Flying 2200 miles in 7 days
From Gaitersburg (Meryland) To Nashville (Tennessee)
My favorite flights are in the United States, the freedom to choose the route and the altitude of the flight, the amount of fields and landings strips that you can choose in any direction you choose to fly allows you to land for rest, refuel or just to be impressed by the view. That’s why I decided that flying in USA will be an annual (almost) event.
This year, 2019, four friends joined together to execute a tour through several selected cities on our way to Lakeland to participate in the event known as Sun n’ Fun in Florida.
We rented a plane at the WIFA ACADEMY OF FLIGHT that situated in Gaithersburg, Maryland, at Montgomery Airport. We received a 210-horsepower Cessna 172 after making sure that every detail on our check list was fulfilled we taxi to the runway. The airplane lifted the four of us easily into the air. We left the restricted area of Washington as we headed west; the first destination on our way was Nashville Tennessee, the capital of country music. After a long flight with 2 landing along the way for refueling, grubbed a lunch and switched pilots we landed at our destination. (Of course I should mention that we are all pilots so we divided the flight segments between us).
New Orleans on the horizon
The City atmosphere greeted us as we landed at John C Tune Airport with a big welcome to Music City; UBER cab took us to the hotel.Without unnecessary delays, we went out for our first evening entertainment, on Nashville’s main street, we found dozens of clubs to choose from wondering which one is the best for us. After a lot of walking, we entered a nice place with country atmosphere to break the hunger that attacked us and relax with the good music.
The fun ended when the fatigue of 500 miles of flight overtook us, the hotel room winked and the rest disappeared in a deep sleep. Next morning, we decided to devote more time to the jazz city New Orleans so we departed from Nashville without any delay skipping what Nashville could offer. Another 400 miles passed, heading for New Orleans. We landed at the beautiful Lakefront Airport (KNEW), the runway penetrating the sea, it was very exciting touchdown on the black asphalt. Needless to say, we received excellent attitude and service we received in every field we landed.
Flight in the rain and clouds
The evening came, jazz music enveloped us as soon as we set our foot on the famous Bourbon Street, from all sides there were bands, singers, pedestrians who sang and moved to the sound of music, even the police horses that stood in the corner of the street were moving to the rhythm. We went into several clubs to listen to choose among many kinds of jazz music that we enjoyed. The tempo caused us to move from place to place like a bees among flowers, we admiring the people dancing and singing with the performers. It was very late when we returned to the hotel hoping that we could spend the next day in the city before continuing to Florida. But unfortunately the weather began to change and disrupted our plans, the forecast predicted thunder and lightning the next day. We analyzed the data and concluded that we had a window of about an hour in the morning to leave New Orleans before the front took over the city and would force us to stay stranded for three days in New Orleans. On nice days it could be nice but not during a storm and we would miss the Florida event, too.
sun n’ fun – Lickland, FL
We manage to take off on time, even though it was raining. We made efforts to get away from the storm as fast as possible and with the flight following controller we avoided entering to bad situations and heavy clouds until we crossed the border to Florida and the weather began to clear. We landed in Plant City Airport (KPCM); we rented a car for three days and drove to the hotel in Lakeland. I do not usually talk about hotels or restaurants, my demands are modest, tasty food, comfortable bed, courteous service and cleanliness. Unfortunately, the hotel did not meet the basic criteria.
Courage and Excitement – Extreme Pilots
Yet the event was as amazing as ever, the daring and accuracy of the pilots flying the aerobics airplanes made my heart beating faster. The Blue Angeles pilots carried out exercises passing each other face to face at a hair’s distance, the vertical leap upwards, the open flower performances and a bunch of formation flights were amazing as the engine noise deafened our ears until they disappeared in the horizon. The flight of the old planes from the former century proved once again that veteran pilots have the same spirit as younger pilots and continue the tradition they have created.
The days passed and again we were standing next to the Cessna ready to start our way back. We planned to visit the airport where the Wright brothers operated and changed history at the First Flight field (KFFA) located in a green landscape along a tree-lined area beside the runway. The place known as Kill Devil Hill greeted us with great weather. We toured between the measuring stones that indicated the distance they had managed to pass on their first flights. A model of their airplane stood in the center of the museum and another one in the field downhill surrounded with statues. Of course, there is a corner in the museum to aviation leaders like Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart.
The way back
After taking off some distance from Washington, it turned out that there was a front over the city that forced us to land overnight in one of the coastal towns, this change turn to be good because of a wonderful meat restaurant, waiters walked among the customers with skewers of all kinds of meet, beef, sheep, pigs and poultry. A bottle of wine accompanies the meal and a salad bar completes the dinner. Two months later, I’m still drooling only from memory.
The next day we landed in the Montgomery Field, in Gaithersburg. We departed from the plane and our friends (Ziv Levi and the great team of instructors). We managed to spend some time in Washington itself before boarding the Air France flight back to the Promised Land. The flight did not go smoothly as scheduled; a delay in leaving Washington caused a long 9-hour stopover in Paris, which was not so bad because we used the time to jump to the city to visit the Arc de Triumph and the Eiffel Tower. I was disappointed by the checkpoints and fences that were built around the tower and the need to stand in a long line in order to walk below and pay an entrance fee, so we gave up.
Thanks and congratulations to my loyal readers until the next trip to the United States..
