So yesterday, my friend Steve Petusky emails me and says “Weather is supposed to be gorgeous tomorrow – how about we go for lunch in the airplane?” Steve is a private pilot and a member of a flying club here in Asheville. He has access to four single-engine planes that are parked at AVL. He’d originally suggested Rutherfordton, because I guess there’s a sandwich shop at the airport there. I replied, “Deal me in! How about we go to Isabel’s for lunch in Jefferson, NC, the “Best County in the World” (™ Lee Jones).  “Sounds great!” came the reply. I emailed our friend and Realtor, Julie Miller, who graciously agreed to send her dad over to pick us up and take us to lunch (she was on her way to CLT, as those of us in the aviation community call Charlotte).

This morning, I went down to AVL and met Steve at the general aviation facility. Steve did the pre-flight check on the Cessna 172/G, and we taxi’d and held at the AVL runway. It was my first time in a small plane on a runway with commercial traffic and it was kinda fun. Steve tried to beat a small plane about to land, but the ATC guy held us up so we had to wait for him. Which was good, because otherwise we wouldn’t have gotten to see him bounce off the runway. See, he was coming in high and I thought 1. “He’s coming in high,” and 2. “What do I know about planes landing?” That’s when Steve said, “He’s coming in awfully high.” Anyway, when he got down to the runway, he was too fast and too high and so the plane bounced off the runway. Now when you do that, you’re not allowed to try again on that run (so I learned) so he had to go around. And it was our turn.

Steve’s flying club has a new GPS built into the plane, so he could just dial the airport in. After that, we simply followed a pink line to Jefferson, enjoying the view on the way. Asheville handed us off to Atlanta then we waved good-by to Atlanta as we neared Ashe County. In fact, we weren’t technically required to tell anybody where we were going or what we were doing, “But I like to let them know where we are,” said Steve. Amen. We skirted around the southern side of Mount Mitchell, the highest point east of the Mississippi. It was beautiful from the air.
I was trying to get my bearings – I thought I should be able to recognize things as we got up toward Boone and Jefferson. At one point, Steve said “Is that Boone?” I wasn’t sure. Then five minutes later, we both pointed and said “Yeah, that’s Boone.”  The Appalachian State University campus swamps the entire town.

Appalachian State University, Boone, NC

I waved at my cousin Rosy Kirby though she couldn’t see me. At that point, I was pretty sure I’d get lost because the boring asphalt route goes east along NC-421 toward Deep Gap, and we were taking the “as the crow flies” route. But I kept my eye on the GPS and as we got closer to the airport, I thought, “I’ve gotta start recognizing something any minute now.”  Then, suddenly, I did.  I saw Mt. Jefferson dead ahead with Phoenix Mountain at about 10:00. From there, Ingles, the Wal-Mart and everything else just dropped right into place like you were looking at a map. Funny how that works, eh?

Jefferson and W. Jefferson, NC. Mount Jefferson on right side of image

“What time is it?” asked Steve. “11:40″ – we’d been up for about 40 minutes. “We have time to go look for your cabin now and still be back at the airport to meet your friend at noon.” Airplanes are cool. “So, bear northwest some and let me dial it in.” I had brought along my GPS unit and first dialed in the coordinates of our Little Piney property near Lansing. I thought I’d be able to get us there visually, but as I said to Steve, “I’m used to having to drive around Phoenix Mountain.” We got to the north side of Phoenix Mountain, and my GPS said we were dead on track to hit our property. “Three miles away” I said. “That’s right beyond the nose of the plane” said the

pilot. Suddenly I saw the road that we’d just had put in – a new road in that area stands out. “Bingo!” There’s our road, the pond, the two ridges that we own (we have 63 acres in there), and a frigging truck parked on our property. Now, it’s possible that this is related to the old cabin that Lisa and I are donating to the Ashe County Historical Society. This cabin dates from the 1930′s and is parked up in a hollow on our land. They asked us if they could have the cabin, and we told ‘em that they were welcome to it. If this is them carting it out, then great. But if it’s hunters or pot growers, then we need to do something about that.

Anyway, not much more to do about that, so I dialed in the GPS coordinates for the cabin up in the northern part of the county. Again, I knew that if I got close I’d recognize things, and my little GPS guided as right in

there. Steve very kindly just kind of lazed around over the general region letting me look for landmarks. Then a road suddenly looked familiar. “That’s Sturgills! Okay – so follow that road.” “Left or right turn?” “Oh, that’s right – you’re new here. Right turn, over the bridge then follow it when it curves right.” And Steve just gracefully followed the curve of highway 194, right down into the Helton Valley. Steve said, “I could put the plane down right in that field.” I’ll remember that for next time – maybe Mr. Vannoy won’t mind.

I took a bunch of pictures, but this was the best one of the bunch. I’ll remember not to try to zoom in the future – it just doesn’t work so well when you’re going 100+ MPH. Then it was

time to head on back down to the airport. As we got closer, Steve started to announce his landing pattern intentions on the common frequency. I’ve been through this before and it’s a bit surreal. Your pilot is talking just as if he were talking to an air traffic control person. Only there’s nobody on the other side of the conversation. Of course, this makes perfect sense – it allows any other pilots in the area to know what you’re up to. But the first time you hear it, it’s a bit confusing. We had a completely uneventful landing and stepped out into a gorgeous crisp fall day in beautiful Ashe County, NC.

When we got out of the plane, we got a friendly wave from two old guys working on a plane engine in one of the hangars. Steve chuckled, “Doesn’t matter what small airport you go to. There’s always a bunch of old guys hanging around looking at the planes, watching ‘em take off and land, talking about planes.” “Guess they just like the smell of av-gas.” “Exactly.” I had called Julie’s dad, Craig, as we were taxiing in – no cellphone restrictions on this flight. Within ten minutes he pulled up in his wife’s Mercedes SUV (“They wouldn’t let me come get you in my old Jeep”). And we were off to Isabel’s, a local place of much fame about which I have written in the past. Isabel has moved into a larger place near the airport and raised her price to $8.75 for basically more food than any human can eat. We stood in line and I got a plate full of food, pointing out to the lady in my broken Spanish what I wanted. Steve stepped up behind me and said “I’ll have basically what he had.” But I had passed on the humongous pork chop. She threw a giant pork chop on top of Steve’s mountain of food anyway. I guess he looked like he needed the calories. Of course, Craig knew half the people in the restaurant and visited with them a bit.

Isabel’s daughter was there, just visiting before her family moves to Texas. She remembered me as a semi-frequent visitor. “Yeah, we flew up from Asheville to have lunch here.” “You did not.” Craig: “Just picked ‘em up at the airport.” Thank you, Veronica, for the delicious food and great hospitality.

As we were finishing up, Steve said, “Well, now we have to re-weigh and re-balance the entire plane.” Then Craig drove us back to the airport and documented our presence at KGEV. Then it was an uneventful 40 minutes back “down” the mountain, as it were. I made myself useful by spotting some traffic that the Atlanta people had warned us about. It’s really the only marginally scary part of general aviation, as far as I’ve experienced it. The control people have two airplanes on the radar, and they can see those planes are getting “anywhere near close” to each other. So they alert both to the other. The moment you hear somebody talking to your plane about “traffic” you start scanning the skies – gotta be out there somewhere. Anyway, I spotted one. “Good eyes,” said Steve. But the next one, neither of us spotted. Furthermore, the other aircraft never saw us. He was at 6000 and we were at 6500. He was crossing in front of us right to left. We knew what we were looking for and where he was supposed to be. And we never saw him. Atlanta told him to stay down at 6000, and told us to stay up above 6500. It was a tense few moments, though I’m sure we were never anywhere near each other. And we never heard the other guy say he could see us, though I’m sure he (and any passengers) were doing the same sky-scanning we were. Finally Atlanta said, “You’re past each other” and gave our neighbor permission to climb and us permission to get into the queue for landing at AVL. Steve very specifically did not bounce the plane on the runway, and we soon had it back near its hangar – it was headed back out in just 90 minutes.

I so can’t wait for my next airplane ride with my friend Steve.

P.S. I’ve bundled up a handful of the best pictures I took (in their original resolution) and put them here for download. It’s 11 MB if you have the bandwidth and interest. Enjoy.