives me a lift into town, is driving an ex-police car which looks like it’s been in a machine-gun-based gang fight recently. According to the manager, it was pristine just 36 hours earlier, but then a hailstorm arrived and it was so destructive that his paintwork has been badly damaged. I’ve heard about that happening but never actually seen it before. Could have just been an excuse for the condition of his car, but given the weather reports from there, I don’t think so, and it makes me very glad I sat it out in west Texas. 

In the end, I had a great time yesterday with my genial hosts who, despite the amazing remoteness of their location, have a constant stream of people coming over for a “Visit,” which seems to be a noun rather than a verb in that part of the country. (When they leave, they say, “Nice visiting with you.”) I gave a ground school lesson on airspace, and we did some low-level flying in Matt’s M24X, which is the identical twin of Bluebird. But mostly we just “Visited.” I may take it up as a hobby.

Matt, Pam and Mitch Snell

We went to the nearby (well, not terribly nearby, TBH) town of Lamesa for dinner and Dave in California (a friend, pilot and technical counselor for people building planes) actually knew of a restaurant there, so we decided to try it. And I learned some more new vocabulary – “Texas Toothpicks” (onion rings) and “Pig Skins” (strange things that are basically pork-flavored polystyrene packing peanuts, as far as I can tell).

Pig skins

Matt and Pam’s gyro business is actually all about farming. As all their neighbors have large farms, there are always issues demanding attention, and everyone tries to stay ahead of maintenance by doing inspections. But when you have several thousand flat acres, how do you do that? Well, with a gyro, of course! Matt has built up quite the business by offering rides to his farmer neighbors who then see how a gyro could transform the way they inspect and manage their properties - he has many gyros sold and even more on order due to this. Some of the visitors were visiting by gyro. Fascinating reversal from the usual way people get into gyros - for me and many other instructors at least, it’s mostly existing pilots who try a gyro and then want one. 

Today, “Day 3” of my flying time, I get up in the morning in the pitch dark and we are all (Matt, Pam and Mitch insisted on coming) on the road before 7am, heading to the airport where I left Bluebird. Dawn is just breaking when I start her up and taxi out to the runway.

Dawn in Lamesa

It’s a lovely flight to Artesia with the rising sun behind me and the landscape slowly getting brighter. Although the weather is good, there are significant clouds ahead and in my direction of flight, which is not per the forecast - at least not the one I got from the eager-to-please AI bot. But I get to Artesia in good time, thanks to a tailwind, to be met by a very cheerful airport manager who promptly makes some fresh coffee. See? Great hospitality. 

Caffeined-up, I continue, but the cloud is now thickening and as I need to climb to over 8,000 feet to clear the mountains in front of me, this is a concern. Quick digression on AI: as someone from the tech industry who has been interested in this topic and given talks on it, I know something about how it works but today was a good demonstration of how the chatty, apparently knowledgeable way that AI “presents” things when you ask questions can lead you astray.

Flight planning a complex multi-day trip is an exercise in managing multiple variables. You are trying to find a good route through the terrain, but that’s the easy bit. Then you have to factor in how long each flight leg takes, where you will get fuel, how many legs you want to fly per day, where you may be able to find half-decent places to stay the night, and last but not least, is there somewhere safe to store the gyro? It’s a lot to factor in, and every single time you alter one thing, the effects ripple through and you have to change everything else. AI ought to be perfect for this. And indeed it is, when it comes to these variables. But add in weather and showing when you plan/want to depart and it starts trying to please. Last night it was adamant that there would be clear skies my whole route today. And I was keen to believe it. But it turned out to be not the case at all.

Fortunately, although I had wanted to believe, I was skeptical enough to have consulted other (non-AI) weather sources, and so I do at least have a plan in case there’s a problem. Rather than the hoped-for climb over Apache Summit to Alamogordo, I decide to divert to Carlsbad in the south. Although there is some cloud here too, it’s the light, puffy kind and not a concern. 

A tailwind helps a great deal, and I make it to El Paso, from where I can see the Rio Grande and Mexico on the other side. I land at nearby Dona Ana airport, which I am interested to see has its own customs post.

Talking of AI, on my way I fly over a vast construction site at the NE of El Paso - obviously planned for AI. You can tell because of the huge amount of energy storage they have already installed. (I find out when I get back that this is the massive “Project Jupiter” planned for use by Oracle and OpenAI, currently in the news owing to its backers getting nervous and saying they might need to delay up to three years.)

Project Jupiter site near El Paso

The transition into New Mexico happens here and reminds me of the fact that from now on for hundreds of miles across NM and AZ I will be encountering flat lands with rows of mountains like jagged teeth rising out of them at irregular but frequent intervals. Means I’ll have to stay high or constantly be descending then climbing. 

I make it to my planned destination of Deming, famous for the windy-ness of its runways, and decide to call it a day. I could go further but it’s getting turbulent and unless I fly several hours more, there’s no good location for either a bed for the night or bed/hangar for Bluebird. 

Over the years I’ve discovered that Americans love to put their hotels right next to freeways. And they don’t believe in double-glazing or soundproofing of any kind. The crappy hotel I find in Deming definitely fits this pattern. Sleep is going to be a challenge. Plus it’s a few miles from the airport. And neither taxi nor Uber service turns out to be available. I’m hoping for an early start in the morning, so my cunning plan is to offer bribes to my fellow “inmates" while we are at what they laughingly refer to as “breakfast” and ask if they will kindly take me to the airport. Otherwise, it’s going to be a long trudge. Tomorrow, I have a few hours of flying to get to Phoenix, or rather one of its satellite airports, Chandler. There I will meet my passenger-to-be, Caroline, who is my partner in Woodstock, the yellow M16 gyro I’ve been flying for 11 years. Then we will attempt to shoehorn both of us plus our luggage into Bluebird and carry on towards California. 

Day 4: Sunday, October 25

Well, as I write this, I’m quite tired. Here’s how my long day went.

I get up at 5.40am this morning in Deming, which is near El Paso on the border with Mexico (and shown for scale on the right-hand corner of the picture below). You can see Deming as the point at which the pink line starts.

I have an early breakfast courtesy of the unComfort Inn (ugh!). As I mentioned, the plan was to bribe another diner to drive me to the airport, but sadly this doesn’t work as they are all wisely avoiding the breakfast area. However, the duty manager is open to a little private commerce, so he drives me to the airport for a small fee (= twice as much as an Uber would have charged).

I manage to get into the hangar (OK, I confess I noticed the night before where the airport guy hid the key) and get Bluebird prepared, and it’s still so early that I’m off the ground before 7am local time, with the sun just beginning to peek over the horizon. 

I’m heading due West so I’m not flying into the sun. The air is flat calm and it is very beautiful as the landscape brightens. I’m not a normal early riser (at all!) but these last days of flying early in the morning have made me think differently about getting up early - at least sometimes.

One of the things I really notice about New Mexico and Arizona is the astonishing clarity of the air. You see some geographical feature that you think is 10 miles away and it turns out to be 50 miles away - just amazing how great the visibility is due to the low humidity. 

I’m leaving early because this is going to be a fairly major day, with over six hours of flying planned. First I fly towards Phoenix (the big yellow blob in the map above). I’m due to pick up Caroline at nearby Chandler, where we have agreed to meet. Caroline and I have had flight adventures before, but the way we’ve done them in the past has never actually involved us flying together. Instead, we pick a place we want to see which has a big commercial airport nearby - Seattle, or Las Vegas, say. Then I fly the gyro one way, hand it off to her and fly home commercial. Meanwhile she flies out commercial, picks up the gyro and flies it back home over the same, or a very similar route. We’ve done that for three multi-state cross-country trips, and it’s been a great way to visit an area without having to reverse course.

But this time I’m just ferrying Bluebird from Alabama to California and there is no opportunity for hand off. Caroline had asked me if she could join the trip anyway and fly back part way. I pointed out that as I would be traveling with enough gear for more than a week away, plus emergency supplies, there would be very little spare space. Undiscouraged, she has packed a small, light bag and shows up today ready to join the trip. 

We squeeze everything in and set off, after lunch at the Hangar Café, Chandler - where I am delighted to discover they serve a “gyro omelet”, even if their understanding of “gyro” is not the same as mine. 

We fly out to the west of Phoenix and then start the long leg to Blythe, which is just over the border into California. While we’re flying, we see a lot of very varied topography, including the low sections and jagged teeth I mentioned previously. Caroline keeps spotting a single house, RV or trailer in the middle of nowhere and wondering aloud what they are doing there / what sort of drugs they must be cooking up. But then we spot a whole wide area with lots of cars/vans/RVs. They are all obviously associated but not in close proximity. 

Quartzsite

It clearly isn’t a trailer or RV park, but it has a curious air of permanence to it. I mention that it reminds me of the film from a few years ago called “Nomadland”, about people living out of their cars. (I find out later that that’s exactly what it is. We are flying over “Quartzsite” which is the place the film was about.) 

Finally, we reach California! We cross the Colorado river and that’s the boundary. It doesn’t make sense to go beyond Blythe as there’s no hangar space for quite a long way after that, but in fact when we talk to the Blythe airport manager, he isn’t able to offer us any either. Their airport is used for a lot of military training, and today 300 British soldiers have apparently just departed. But 100 Dutchmen are expected imminently, and he has to keep the hangars clear.

But he recommends that if we fly NE for 25 mins or so, there is a small airport that has a casino with rooms just across the street. He says transport is included (if we don’t want to just walk) and that the rooms are better and cheaper than the local hotels (all of which are, of course, next to a freeway). We decide to give it a go. And of course, it turns out that the rooms are more expensive, the location is somewhat further away than promised, and the only transportation does in fact have to be paid for. So I don’t know what commission he was on, but he fooled us!

Having said that, although I hate casinos, (having been forced to spend far too much time visiting Las Vegas for work conferences), this place is fun and the rooms are good. And the views are exceptional. Caroline and I sit in the bar and then have a meal which becomes increasingly comic as more and more things from the menu turn out not to be available and our (very nice) waiter grows more and more embarrassed and apologetic. 

Casino hotel in Parker - Colorado river

To get to the casino, which is in the town of Parker, we’ve had to fly back into Arizona. The plan for tomorrow is to head back into California and fly NW up the Coachella Valley, passing Palm Springs and venturing into the LA basin through the famous Banning Pass before exiting it again through the Cajon Pass. Then we’ll fly over Palmdale to take a look at the Lockheed “Skunk Works” plant – Lockheed are the inventors of the U2 spy plane and SR-71 fastest ever plane. I hope to land at General Fox airport, close to Edwards Airforce base.