This trip started off the same as so many of our family RV10
trips that we've had since we started traveling by RV10 in
2006. We had a very general goal, but didn't make any
solid plans. No reservations, no prearrangement's.
When you travel by plane, even with an instrument rating, you
have to be prepared to cancel when it just doesn't look
right. You may see that as a negative, but we view it as
ultimate freedom to choose the best possible destination at the
last possible moment. After all, what's a vacation if you
are going to be too hot or cold or wet or miserable in any
way? We have goals to see and visit various places, but
none of those goals usually have a timeline attached to them.
This time that again turned out to be a huge benefit to
us. As we arrived in August 2019, we hit a family
milestone that I didn't really want to hit. This is the
month that we become a house that's an empty nest, for the
majority of the year. That's right, the kids you've seen
grow up in these trips are now both gone to college. It
happens much faster than you would ever know it. It's my
biggest reason for stating unequivocally that if you really
intend to build an RV10 for your family, you do not want to
delay that decision any more than is necessary to ensure you can
afford to finish the project. If you build the plane and
you will finish after your kids are about 12 years old, I'll
tell you right now that you've already missed some of the best
years to travel as a family. Ages 12-16 is a busy time
period for any family. You're far less likely to get the
time you want with the whole family, to experience all the
traveling you will want to do with these amazing airplanes. So
don't wait until they are too old. But I digress...
Continuing on to the vacation at hand, we had be wanting to see
the Upper North West, specifically the San Juan Islands area
near Seattle, WA. I have flown over the area before, but
we've never been to the islands there, and I had thought maybe
we could see some whales, hang out by the sea, and just have a
good family vacation. Still on our barrel list (I'd call
it a bucket list, but the darn bucket is too big to be a bucket,
so it's more like a barrel), is to fly over Crater Lake, and do
another trip to Lake Powell and Moab, UT and places like
that. I had hoped that we could roll a few of these types
of things into this vacation. The problem was the weather,
as usual.
The past year has been vastly different than most years I've
experienced in weather. We started last winter off in a
halfway normal way, but about halfway through, we started
getting snowfall after snowfall until we actually set records in
our area for most snowfall ever recorded. Then
spring came and brought rain. That's normal enough, but
almost always, by July, we've had enough dry spell to hear the
word "drought" on the news repeatedly, and our grass turns to a
crispy brown as it goes dormant. This year, for the first
time in my memory, we've maintained green grass all the way thru
mid-August, and we don't water our lawn. Oshkosh brought a
replay of "Sloshkosh" with plenty of rain and mud just prior to
the show. And here's one that's highly unusual to
me: Whenever I've watched the weather out West, just West
of the Rockies, I have seen continuous scattered showers and
storms over all places, many of which are in desert type
areas. That I've never seen before either. July was
the hottest on record for the earth since record keeping
started, I just heard last week. And yesterday I read that
Salmon are dying off in Alaska because the water in one of the
inlets is over 80F when it's never been higher than the mid-70's
before. Perhaps with the extra heat we're finally carrying
so much moisture in the atmosphere that lots of precipitation
will become the new norm?
So when I looked Westward to plan our route to Oregon and Seattle,
I saw that there was going to be a lot of rain over the Rockies
and beyond, and that the West coast was going to be wet, at least
anywhere inland, for the first few days of our
vacation. We quickly scanned the Prog charts, and
Ceiling and Viz forecasts, and then charted a new course. We
were able to go East and have good weather for at least the first
few days of our vacation period, as long as we didn't stray too
far South of Ohio/Indiana, or North of New York State. That
fed right into one of my plans I've been hoping to get the family
on board with for a couple years...an adventure into New York
City. I hadn't been there since I was very young a teenager
or younger, I would guess. And I think every person should
get out to New York City and see what it's like at least
once. I think the family was just slightly reluctant at
first, but once they saw the weather forecasts, they accepted it
and we moved on. So with the plan in motion at maybe 9-10pm,
it was time to get a nights sleep and plan to leave the next
day. The good thing about heading to New York over Seattle
is also that it is easy flying, and at least a few hours shorter
for us.
With 3 RV pilots in the family, it's a bit like musical
chairs in our airplane on flights now. The first leg
belonged to Andrea. It was a real fun one because
anytime we head to the upper East Coast it means we have
to deal with Chicago, and our favorite way to do that is
to fly the shoreline under the Class B airspace.
This day was perfect for that, with clear skies and no
noteworthy turbulence. We saw what looked like a
sailboat regatta on the way past, got some good looks at
the cityscape, and were able to see many airliners flying
into O'Hare. We ended the leg in Nappanee, IN, (C03)
which is a fantastic little strip with good fuel
prices. The ramp is well maintained, and although
the runway wasn't wide it's a place where I'd definitely
like to drop in on again.
Upon leaving Nappanee, it was time for Danielle to take
the Left seat. While we flew across the country, I
read and re-read the advice I could dig up on New York
area airports to decide where we wanted to go. It
looked like KHPN was the easiest choice, but KLDJ and KFRG
were also options. There were a few big problems
with both KLDJ and KFRG, however. One was that KLDJ
was under a huge presidential TFR, one of the biggest and
worst jokes of our time. There should be no way that
a TFR should be allowed to be 30 miles in size. I
was finally feeling the pain that I'd read about for the
people who operate out of airports affected by the VIP
TFRs. Also, KLDJ had runway construction going on
daily from 7-3:30 so you could fly in and out if you
wanted but you would have to do it with some time
restrictions. KFRG when I first was looking at our
flight, was also going to be under a couple of large
Presidential TFRs over Long Island, that would be expired
by the time we got there.
From what I had read though, KHPN had only one big
drawback and that was fuel price. That I can live
with. We dealt with that by making a stop at KBFD to
fuel up on the way in. That would give us a couple
of things. 1) Cheaper fuel, 2) A place where
we could file an IFR flight plan from, and 3) A quick
break. We'd only use about 1.5 hours of fuel that we'd
have to replace at Million Air.
It isn't far from the airport to the North Metro station
that takes you into the city. All we'd need is a
hotel in the area, and Million Air FBO could supply us
with a rental car for a good rate which would allow us to
easily get a hotel and transportation as needed. We
weren't sure if we wanted to bother driving into NYC or
stay in a hotel down in Manhattan, so we figured we'd
start by staying at KHPN (White Plains) and see what we
decided later. The folks at Million Air KHPN were
great to deal with. I'll definitely go there again
on my next trip into NYC.
The flight over Northern Pennsylvania was fantastic.
It's a beautiful place with lots of trees and hills.
When flying into the New York area via IFR, I've read
stories for years and years that you can try to anticipate
your route, but most often you will get thrown a curve
ball and end up re-routed. I had also read that
tower controllers get very irritated with people who just
do the normal VFR flight in, and call 10 miles out,
expecting to be fit into the heavy traffic flow for that
airport. I think that would have worked at the time
of day I went into KHPN, but I really felt more
comfortable going in IFR. So Danielle used the time
to get some good IMC stick time while I got to have some
fun working the route. I wanted to make sure to get
my IFR squawk early on, because if I were flying into a
TFR, one of the requirements was a filed plan and a squawk
before you departed. We filed direct from KBFD to KHPN,
and when departing, were given "Cleared Direct KHPN, Climb
and Maintain 9000', squawk 2142, contact NY CTR on
134.45". And with that, the fun began!
Within a few minutes of being in cruise, we received the
expected call: "N104CD, I have a new route for you
when you're ready to copy." "Okey Doke, lets play."
I thought to myself. They gave me Direct RAGER -
T216 - IGN - V483 - CASSH - Nobbi5 Arrival. Yee haw,
now we're talking! Lets fly a STAR! We don't
get chances to do that sort of thing where I'm from.
I loaded the STAR into the GNS480 and the Chelton.
Both had their unique idiosyncrasies about them because
CASSH and IGN weren't normal transitions into the STAR,
but I was able to enter into both and we flew the route
perfectly. Eventually after we started the reroute,
they gave us direct CASSH, so we skipped a lot of the
route, and then after a while on the NOBBI5 we started
going by vectors, and it was a breeze.
After our quick check in to get our car from Million Air
(Not the Mercedes pictured), we needed food. There's
ONE type of food that I'm always in for, and that's
Italian, so we google mapped Italian Food and found
Trattoria 632 in Purchase NY. It was fantastic
Italian food! The serving size wasn't huge, and part
of me wasn't thrilled about that at first, but the reality
is, this fat dude didn't need more food, and when I was
done, I felt fine with the portion size...and the taste
was superb.
After that we headed to the White Plains TransCenter to
make sure we knew where it was, and once there, we used a
combination of "Hotel Tonight" app and Google Maps to find
a hotel that would be as nearby as possible yet still give
us one of our requirements in a hotel: An actual
Queen sized bed. Double beds just aren't good unless
you're a snuggly couple, and the kids are sisters who
become annoyed when they bump each other. So we
query the hotel to ensure we will get a double Queen
room. Well, Crowne Plaza said that we could get
that, or pay a little less for a "standard room" with
Double beds, but only one night would be guaranteed in
double Queens. Turns out that was all B.S. because
when we arrived at the hotel, we found out that all they
have is doubles. Oh well, it was late and we
settled, but I won't probably stay there again unless I am
getting a standard King room.
The TransCenter is the place for getting into NYC from the
North Suburbs. It was a little more expensive than I
thought it would be, without having any perspective on
what was realistic, but it was also very very convenient.
They had a parking ramp there and you could park all day
for under $12 for 24 hours. Ideally we wouldn't have
needed a car at all, if we had picked a hotel that offered
an airport and TransCenter shuttle, but we didn't research
that at all, so we parked the car daily at the TransCenter
and it was about $78 per day for our family of 4 adults to
get train tickets into NYC. I learned later that we
could have got a 10 trip ticket for a cheaper rate and we
may have saved a little money over the course of the time
we were there. You live and learn. You buy
your train pass and within a few minutes there will be a
train into the city showing up to jump on. Every
other train is an Express train that makes fewer stops,
but, unless you plan the schedule for when you get to the
station it doesn't matter too much either way. We
were just happy to get the first train that showed up.
After a little train ride, you suddenly enter the darkness
for the final couple minutes as you go underground in NYC
and you find yourself arriving in the depths of Grand
Central Station. I think they said we were on the
upper level in the station, and the Subway level is below
that. Grand Central was fantastic to see, after
seeing it in movie after movie for so many years.
It's clean and a great hub for the area.
We put a lot of miles on our feet that first day. We
came above ground out of Grand Central and started walking
5th avenue and other streets in the area, heading for
Central Park. Time after time we stumbled on either
very cool buildings, churches, or sites that we'd heard
about many times in our lives. At one point we
stumbled on the gold letters of Bumble Brains tower, where
a machine gun armed guard stood outside, so we knew why
the TFR was in effect. I laughed later when I found
out that there's a well-signed petition to rename a
section street in front of the tower to "President Barack
Obama Street". I'll laugh hard if that happens.
Central Park was better than I ever expected. It's
full of people all enjoying leisure time. You can
climb rocks, rent rowboats and paddle around a pond, sail
your RC sailboat, sleep under a tree, play ball, or catch
some rays in the grass. There is food available,
biking, lots of great scenery, and hey, even a few
scammers ready to fleece you of a couple bucks. I
laughed at my Midwestern gullibility as I saw a couple
guys on segways with a pair of Boa Constrictors. I
had a couple when I was young and I wanted the girls to be
able to hold them. The guys that had them were
thrilled to put them on peoples shoulders...for only
$20. I was fine with that, but didn't negotiate or
consider the ramifications in advance when they put one on
me and one on Danielle. I was then to find out that
it was $20 PER SNAKE. :) What a gomer. I
didn't argue...that would have been best beforehand.
I just gave them their $40 and smiled on our way out,
knowing I'd been had. From that point on, we
discussed the price of everything we did in terms of
snakes. Like, a 4 adult pass for the World Tower
plus 9/11 museum is about 14 snakes. ($280 USD)
Depends on where and how you buy it of course.
I also thought it was cool when I saw on the map in
Central Park, a place called Strawberry Fields, where
there was a John Lennon memorial. Always liked that
guy.
From Central Park we wanted to get down to the One World
Tower, and see the 9/11 memorial, so we walked the first
half, walking along Broadway, down to Times Square, and
Rockefeller Center. We took a loop around to see my
favorite night show's site...the Late Show with Stephen
Colbert. I wanted to get tickets, but you have to
get them in advance, and we hadn't planned ahead for
that. It gives me a reason to go back to New York
though...so I'll be trying to get tickets again soon.
We had some Cheesecake at Juniors, which I guess is a
thing. Then we jumped on the Subway for the ride
down to lower Manhattan to the 9/11 memorial.
As we were traveling on this trip, we grabbed lots of
little pics and videos and Danielle compiled them into
this trip video for us. I think she did a great job,
what you say?
We bought our One World Tower and 9/11 museum tickets from
some dude on the street carrying a ticket selling computer
system. Not sure if it was the best deal, but it got
us tickets. We had a little wait for our Tower
tour...turned out we had to turn in our ticket vouchers
for actual tickets at the gate, and then we had time to
stroll around. The memorial sites they built are
spectacular. At first, they're just waterfalls into square
holes in the ground, but then you read the inscriptions
and start to find out more detail and the gravity sinks
in. Those 2 holes are directly over the former site
of the World Trade Center towers. I didn't realize
it was built exactly on that spot. But it got even
better later.
While we waited, we needed a restroom, and a security
guard sent us towards a spiky white building. I had
no idea what it was. It just looked small and a little
artistic from the outside at first glance. Turns out
it's called the Occulus and its HUGE inside. Not
just huge inside, but there are many levels and many
passages that branch off inside. More on that later
too.
The trip up and down the One World Tower is
fantastic! On the ride up, since the elevators are
internal to the building, they plan a surround video on
all the walls that starts with old New York City, where
you can see it develop through time, becoming more and
more recent as you ride to the top of the building.
It was very well done, but I wish I had know what it was
before the ride, because I'd love to watch it again and
pay better attention.
Looking out over the city you get a phenomenal view of
everything. The harbor, the city, the Brooklyn
Bridge, and everything around you. It wouldn't be a
bad thing to start the trip with, if you knew where you
planned to go, so you could get your bearings. But I
think for us it was better that we did it after the first
day, because it showed us where we were, and what else we
may want to see. We were also lucky that we were on
the 7:30pm trip up, which put us up there for
sunset. What a beautiful time of day to be in the
building!
The trip down was just as cool, but in a different
way. They played an elevator video that made it
appear that the elevator busted out from the side of the
building and flew around the city skyscrapers, later
re-joining into the tower. The motion of the video
made it feel as if you were flying, when combined with the
movement of the elevator. It was really fantastic.
Done with the Tower, we had to get the subway back to
Grand Central for our train home to White Plains for the
night. We found out that if you go back into the
Occulus, you can walk a LONG way underground past lots of
shops, hallways and large areas to get to multiple subway
stations for various subway lines, all without going above
ground. By the time we were done with the day we had
put over 11 miles on our feet, walking about 25,000
steps. It was a good day of sightseeing.
Day 2 we had purchased tickets the day before for a Statue
of Liberty cruise. To go into the crown (I did that
as a kid) you would need to book the ticket probably at
least a month or more in advance, so we just settled on
standard tickets. The cruise isn't too long, and
you're on the island with the statue. There is good food
there, so we toured around and used that as a lunch
stop. We spent some time in a great movie that the
National Park Service puts on about the statue and how it
came to be, and we walked around the other exhibits.
I took some photos of some of my favorite quotes they had
on display.
As we walked around the island looking at the Statue of
Liberty, and in the museum looking at the presentations, I
found myself becoming very proud of this particular
monument to our country, and what the values of the United
States of America are supposed to represent. Lately
with politics the way they've turned, I find it's been
very disheartening to see what some of the country's
symbols are being used for. With White nationalism
getting newfound popularity, and anti-immigrant rhetoric
being spewed daily, I see symbols such as the American
Flag being used by people as much to spew hate and
completely non-Christian values, and it's started to taint
my view of some symbols of our democracy. Not to
mention the gerrymandering and other political tools that
are completely anti-democratic. The values that our
country are SUPPOSED to represent, especially to those who
call themselves Christians, are supposed to be values that
encourage participation, integration, immigration,
brotherly love. Values that are supposed to
encourage democracy both domestic and abroad. Our
values are supposed to help push other countries to move
to become better to their own people, relieving their
citizens of poor working conditions, government
oppression, and bringing them freedom of speech and
religion. Instead I see our country locked in a
never ending power struggle where each side would love to
remove the rights of the other side, completely removing
all democracy, in the name of full power and
control. The American Flag is being used daily by
people with such agendas on both sides, and it's sad to
see. Does the flag represent our freedom and
democracy, or our world domination and control? Is
it nationalism, patriotism, or a deep value for our
American rights? It's hard to see through the smoke,
and tell.
But when you look at the Statue of Liberty, it was built
for the United States and given to us because we were
finally, at the point they built the statue, beginning to
walk the talk of the values that our country was founded
on. We were giving our people freedom, and liberty,
and also trying to spread it around the globe. We
welcomed people into our country as refugees, and the
Statue of Liberty was one of the very first things a
person may see when arriving by ship, before they were
processed for immigration into the United States. To
those people, OUR OWN relatives of past generations, this
was a symbol of hope, and they came from all over the
world. The statue had only been something I saw as a
monument, before, but as I walked around, and read, and
thought about it more this day, I truly now see it as more
monumentAL than that. This statue represents the
values of our country. The same values that I see
being torn down and jeopardized daily. So it was
with great pride that I looked upon the lady on this trip
and see that she still stands, and not only that, she is
maintained by my absolute favorite portion of the United
States government...the National Park Service. It is
by the country funding and supporting our National Parks,
that I know there are still people who care about the
country, it's values, and preserving them so that they can
be shared with all who come here to visit them. I
ask of every person who reads this to support our National
Parks. Behave well when inside them. Don't
damage our park lands, and keep them clean and pristine
for everyone who follows you. Show our citizens and
the world that our country, it's parks, and it's values
have meaning to you, personally, and act as a good example
to everyone.
After the Statue of Liberty, we made the stop at Ellis
Island. This stop was barely memorable to me, if at
all, from childhood, but now that I have grown, it takes
on much more importance. Some of these photos I took
I am appalled at, and some I am moved by. It was
very sad for me to see that even as we were allowing
immigration a couple generations ago, groups like the KKK
were discriminating not only against blacks, but against
immigrants...especially if they weren't Anglo based.
It feels so overwhelmingly familiar for me in 2019 now, as
some of this same hate filled rhetoric shows it's
head. But then there are the good stories. I
read far more exhibit plaques than what's pictured here,
and there were so many that were filled with hope.
People coming here had hope for a better life. The
"American Dream". There was a story I remember of a
girl with warts on her hand or something similar, and she
was marked with chalk, potentially deported, but someone
had her flip her jacket inside out and the mark was gone,
and she was allowed to stay. You could see all of
the rooms where people were processed, and read actual
papers and passports from people who came here. It's
just an incredible amount of history that happened at
Ellis Island. In its day, it was the most intensive
immigration facility in the country.
After Ellis Island, we high tailed it to the 9/11
museum. This was a stop that at first I didn't even
know it existed. My second thought was that it may
be interesting but I wasn't sure I wanted to go. Boy
was I wrong. Let me tell you, if you were alive and
remember that day, this is a stop you don't want to miss.
You enter the museum, and descend past a steel beam from
the tower. That's your first clue that it's going to
be a moving experience. I am not sure if the first beam I
saw was still in its original location or not, but it was
monumental. Then as you get underground, you
can see the flight paths of the 4 planes that were lost
that day, and you start becoming immersed in the
memories. A short time later you enter another
underground chamber, and that's when you're fully taken
over. You descend down into the water holdback basin
that was built to keep the foundations of the buildings
dry, below sea level, and as you do, you realize that you
are actually going down to the actual foundations of the
ORIGINAL actual World Trade Center buildings. You
pass areas where signs are displayed, previously posted by
families after 9/11, looking for their missing loved
ones. By this point in the trip, my eyes had been
watery multiple times and I felt the lump in my chest
growing.
As you go down a final escalator, you are next to an
actual original set of stairs that are unmoved from their
original location on the buildings. As you walk
around, you see that the 2 fountains you saw above ground,
were built DIRECTLY over the original towers, but now
you're walking around directly UNDER the fountains.
Yes, much of the museum is located precisely on top of
ground zero, right where the buildings had stood.
The foundation concrete and steel outlines the 2
buildings, and you can see it right next to you.
Underground are countless rooms in a maze through the
museum where you can see artifacts, photos, videos, and
audio recordings from before, during, and after
9/11. Ladder truck 3 is there, where can see it was
crushed by falling debris. A towering beam stands
where firefighters and police memorialized their
partners. Huge, thick twisted steel is there, and
you can touch it and feel the strength. There are
exhibits that broke me. I can watch the airplanes
fly into the towers. I like to keep the memory
alive, but it tears me up and pulls me apart every time I
see it. I know exactly where I was when I heard the
news, and it firmly brings me back into that moment.
It is very powerful. You can listen and look at
where people were as they left answering machine messages,
that you can listen to, for their loved ones. There
are numerous quotes and stories from people. And on
one very artistic blue tiled wall, it is stated that the
bodies of over 2,000 people are buried behind that
wall. The whole museum will wreck you, and make you
once again appreciate the gravity of the day, and the
sacrifices that were made during and after. For the
people involved in the rescue and recovery, I hope our
country does all it can to take care of you for the rest
of your lives.
After the 9/11 museum, it was time for strolling around
again. We headed down to Wall St. to see the New
York Stock Exchange, see the raging bull, and even
stumbled upon the building where George Washington himself
was first inaugurated. Who knew it was right near
the New York Stock Exchange!?!?! Being a Sunday
evening, it was actually fairly dead down there, which
shocked us, and we had a hard time finding food that we
wanted. We ended up at Pershing Square near grand
central station, where I had pancakes for $24. Yes,
don't eat there if you don't want to pay WAY more than the
food is worth, but it was good.
We had done and seen a lot in our first 2 days in the
city, but we weren't quite ready to leave yet. We
first wanted to see the Intrepid Museum. Oh, and
before that, we purchased our Sky Diving deposits, which
firmly planted our date for when we'd do our first
skydive. The Intrepid museum was good, but let me be
a critic her and say this. If you've traveled like
us, and been to Charleston SC, and toured the ships there,
and you've been to the Kennedy Space Center and seen the
Shuttle, and you've seen the Concorde up close, and you've
been to the Air Force Museum in Dayton OH, the Intrepid
museum is going to be a little bit of a letdown.
It's not a BAD museum, but none of the displays are nearly
as nice as those you can get elsewhere, if you make
multiple trips and see those sites instead. You will
have a hard time topping Dayton's Air Force Museum for
seeing most aircraft. The hardest one for me to see
though is the Concorde, which is what solidified my plans
to see it at the Intrepid Museum, and other than the fact
we didn't get to go inside, it made it worth while for us.
It was to be a short day in NYC for us, since we wanted to
beat any potential bad weather out, we wanted to fly the
Hudson River, and we wanted to guarantee we would arrive
with no issues in Virginia for skydiving, so we took the
Metro North back out of town and got in the RV10 for our
flight South.
This was to be a far more complicated Hudson River flight
than we would have most of the time. First of all,
to fly the Hudson, you need to take the FAA course on the
Hudson SFRA. We did that, which was
informative. I had previously taken the DC SFRA
course, but re-took it on this trip as well. Bring a
laptop when you go to these areas, so you can do that.
The issue at hand was this mess of TFRs we were
facing. To the West was still a big 30 mile TFR, and
flying down the Hudson took us through a stadium TFR that
was active if we flew the SFRA area. There was also
a Trump Tower TFR that was active. So there are 2
choices. If you fly the SFRA exclusion area, you fly
at between 1,000 and up to and not including 1,300'
msl. If you do that, you don't talk to anyone.
Well, that directly contradicts what it takes to legally
fly through any TFR, which is a discrete squawk BEFORE you
leave the ground, plus a flight plan, plus 2 way
communication. If you want 2 way, you want to fly
the "Skyline route" which is at 1,500' minimum down the
corridor. Now your views aren't as good, but you are
in Class B airspace and talking to controllers the whole
way. Turns out you get handed off a LOT while flying
that corridor, and, they are controlling other traffic
that will probably be an even larger collision risk for
you than if you were self-guiding a flight down the
exclusion area at 1,000' msl. But, thanks to helpful
controllers, and a little pre-planning, we didn't have to
completely cancel our Hudson flight, but just did it under
positive control the whole time. I guess I'll just
have to go back and do it again!
Once well out of the New York area, we decided to reroute
to Richmond VA for the night because I figured it being a
busy and bigger airport would have easy access to cars and
hotels. I was partially correct, I guess. We
stayed at Million Air FBO there too. Sadly they
don't have a single tie down spot on their ramp as far as
I could see. That's kind of Ludicrous I think. And,
all of the car rental companies at the airport area were
completely sold out. Darn. Well, that meant we
had to pick a hotel that had airport pickup, and luckily
the Hilton Garden Inn did. It turned out to be a
nice hotel. In a way, it was too nice. We
would normally get a nice hotel with continental
breakfast. This hotel was a nice hotel, but had a
restaurant on site but it wasn't cheap. The
breakfast wasn't leaps and bounds better than most hotels
I go to, but it was over $15/pp. It was good food though,
and had a waitress and everything and our waiter for the
night meal and waitress for breakfast were both very very
nice. So other than a little unexpected food cost it
wasn't a big issue. They also took us to a local
shopping center and from there we took a Lyft to a theater
for a movie. During the Lyft ride back to the hotel
we saw how we really missed out on some of the cool things
in Richmond. It's a very historic area, and I'd like to go
back again but this time get a car so I can see a lot
more.
After a couple nights it was time to head to Skydive
Orange in Orange, VA and take our first skydive!
Ever since we did the wind tunnel skydiving when the kids
were tiny in Vegas and when they were a bit older in
Denver, we've told them that we could go skydiving once
they were old enough. With both now over 18, this
was the year. I wasn't sure how it was going to
work, because this past year wasn't good to me and I was
over the 230lb limit that many places list for
weight. But leave it to Danielle, she spent some
time online trying to find East Coast places and see what
their weight limits were, and she came across Skydive
Orange, in Orange, VA. (KOMH) It turns out
that they can take fatties like me, so we nicknamed them
"Fat Man Skydiving" and we booked it. I lived in
fear for a couple days. Not fear of the skydiving
but fear that the day would come when we were up for our
2:00 time slot, and the weather wouldn't cooperate.
The TAF and MOS forecasts didn't make it look
promising. That morning it still looked the same,
but we took off from KRIC and headed for KOMH and the
actual eyeball analysis was much better. The
forecasts were simply too coarse to be able to show what
to expect. We got there and there was a skydiving
event going on, so they were occasionally operating their
Twin Otter in addition to a visiting Sky Van. All
was going along just fine until our time came and we got
our harnesses on. At that point the ceiling started
closing over a little and they did a ground stop.
Luckily a while later it cleared again and we loaded up
the Sky Van. That thing looks just ridiculous, but
it holds skydivers real well. I had thought it may
be cool to have for a family plane if you were traveling
with a lot of luggage, but it was noisy as heck with it's
twin turbine engines.
The worst part about the skydive was probably the trip
up. The floor was rather slick, and the climb angle
was pretty steep, so we had to hold on as we climbed to
14,000'. But it didn't take long and we were
there. Making my own skydive a little tricky was the
fact that with my height, and weight, my tandem instructor
had to be a smaller dude, which meant that our difference
in height was problematic as far as walking and jumping
out. They solved that by doing a seated entry where
I simply sat down with my legs in front and we slid
towards the exit, and rolled forward to jump out. It ended
up working real well on the slick sky van floor, and soon
I found myself screaming (not literally) towards the
ground. It was truly an awesome ride! I
expected the jerking from the chute popping to be much
harsher than it was, but it was really nothing. And
once the chute deployed, it was quiet and we were able to
circle our way down to the airport below. What a
ride! Landing was a simple slide-in landing.
The girls both got the more traditional standing exit,
with Danielle doing a backflip on the way out. For
them, I had paid for videographers to film the skydive
with pics and video. The videos are embedded
below. All in all we had a great time, and I know
Danielle and I will definitely be up for it again.
Colleen's Skydiving Video
Danielle's Skydiving Video
Once we were done at Skydive Orange, it was time to high
tail it for home. We boarded the plane and lept over
the Appalachians and headed East. A short fuel stop
at KOXI (Knox Indiana) and it was Andrea's turn to finish
the flight home. Another evening shoreline flight by
Chicago was a bonus. Knox, by the way, has ice cream
bars and snacks available, so it makes a perfect stop with
kids if you need a quick snack and fuel but don't need a
whole meal.
More Skydive Pics from Skydiving with
Skydive Orange