FLYING TO THE EAST COAST IN MY BONAZA...OR NOT

I have only done one real long cross country. My wife and I decided to fly from Scottsdale to Victoria and Vancouver in our 1954 V Tail Bonanza. This was several years ago pre IPad days. I purchased VFR Sectionals for Northern California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. I also had a Jeppesen subscription for the Western United States. The only electronic device we had was a Garmin 396 portable GPS.

It took hours to plan our trip for fuel stops. Our trip was planned for August which gave us the best shot at good weather. We decided to go the long way to San Francisco so that I could fly my wife over the Hearst Castle and Big Sur. Unfortunately there was a cloud layer below us and no visibility. Our first stop was Oakland and we took BART into the City. Our hotel was only a 2 block walk. That night we had an early dinner with a fraternity brother and departed for Seattle the next morning. We had a planned fuel stop along the way and used VFR flight following as we did on our whole trip. 

The beauty of traveling by general aviation is if we like a place we stayed longer, and conversely if we did not we left earlier. Seattle was just fantastic with clear skies and great weather, and we added an extra day there. Next stop was Victoria, British Columbia. The ceiling was low on departure day and we waited for the weather to break. It took me a couple of hours to realize that we were at sea level with no mountains in the way and decided to fly over at 2,500 feet. Out west I am used to flying 8,000-12,000 feet. My wife said this part of the trip was the best flight she ever had. The views were fantastic. Upon reaching Victoria Class Charlie airspace ATC asked us to climb to 3,500 feet. Not having IFR charts I said unable. ATC asked if I see the Caravan in front of us which I did, and they said to follow it for landing. We pulled into the customs circle and were cleaning up the cockpit while customs was checking out a turboprop parked next to us. Customs left and walked into their office. I told Pam to go ask customs to come out and clear us. They asked if we were in the Bonanza. Pam said yes and customs gave her a number and we were cleared. We loved Vitoria some of the friendliest people we ever met and again stayed longer. Then we moved on to Vancouver which was outstanding.

Next stop was Portland. We had dinner with a cousin. I do not mean to offend anyone, but Portland was not one of our favorite places so we left early to spend more time in San Francisco. 

Our last stop was in Los Angeles to celebrate my Aunt’s 90th birthday, and then we headed home to Scottsdale.

My wife and I talked for years about doing a cross country trip to New Orleans, Auburn (my undergraduate school) and Atlanta. My Mom, Sister and daughter all live in Atlanta along with many friends and fraternity brothers. Unfortunately my wife had to have a kidney transplant 3 years ago, then the following year she went into kidney rejection so we delayed the trip for 3 years.

This was the year to go. Planning is a lot different now with APPS such as ForeFlight. I loaded the preferred IFR routing for our trip, and I removed unnecessary waypoints for VFR flying. Next was to plan fuel stops and overnights. What took many hours before with paper sectionals only took 2 hours to plan with ForeFlight. I then called the FBO’s where we planned to spend the night enroute to our destinations. Our first overnight was in Junction, Texas. When I called the FBO manager who lived on the airport and would take us to our hotel and pick us up the next morning. The other stop coming home said they would give us a car for the night. Many years ago I remember airports doing this, not so much anymore. 

Our stops were also planned with ForeFlights for fuel pricing. It made a major difference in where we decided to stop. Fuel in New Mexico and across Texas was around $3.50 a gallon. If we stopped in a major city such as Austin, Texas you could just about double the price.

I started planning this trip in December 2016, and our plan was to depart the first week of April 2017. We were in no hurry, and if the weather was bad we could just delay our departure. As it turned out the weather was horrible in Texas and Louisiana. 

Then a funny thing happened. My wife spiked a fever that she could not shake 8 weeks before our planned departure. Being a kidney transplant fevers are a bad thing, and I took her to the emergency room. She was admitted to the hospital with a bad infection. After several tests this infection spread to her heart. She had to have her Mitral valve replaced and bypass surgery two weeks after she was admitted. They had to get the kidney infection under control before heart surgery. She was recovering in the ICU and a week later moved to a room on the Telemetry floor. During heart surgery you are given a lot of fluid and my wife was having trouble removing the fluid from her heart. All the Docs felt she was okay to go home. The nurse helped Pam get dressed and Pam sat down, could not breathe and had chest pain. She coded right in front of me and the room was full of doctors. They were able to bring her back and rushed her back into the ICU. She was stable that night but coded again the next morning and was rushed into surgery where they removed the excess fluid from her heart. The heart is now working great but when you loose all blood pressure the kidney takes on a lot of damage. Pam has now been in the hospital for 7 weeks and still has a slow process of 8 more weeks to remove fluid on her body that the kidney can not by dialysis.

Bless my wife. She was more worried about cancelling our trip then her problems. She is a strong woman. I told her to worry about getting well so we can make our trip in 2018.

So that is my story of our almost cross country to the East Coast. It will happen, it will just take a little longer than expected.