Called Home

In Memoriam

Wayne was a good guy, though I confess that I did not know him well. After he married my cousin Kim, they invited us to their home for Thanksgiving. Wayne was welcoming, well-humored, and clearly someone who cared about people. Most importantly, I saw that he treasured my cousin. They were wonderful together and their interaction told me everything I needed to know about him.

We lost Wayne in February 2021 and a family gathering was deferred to June 19, 2021. Not only did I want to be present to support Kim, I wanted to see the rest of the family. I had not seen any of them since my mother's funeral in 2018.

Weather Wise(r)

Thunderstorms would be the hurdle of the day. I studied the weather obsessively beforehand and concluded that afternoon thunderstorms were inevitable. The key question boiled down to whether they would be scattered and avoidable or widespread enough to block my passage through the air. Optimistically, I filed my flight plans the night before and awoke at 5:30 am on Saturday to study the weather one last time. I hemmed and hawed, did some introspection on whether my judgement was clouded (no pun intended) by a desire to go ("get-there-itis"), then ultimately decided that the expected weather should be sufficiently scattered to present a reasonably low risk.

Neighborhood Tour

Date	Aircraft	Route of Flight	Time (hrs)	Total (hrs)
19 Jun 2021	N21481	SDC (Sodus, NY) - FNT (Flint, MI) - SDC	5.8	2277.2

The gathering was held at Kim's half-sister's home in Attica, MI. The nearest airport was Lapeer-Dupont, but no ground transportation was available there. That made Flint the next best choice, a 45 minute drive from the memorial. This was not so terrible considering that the drive from my home would require 8+ hours one way due to the Canadian border being closed.

After collecting my instrument clearance from Rochester Approach in the air, I activated HAL and enjoyed the aerial tour of my back yard from a mile above the ground.

On a direct route to Flint, I passed north of my neighborhood. Most of the houses were visible.  Except for mine, of course.

Downtown Rochester, NY

I passed two Rochester corporate stalwarts, Bausch & Lomb and a former Kodak facility (now Eastman Business Park). OK, so some places are more stalwart than others.

Veteran's Memorial Bridge over the Genesee River

West of the city, a broken ceiling cast dramatic mottled shadows across the landscape. Sunbeams slashing through the hazy atmosphere gave substance to the normally invisible medium supporting my wings.

Haze, clouds, and the low angle of morning sunlight illuminated the Lake Ontario shoreline with an ethereal quality.

Between layers, shadows seemed to hint at an immense winged dragon soaring overhead. 

Near Buffalo, a pair of distinctive lumps distorted the surface of the undercast. 

These aberrations caused me to wonder about the atmospheric dynamics that formed them.

Low clouds obscured the US-Canada border crossing at Lewiston that I normally use while driving to Michigan.

Stairway to Erie

I flew a line oriented more northerly than my usual flights to Michigan, cruising along the Lake Ontario shore and over the northern end of the Welland Canal. The canal gives passage to shipping traffic from Lake Ontario uphill to Lake Erie. Its north end features the Garden City Skyway Bridge that carries QEW traffic over the canal at an altitude high enough to be distressing on windy days.

I have always been fascinated by the massive freighters plying the Great Lakes and was intrigued to see several negotiating the canal and its locks.

Port Weller, the Lake Ontario entrance to the canal

St Catherine's, Ontario

"What's Your Name, Man?"

(Hamilton)

This segment of the QEW between St. Catherine's and Hamilton is usually congested and moving incongruously rapidly. Not so at 8:00 am on a Saturday morning. Clearly, I was out ahead of the traffic.

With Hamilton and its associated urban sprawl dominating, the sunset end of Lake Ontario is significantly more developed than the sunrise side near Watertown, NY.

The large terrain feature near Hamilton is part of the Niagara Escarpment, which gives shape to the northern shores of Lakes Michigan and Huron, is the cliff over which the Niagara River plunges to form the eponymous falls, and was the primary reason that dynamite was required just to create holes for chain link fence posts around the Le Roy Airport.

A densely-packed suburb of Brantford, Ontario

As I flew over the Brantford Airport in Ontario, some unusual building activity near the middle of the airport caught my eye.

With a closer look, I realized that I had seen a post about this on Piper Forum. It was a movie set for a post-apocalyptic film taking place at a decaying airport. The filmmakers were making use of one of Brantford's closed runways for authenticity.

I hummed along a mile above the surface, everything running smoothly. It was good to have my airplane truly back in service, no longer limping along with a hot engine or idle with a gutted panel.

I don't always fly over the Lake Huron shore, but when I do, I take pictures of it.

Near the Sarnia (Chris Hadfield) Airport, I observed this artificially-augmented creek and thought that it looked like an ideal emergency landing strip for a seaplane. Too bad it is not closer to the airport.

Bulky Lake Huron tapers down to the svelte St Clair River at the international border. In the funnel, the water was so strikingly clear that even submerged surface features could be seen converging toward the river.

(Another freighter!)

Harbinger

For all the weather planning, the outbound flight was incredibly straightforward. The challenge would come during the afternoon return home. Datalink weather showed that multiple cells had already made landfall in western Michigan and were moving across the Mitten. Somewhere between Port Huron and Lapeer, I encountered the first hint of what was coming.

I landed on runway 27 at Flint around 10:20 am that morning. It was my first time back at Bishop International since 2012. My college roommate Jason was waiting for me in the parking lot and we caught up over lunch.

Reminiscence

"Sure" answered the young woman at AvFlight-Flint when I asked to use the courtesy car for longer than the customary hour. In answering, she did not actually look at me. Though I was pleased to have gotten what I wanted, I simultaneously felt dismissed.

Passing me the keys, she pointed out the window and indicated, "It's that gray Ford Fusion...or Focus...I'm not sure what it is."

"That's OK," I responded still trying for some engagement. "This is really more of a GM town anyway."

The Ford Focus loaner car openly wore its 120,000 miles on its sleeve, shuddering, rattling, and squeaking as I cajoled it toward the posted 70 mph speed limit on I-69. Commentary from FBO owner Glenn Crabtree in Guthrie, OK came to mind: Don't drive it any farther than you want to walk. When I crossed into the next county and the speed limit increased to 75, I decided not to risk it and let the locals buzz on past me.

I reunited with family after chattering down the washboard surface of a gravel road. Kim's son Andy was directing cars to parking on the rural property. "This isn't your car, is it?" He was relieved to hear that it was not. "Every time the AC cycles, it squeals," he pointed out. After 45 minutes at the wheel, I was well aware.

"There aren't many of us left." A gruff observation from my cousin, Brian. I had not really thought about it before, but certainly the generations before ours were mostly gone; our grandparents, Mom, and our uncle. It was why I had spent so little time with the family in recent years; Mom was my connection to family and with her gone, I felt untethered.

A pastor led the memorial, citing Wayne's piety and asserting that he had been "called home" and that we were present to celebrate a joyous homecoming. As I considered this beyond its ecclesiastical premise, I realized that a disproportionate number of my recent trips home to southeast Michigan were the direct result of family crisis or the passing of someone who mattered. I cannot claim to know much about my spiritual home, but I have come to associate loss with being called to my literal home. 

Other family members honored Wayne by sharing their reminiscences. Afterward, I spent time reconnecting with my family, especially Kim and my Uncle Brian. I think they were pleasantly surprised that I made the trip. I spent a long time with my cousin (actually, first cousin, once removed) Cody, who is pursuing a PhD in Immunology. After years of being the only academic weirdo in the family, it was great to reconnect with a kindred spirit.

After three hours, I said my farewells. I could have lingered much longer with my distant family, but I felt guilty about keeping the car beyond the promised three hours. I drove through some deluges on the way to Bishop International and discovered that the old windshield wipers were barely suited to the task.

Good Timing

I pushed the keys back across the desk to the young woman at AvFlight. She presided over a deserted lobby when I returned and it was obvious that no one else was clamoring to use the car. I explained that I topped off the tank and, at that, she seemed to take actual notice of me for the first time. "Oh! You didn't have to do that. We would have taken care of it." I explained that I appreciated the extended use of the car and fueling it up just seemed like good manners.

"Well, your timing is really good," she exclaimed. "It was pouring here just a few minutes ago." Radar revealed that she was more spot-on than she probably knew. Most of the weather had moved southeast of Flint, with some sizable cells pummeling my hometown and my usual destination airport, Oakland County International (KPTK). The edge of the weather lay right along my course line home, so a slight northern deviation would keep me out of it.

On take off from runway 27, Great lakes Departure turned me left on course, then provided a slight northward vector to avoid the bulk of the weather. The view outside my airplane was split; dark and ominous to the south, bright and largely clear to the north.

Flint's Bishop International Airport

The airline terminal at Bishop International Airport with the AvFlight ramp at left of frame

The southern interchange of I-475 and I-75, a route I once drove daily at least three lifetimes ago.

I filed Oakland County International as my weather alternate that morning. It was located somewhere in the rain off my right wingtip. Had I landed there instead of Flint, I would have been stuck for some time.

I contemplated downtown Flint and the I-475 corridor below. Some of my most positive formative moments occurred down there many years prior.

Rain shafts west of Lake St Clair

Flying over unfamiliar ground, the Greenwood Energy Center caught my eye because of the unusual ponds near the power plant. I wondered at their purpose.

Approaching Lake Huron

Southeast Lake Huron shore in Ontario, Canada

Airplane Bath

I was mostly in light rain and IMC (instrument meteorological conditions) during the leg across Canada. I received some southerly vectors toward Lake Erie in an effort to avoid moderate precipitation east of London, Ontario. However, by the time I caught up to the weather, its intensity had relaxed from yellow to green. I coordinated with Toronto Center to deviate north of an intense thunderstorm pummeling eastern Ontario just west of Buffalo. Toronto checked on me at least twice as I detoured around the storm, but the air remained smooth the whole way.

I appreciated having HAL fly the airplane during this time. HAL provided me with more time to think and study the (admittedly delayed) datalink weather while comparing it to what I saw out the window and what Toronto Center detected with their real-time radar. With some simple strategizing, the flight was a nonevent. 

Grand Island, NY in the Niagara River

As I crossed the Niagara River back into the United States, a chaotic sky ruled over Buffalo. Inbound airliners were actively managing severe weather south of my position. As I continued eastward along Lake Ontario toward Rochester, the sky eventually opened up and I knew that the worst of the weather was behind me.

With a tailwind, the entire return flight from Flint to Sodus was 2.2 hours. I departed the memorial at 3:00 pm, and was on the ground in Sodus by 6:20 pm. Impressive, considering that this time included a 45 minute ground commute back to Bishop, a stop at a gas station, weather planning and preflight inspection of the Warrior in Flint, and a 305 nautical mile flight back to New York from Michigan. Even some twenty years in, I am still impressed by the superpowers conferred by General Aviation.

I finished the day thankful to many. To Air Traffic Control for their help around the worst of the weather, to AvFlight for the extended loan of the car, to Jason for reconnecting with me over lunch, to my family for welcoming me home with open arms, and to Cody for being another academic weirdo in the family so that I am not the only one. 

And, most of all, to Wayne. Just for being who he was.