Anacortes Fly-In Saturday

I’ve been thinking what a special privilege it is to be so familiar with the airports around the Seattle area.

Yesterday I went in to work, and unexpectedly the front desk customer service person asked me if I’d grab an airplane and fly one of our flight instructors up to the Skagit Valley, to pick up one of our aircraft which had been having a one hundred hour maintenance overhaul. So, ten minutes later I was ready to go, but the weather just crapped out, just as the briefer had said it would on the phone moments before. But, half an hour after that, again, just as the briefer had predicted, the line of thunderstorms had passed through, and I was airborne heading northbound out of Boeing Field.

It’s nice to fly with an instructor when you’re not actually paying for instruction, as he feels free to comment on your flying, but you don’t have to listen…..you’re wise however if you do. So, Keith, who’s done some significant development work for NASA, gave me an intensive lesson on leaning the engine mixture, for proper fuel consumption.

Half an hour later, I dropped him off at Bayview Skagit, which is Mount Vernon Washington, and had a nice chat with the maintenance manager at the business there. He’s trying to encourage my company to expand to his facility, so it was one of those meetings where he was putting on his best face and I was doing my best to be non-committal. But what struck me was how nice it was to know somebody at that airport, and how fortunate I am that that’s the case.

Had a nice flight back home, twiddling knobs on the panel practicing my IFR procedures, in the middle of which I find myself…..that is, I’m in the middle of my instrument rating, and I take every opportunity to fly as if I were inside the clouds. So, 1.3 hours on the company nickel, and I’m grateful for it.

Today, we flew three airplanes up to Anacortes Washington, which is the gateway to the San Juan Islands. They were having an airport fly-in, and one of the organizers had invited us to bring some planes up to display them. We anticipated a few dozen planes at most, and a barbeque, and maybe a smallish crowd….instead, it was about fifty or sixty planes of all descriptions, a few hundred people wandering around, and a beautiful sunshiney day.

You couldn’t have asked for more fun if you’re a pilot. There were taildraggers, weird birds from Eastern Bloc countries, amphibians, military helicopters, Cessnas, our three Diamonds, including the TwinStar which was the star of the show, and lots of other eye candy.

The organizer is the owner of the airplane I flew a few months ago which wound up on the cover of a flight training magazine, and he had been unaware of that, so it was fun to show him his airplane on a national magazine. There were women with diamonds the size of Manhattan Island wandering around. Anacortes has become a refuge for people from California, Oregon, and Washington, who love it for the access to the San Juans, and the fact that the sun shines significantly more often there than in Seattle or Bellingham to the north.

The burgers were free, the pilots were bullshitting each other, and the wives looked lovely, including those who were themselves accomplished pilots. And the kids were having a blast, playing airplanes and dogfighting.

I ran into an acquaintance late in the afternoon, who had dropped in looking for members of his Civil Air Patrol squadron, to pick him up at Arlington Airport, to the southeast, and give him a ride home to Seattle. I volunteered to do that, as his squadron had already packed up and left an hour earlier. So, I flew over to Arlington and there too ran into somebody I know who’s the main organizer of the Northwest EAA Fly-in and Airshow in July. We had a lovely chat, standing around her hangar, watching the various gliders being towed into the sky, to land on the grass a few minutes later.

Then it was a short hop home, arriving at Boeing just in time to hang out with the staff at the flight school, and give my new friend a ride on my motorcycle back to where he’d parked his car, at the northeast parking area. When we got there, my friend Ken was working on his Glastar, so we had a chat. Finally I tried to leave, but going out the airport gate there were two attractive young women walking towards a Piper Cub. One was my friend Mark’s wife Chris, who’s taking her private pilot checkride next week, and the other was Alison, who flies float planes for Kenmore Air out of Seattle. So we chatted for a while and finally I made my way off the airport.

Aviation has brought me so many new friends and such joy. I’m astonished at what a community it is, and how I’m beginning to be a part of that community.