Back to the Bricks | Part 4, Remembrance

Circle of Life

If resistance breeds character, then our personal character arcs must have developed significantly on the long trek south of Lake Erie to Flint, MI. Simultaneously held aloft and hindered by an atmosphere moving opposite our course at 40 knots, our groundspeed was sometimes depressed as low as 70 knots. Such struggle seemed pertinent considering the purpose of our flight that day.

Though I was solo in April when I last made the trek to Flint ("Back to the Bricks | Part 2, Chrysalis"), this time I was joined by Kristy and The Bear. The April trip was fueled by nostalgia and hopeful investment in the future, but our purpose two months later was mournful remembrance. Just three days after I visited him in April, my Uncle Brian passed away ("Back to the Bricks | Part 3, Many Meetings"). We were returning to memorialize not only him, but to attend a celebration of life for one of Kristy's high school friends being held on the very same day.

Pushing forward against the headwind allowed significant time for reflection. Increasingly, our visits to Michigan are initiated by the loss of loved ones. We have reached that age where we attend more funerals than weddings.

Dimensional Intersection

Warrior 481 ready to go outside our hangar in Sodus. Photo by The Bear.

A large puddle on the ramp outside our hangar seemed to provide a window into an alternative universe, perhaps one in which we had not lost those dear to us. Maybe in that universe, we were flying off on a grand adventure. I resisted the urge to dive headfirst into that universe -- probably for the best due to a number of fanciful and practical reasons alike -- and readied 481 to fly in this world instead.

June 12, 2026: Second Run for the "Roll Your Own" Routing

Date	Aircraft	Route of Flight	Time (hrs)	Total (hrs)
12 Jun 2026	N21481	SDC (Sodus, NY) - FNT (Flint, MI)	4.6	3164.5

For the April trip, I spent some time determining a suitable route through the Cleveland and Detroit Bravo airspaces given a lack of airways. The routing that I filed for that flight ("Back to the Bricks | Part 1, Modernization") was successful and I recycled it for this trip. Still, I would have much preferred to set out directly across Canada as in years past.

Headwinds are fun?

At 6,000 feet, we were largely above the clouds, though we rumbled through enough of them that I logged 0.3 hours of IMC (instrument meteorological conditions) time that afternoon.

Rural western NY in all its verdant glory.

Chautauqua Lake in western NY.

"Almost an island" in Erie, PA.

Railyard outside of Cleveland, OH.

A marina on Lake Erie east of Cleveland,

Downtown Cleveland and Burke Lakefront Airport.

The Cleveland waterfront.

Downtown Cleveland.

Modifications underway at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Steamship William G Mather.

As we flew along the Cleveland waterfront, I flipped the isolation switch on the audio panel back to "all" so that The Bear could hear me again. "There it is!" I pointed at the freighter below.

"Oh, is that the ship that hates you?" responded The Bear with more glee than I would have preferred.

Cleveland Hopkins International Airport.

Kristy called my attention to a freighter below whose wake genuinely suggested that it was doing doughnuts in Lake Erie.

Angular, flat, rural. Ohio.

Fenton, MI with Silver Lake (left) and Lake Ponemah (right).

Silver Lake is a really popular lake name in Michigan. I personally know of at least four of them including this one in Fenton, MI and the one outside Traverse City where I trained for my seaplane rating.

We followed US-23 northbound from Ann Arbor. Ahead, where US-23 diverted around Flint's Bishop International Airport, we could see runway 18-36 and its parallel taxiway directly in line with the divided highway.

Back to the Bricks

The Bear and Kristy after putting pajamas on Warrior 481.

Following our arrival to Bishop International Airport, we were marshaled to parking at Flint's only FBO, AvFlight. Our aeronautical route was not the only parallel with the prior trip in April. As before, I had an Enterprise rental waiting at AvFlight and a room reserved at the cool downtown Flint Hilton Garden Inn. The biggest difference this time around was availability of a skilled ground crew to assist with the cover (pictured above).

After my previous visit ("Back to the Bricks | Part 2, Chrysalis"), I returned from Flint with tales of the tall chairs in AvFlight that a very tiny Little Bear once used years prior to pull herself to a standing position for the first time. But when we entered the AvFlight lobby, we discovered that they were gone. Disappointed that we would not be able to photograph a reenactment with an adult Bear, we learned from AvFlight staff that the lobby furniture had finally been retired ("those chairs were really old!") and relocated to a maintenance hangar.

I flexed my wayfinding instincts and navigated to downtown Flint from memory. We parked in the large public lot at the corner of Kearsley and Saginaw, set diagonally across the intersection from the Hilton Garden Inn that was originally built in 1920 as the Genesee County Savings Bank. Beyond it stood the Huntington Bank building bearing Flint's iconic weather ball.

That night, we drove to the west side to meet my college roommate Jason and our friend Cher for dinner at Grill of India. The restaurant was located in LinCor Plaza at the intersection of Linden and Corunna Roads, a plaza that was also home to Rider's Hobby Shop that Kristy remembered as a favorite nerd destination from childhood. It was evidently the place in Flint to get Dungeons & Dragons miniatures. Sadly, she never got that cool dragon miniature she had her eye on. We had a great evening with good food and lots of laughs with Jason and Cher -- at least until we overstayed our welcome and the restaurant owners kicked us out. It was kind of like being in college again.

When we returned to the hotel that night, downtown Flint was abuzz with activity and the weather ball was lit in all its glory. "When the weather ball is red, higher temperatures ahead," Kristy recited from memory. Indeed, the next day was a hot one.

Downtown Flint's brick Saginaw Street and the iconic "Vehicle City" arches.

June 13, 2026: Remembrance

Saturday June 13 was a day to remember, relive, and celebrate what was past.

We started off the day in Sauce, the Italian restaurant occupying the ground floor of our hotel that preserved the circular vault door from the original bank. After breakfast, we walked through the University of Michigan - Flint campus. Though I had been back a few times over the years ("Back to the Bricks | Part 2, Chrysalis"), it was Kristy's first return in two decades to the campus where we originally met.

University Pavilion.

At the heart of McKinnon Plaza.

The building where I spent most of my time was completed a year before I started college.

This mural most certainly did not date back to our time on campus.

We drove to Imlay City for my uncle's funeral. It was good to see family and pay tribute to my wonderful uncle. Being there to pay my respects was very important to me. Uncle Brian was someone who always had my back. I was evidently not alone in that mindset. My cousin Scott, who vanished thirteen years ago and cut his ties with the family, reappeared for his father's service. While I saw him from across the room, I did not have opportunity to speak with him and, when the service was over, he vanished again. It was as though he'd never been there at all.

We returned to the hotel to change clothes before venturing back out. The night before, I talked about my discovery on the April trip that the house in Flint's East Village that Jason and I shared during the early 1990s was gone. Jason noted that he went looking for our first house on Branch Road in Flint Township and was unable to find it. He hypothesized that it was gone as well.

That seemed unlikely, so Kristy, The Bear and I set out to find the house I lived in twenty-five years ago. I studied a map beforehand, but found that most of the landmarks along the way were familiar. We followed I-475 north to the Stewart Avenue exit, where a shooting occurred just prior to us moving to Branch Road that caused Kristy's mother to be wary of any passage through that interchange. We continued past the former wooden pallet storage yard (now mostly empty), through the small neighborhood of identical low end housing, and finally reached Branch Rd.

Four of us moved into that house on Branch Road in February of 1991. During the move in, Chris and I dropped a refrigerator on Jason when he stumbled over a snowbank while the three of us carried it. The experience in that house went downhill from there, between multiple interpersonal issues and unreliable heat. The place was a "bilevel" or "raised ranch", with the main floor half a story above ground and the bottom level (the "garden level") half below ground. It was sided all in white with tall white pillars flanking the front entrance. It was the only house of that style on the road. 

"There it is," Kristy pointed. We passed it quickly, but I processed that the house had not aged well. It was missing siding, the paved driveway had regressed back to gravel, the front entry pillars were now brown -- whether due to paint or loss of white fascia, I cannot say -- and the front yard was cluttered with stuff. Near the doorway, someone was sitting in a rocking chair. In a moment, we were past it.

"That looked pretty rough," I commented to Kristy, who agreed. The Google street view image taken a year earlier looks exactly the way I remember from our drive-by, right down to someone sitting in a rocking chair by the door. I wonder if it's the same guy? (The address in the image is wrong, but close enough.) 

From there, we followed back roads to Kristy's home town. The celebration of life was being hosted by my brother-in-law's parents. Because the deceased was friends with both of Kristy's sisters and particularly close to my brother-in-law Nate, the memorial also reunited Kristy's siblings from their homes in different states.

Despite being an outsider who did not know the deceased, I was delighted by the entire concept of the gathering; food, drink, and fond remembrances shared of a beloved friend by those who knew him best. The stories were fun, occasionally profane, and retold with great love. It was exactly the kind of warm, humanistic gathering that my uncle deserved instead of a sterile church service delivered by an officiant who could have substituted the name of any person into his canned patter without changing a thing.

June 14, 2026: A Change in the Weather

Date	Aircraft	Route of Flight	Time (hrs)	Total (hrs)
14 Jun 2026	N21481	FNT (Flint, MI) - SDC (Sodus, NY)	3.3	3167.8

We departed Flint into low weather and rain, another parallel with my previous visit in April, but with fewer concerns about icing. Directly off runway 27, we entered the clouds and Great Lakes departure issued a southerly vector to avoid a cell of weather that overran the airport minutes after we departed. That clearly moved in quickly; it was not an imminent threat while preparing the airplane for flight.

We tracked over a gloomy southeast Michigan, the deep greens and blues of the landscape from two days prior completely sapped of color.

Toledo area and Lake Erie.

Erie International Airport and Presque Isle.

Once we returned to New York, uplinked weather showed that storm cells were beginning to form. Although uplinked weather is not a perfect tool due to its inherent delay, it is nonetheless extremely valuable. It tells us that there is weather in the area, perhaps prompting a query to ATC to understand its position in real time. It also shows us how it is moving so, even if we do not know exactly where it is in the moment, we know where it was most recently and its direction of movement. Whenever possible, I try to conservatively place myself upwind of storm cells.

ForeFlight screenshot after a weather deviation (green line) from our course (magenta line) near Dunkirk, NY.

Buffalo Approach is generally proactive in advising reroutes to avoid weather and this day was no exception. South of Dunkirk, we were given a vector to avoid a small but active cell lurking ahead in the murk. Once turned direct to Sodus, we followed a trajectory along the back side of weather as it  moved away from us.

ForeFlight screenshot demonstrating the lag in radar data. The actual cell was SE of our position.

At times, the delay in radar data was quite evident as we passed through regions depicted with heavy precipitation, but our eyes told us that the weather had moved southeast of our position. A bend in the routing at the Geneseo VOR turned us farther away from the worst of the weather.

ForeFlight screenshot taken while passing Rochester.

When we were roughly 22 miles from Sodus, another cell was dousing our home airport. Animating the radar display suggested that the weather would move off to the east before we arrived and so we continued on.

ForeFlight screenshot showing the weather moving out of Sodus.

This was indeed the case and we arrived home to find a very wet airport awaiting us under a dry sky.

Debrief

In many ways, this trip to Michigan served as a conclusion to my journey there in April, an unplanned fourth chapter appended to the earlier trilogy. It encompassed a return to Flint with Kristy, a final goodbye to my Uncle Brian, a fun evening with old friends, and revisiting another past home for the first time in many years. Beyond that, it was an opportunity for Kristy to pay her respects to a departed high school friend. For all three of us, it was a small reunion with Kristy's siblings and their spouses, all of us residents of different states (and none of them the state of our births). Finally, the return flight home was an exercise in IFR weather management that featured an IMC departure from Flint, 1.4 hours in IMC, and leveraging a combination of ATC, uplinked weather, as well as our own eyes to navigate scattered convective weather safely. By tasking the autopilot with flying the airplane, bandwidth for strategic planning around weather was greatly increased and I made full use of that capability.

For many years, our flights to Michigan were for fun. We visited family and friends while introducing The Bear to aspects of our home state that we loved, places like Kalamazoo and the Air Zoo, the Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes, and Mackinac Island. Over the years, our trips to Michigan have morphed in tone, driven more by loss than joy. This change in connotation is not something objectively earned by the state. Instead, I think it is more reflective of our stage in life.

"We were talking about whether we would see you," my uncle's eldest son told me at the funeral gathering. "But I knew you'd be here. You always come."

I certainly try. Having a time machine helps, even if using that capability requires additional work and planning than is necessary when simply hopping into the car.

Ultimate Geocaching

Daybreak in Wolcott, NY

Sunbeams were made tangible by residual morning haze and highlighted the chaotic flight paths of swarming mosquitos. The Bear and I prowled through the woods, moving cautiously as the ground was obscured by knee deep undergrowth that hid dead tree limbs and other traps to make footing treacherous. Pushing past branches, occasionally snagged by thorns, we made our own path. Deeper into the woods, our footfalls began to squelch as the ground softened on the edge of a marshy area.

The Bear held her phone before her like a digital divining rod. "I think it's that way," she offered in a tone that fell short of sounding confident. We had searched for twenty minutes, both of us silently contemplating the possibility that our foray into the woods that morning might be for nothing.

Eventide Glory

Date	Aircraft	Route of Flight	Time (hrs)	Total (hrs)
08 Jun 2026	N21481	SDC (Sodus, NY) - local flight	0.7	3159.9

It was a throwback flight, the kind I used to make frequently from South Haven, MI during my first year as an aircraft owner. I was aloft near dusk, camera at the ready, hoping to capture a glorious sunset over a Great Lake.

Mother nature did not disappoint.

While repositioning myself over Sodus Bay, I was struck by the sharply defined anti-twilight arch and watched as it was gradually swallowed by deep blue from below, the growing shadow of Earth cast on its own atmosphere.

I brought the Warrior back around toward Lake Ontario and was struck by the crystalline blue above, tangerine sunset hues smudged by clouds, and glassy water of the bay mirroring residual light from what was otherwise a world already in shadow.

I captured the evening's last gasp as it spread across the horizon in a shade approaching the visible spectrum's very edge. Deeply satisfied, I switched off my trusty Canon and safely cached it in a protective case

Damn you, Bernoulli

When I noticed a vibrant ruby coloring reflected by my wing, I decided to get one last picture. Having already packed away the Canon, I knew that the iPhone would suffice.

Over Manhattan, 21 July 2024, photographing through the open window. Photo by Alyssa.

I have been taking pictures from aircraft for longer than I have been a pilot, more than twenty-five years. I am often asked how I manage to capture such clear images and the answer is simple: I take them through an open window whenever possible. The next question people usually ask is, "Have you ever lost anything out the window?"

Of course not. 

Not in twenty-five years.

I opened the small pilot side vent window and heard the familiar rushing sound of the airplane's slipstream as it flowed past. I positioned my iPhone to take a shot and as I moved to snap a picture...

Ffffff...WHOOOOOSH!

White noise of the slipstream was momentarily interrupted and a small black rectangle raced aft, barely tracked in my peripheral vision, and then it was gone. Literally plucked from my hands. 

That did not just happen.

But it did. I moved through the stages of grief rather quickly, but dawdled in denial. I achieved acceptance before touching down softly at Sodus with one of those landings so aerodynamically pure that they only happen when no one is around to witness them.

Dumb Luck

(With emphasis on "dumb")

My Apple watch is cellular enabled, so once back at the airport, I called Kristy.

"Hi! When you track me, where do I show up?" I asked brightly.

My wife was immediately suspicious. I sounded too chipper for 9:00 at night, but she investigated anyway. "You're in...Wolcott?"

"Really?" I said. "And is that an old position or is it showing that it's live?"

"It's live," she confirmed.

I laughed and explained to my puzzled wife what had happened. When I was done, and because Kristy had me on speaker, I could hear The Bear laughing in the background. If the phone was broadcasting live, that meant two things. First, it was unbroken despite a 2,600 foot fall from an airplane. Second, it did not make a water landing in Lake Ontario, which was a distinct possibility given my position over the shoreline.

Kristy was not laughing. "I'm glad the two of you think this is funny."

Screenshot from The Bear showing my phone in Wolcott, NY.

Moments later, I received this screen shot from The Bear. My iPhone had landed in a woods just east of Chimney Bluffs State Park. It had missed Lake Ontario (barely), a marsh to the east (also barely), and East Bay Road to the west (even more barely).

There would be no point in tramping through the woods that night and no one was going to stumble across it where it fell. "Hey, Little Bear, want to go on an adventure tomorrow morning?"

Naturally, The Bear was game.

Kristy snorted and predicted that we would get arrested for trespassing.

Ping!

And so, The Bear and I found ourselves in Wolcott, NY at 8:00 am the next morning after nearly an hour drive to the east edge of Chimney Bluffs State Park. I planned to use The Bear's phone to get close, then ping the iPhone with my Apple watch. Calling the phone would not be productive, I perpetually keep it in silent mode. I did not know it at the time, but at some point, "Find My" had been deactivated on the phone. It could not be tracked as a device, could not be wiped remotely, and could not be made to emit an audible locating ping with The Bear's phone. Despite that, my phone's location still showed when anyone in my family tried to track me as an individual and that tenuous thread led us to Wolcott that morning.

We contemplated the dense woods from East Bay Road and I tried pinging the phone with my watch, but received an error that no phone was detected. It was clearly out of Bluetooth range. I had not anticipated that problem, but it made sense in hindsight. We just needed to get closer. Fortunately, the phone battery was still going after a night in the woods and The Bear still showed a live position for "me".

For twenty minutes we picked our way through the treacherous undergrowth. Though the mosquitos were swarming, they were young and remained below waist height, clinging impotently to our pants and completely ignoring our exposed faces. Our position on The Bear's phone screen bounced around, but she led us forward as I made periodic attempts to ping the phone.

Beginning to wonder if it was all for naught, I tapped the "ping iPhone" icon for the fifth time. This time, I did not receive an error. After a brief delay...

CLANG CLANG CLANG-CLANG!

The Bear and I locked eyes in triumph. I continued pinging the phone and we followed the sound. Tens of feet deep into the small forest, our shoes squelching through the muddy terrain, The Bear suddenly stopped and pointed. "There it is!"

Beneath some dense growth lay the iPhone, screen up and reflecting indirect morning light.

The Bear scrambled into the undergrowth, then backed herself out while proudly brandishing the errant smart phone. It was muddy, but otherwise completely unscathed and fully functional.

Victory!

Lake Ontario.

The Bear and I walked to Lake Ontario and cleaned the mud from our shoes.

We commemorated the moment with a beach selfie (from my recovered iPhone, of course) before starting the long drive back home. The Bear was very pleased with herself for putting her geocaching skills to practical application. 

The smartest thing I did during the whole incident was re-enable "Find My" on the phone.

Epilogue: Ten Feet, Eh?

At home, I dismantled the svelte case that protected my phone after it plummeted 2,600 feet. I was amused to note that the inside of the case was embossed with "10 feet drop-tested". 

Clearly, I am an overachiever.

But, you know, in a really dumb way.