83 days of flying
pilotweb.aero | Pilot June 2018 | 55One of the bigger risks of the
whole thing was the return of my
wife. There is no better institution
on planet earth to kill the
budding romance of aviation than
marriage, and I underestimated
the conflict of will that would take
place. Despite having reached
almost twenty days, I had to
contend with the “you’re going
flying again?” enquiries, for which
I successfully nagged my spouse
into submission, training her to
ask, “when are you going flying
today?” I even resorted to a tool
so often used by happily married
couples: becoming difficult when
a proposed obligation would
interfere with flying, and lovingly
showering her with being in a
good mood after having flown,
which then afforded an erosion
of any remaining willpower on
her part, and she acquiesced to
the benefits of a husband in a
better mood. As they say, “happy
[husband], happy life”.
There was a pesky detail
approaching at day 38, which I
hadn’t considered owing to its
improbability: I had scheduled
a commercial flight to London
to get my insipid UK medical.
This subject is one that will be
shared in the future, supposing
the kind folks at the CAA issue
my European licence before I die
of old age. Nonetheless, I knew
it would be impossible to fly on
one of those days, and impossible
to arrange a private flight while
in London. Thus, I woke up, flew
the Cub, drove to Barcelona,
flew to London, and returned the
next day by commercial carrier,
rationalising that I did fly “every
day”, so it was good enough.Forty came and went without a
problem. As I approached 55 days,
I set my mind to 75. At this point,
the weather was record-breaking
heat and I had battled every
conceivable weather phenomenon
in the air inclusive of hail, summer
snow, downpours, wind, cold,
mountain waves, desert heat,
thunderstorms, and fog. Certain
days by chance I drove to the
airport for the sixty minutes of VFR
that existed for the day, before the
next wave of IMC came in.
The next test of this endeavour
came with a dramatic bout of
Spanish criminality, where we
had to choose between putting
up with continued illegal and
fraudulent behaviour on the part
of our landlord and his estate
agent, who were in cahoots to get
us out so the landlord could use
the unit for vacation purposes, or
take a sensible path and move into
the adjoining unit, which we did.
The BMW then broke, which took
weeks to fix, and then it broke
again. As we had one car and lived
in a rural area, I bummed rides
from pilots until they wouldn’t do
it, walked the hour to the airport,I had
battled
hail, snow,
wind, cold,
desert heat
and fog
Rice fields, Delta de l’Ebre, Catalunya
Surfing above the wave at 12,000 feet, Val du Carol, France