Recently a friend and I, each flying our own planes, flew a little over 100 miles to visit our favorite barbeque restaurant, known for its smoked meats.
We ate lunch there and because I am well known as a smoked meat junkie, I also ordered one of their smoked chickens to go.
On the way back to the airport from the restaurant, I put the “to go” bag with the chicken in the back seat of the airport’s courtesy car. Delicious smells filled the car as we talked about the fun we had on the flight down. Back at the airport we checked in the courtesy car, pre-flighted our planes, and off we went.
Upon returning to our home airport, I fueled up, cleaned the windscreen, and wiped the bugs off the leading edges. The last thing I do after any flight is remove my flight bag and any cargo and place it in my car.
Cargo? CARGO? CARGO? Where’s that delicious chicken that gave up its life to sustain mine? Oh no! I forgot to transfer the to go bag from the courtesy car to my airplane. Every delicious morsel of that heavenly smoked chicken was sitting in the rear seat of the courtesy car 100-plus miles away. I became melancholy as I realized that tomorrow morning the airport staff would clean the courtesy car and throw my favorite meal in the trash.
On my drive home, I thought about the ugly fate that faced my chicken: To have died for such a noble cause and then to be dumped into a heap to disintegrate in a landfill. My heart was heavy.
Then my undersized brain, the same one that forgot to put the chicken in my plane, began thinking. The gears creaked and churned and turned. I started having wild thoughts about a rescue flight the next day.
After all, this is not ordinary chicken. This is smoked chicken that is fall off the bone, melt in your mouth drop dead delicious. No, I thought, the bird will spoil without refrigeration. Then it dawned on my pea-sized brain that the reason these meats are so darned good is that they are heavily smoked. A quick check of the restaurant’s website disclosed that the chickens are smoked for approximately three hours. An overnight stay in the back seat of a car would not spoil the smoke-preserved meat.
My mind was really working now — if I flew the dead chicken rescue mission the next day, I would have to leave early enough to make the rescue before the airport maintenance crew cleaned the car.
As I lay in bed and drifted off to sleep that night, I had visions of the sides I would match up with my smoked beauty…maybe baked beans, coleslaw, or potato salad…
In the morning I was up early and gathered my weather information. It was VFR at my home airport with a scattered layer 1,000 feet agl and clear above that with visibility of five miles. About 100 miles to the south it was clear skies at the airport where my chicken awaited rescue. The forecast was continued clear at the rescue destination and becoming clear at my home airport later in the day. That’s a go for me. Off I went.
When I cleared the low broken layer, I expected to see brilliant clear sky above. Instead, I discovered my home airport was in a bit of a donut hole and within 10 miles, the scattered low layer became a broken low layer, which is MVFR, but within my personal minimums. In addition, the reason for only five miles visibility was smoke from forest fires thousands of miles to my west. Looking straight up was a clear blue sky, but as the eyes came back down to the horizon, there was a brownish yellow haze.
I gave myself 10 minutes of flight time and enough altitude to fly back to my home airport if conditions got worse. At all times I had a clear view of the horizon, but if I had engine trouble, I would have to fly down into smallish holes in the broken layer below. For the first 30 minutes, I flew 10 minutes, assessed if I could do an emergency landing from that point, then went on for another 10 minutes. I considered it to be excellent MVFR practice because I always could see the horizon and the ground, albeit through smallish holes in the lower broken layer. After 40 minutes I had worked my way to the edge of the low broken layer and beyond was a cloudless but smoke-hazy sky. More good practice for this VFR pilot.
As I approached the rescue airport, I got a glimpse of the courtesy car parked in the same spot we left it the day before. My hopes were building.
I put that out of my mind and concentrated on my approach. I made a better than average landing and, of course, no one was around to witness it. Why does it always seem to happen that way?
As I parked my plane, I wondered if I would experience the sweet, smoky taste of success or the agony of defeat. To my great delight, my smoked chicken was still in the back seat of the courtesy car.
I swooped up the chicken and flew back to my home airport to complete the rescue mission. On the return flight, I got in more excellent MVFR practice as I encountered the same weather pattern in reverse.
Can you guess what I had for dinner that night? That smoked chicken was double yummy. Now the bird is just a memory, but a fond memory indeed.
We all know about the $100 hamburger and now we know about the $200 smoked chicken.
On the $200 rescue mission. Great story and I know you are very proud of your MVFR flying, but please get your instrument rating so you don’t have to practice MVFR. In the early 80’s I too was the proud owner of a Piper Warrior and it was a great platform for me to get my instrument rating in as well as my step son to get his private privileges. I later moved on to a 7 place PA-32 in which I enjoyed many hours of flying the “Air Truck” as it was affectionately known. It was said that “if you could get it inside and close the rear doors, it would fly”. Piper even had an ad showing two guys in white overalls loading a grand piano inside with the seats removed and flying off into the proverbial sunset. The best of memories in my PA-32.
I hope by now you have your instrument rating and wish you many hours of happiness in the air.