Hour 57

My 56th hour of flight as a pilot ended with our noble heroes home safe and sound, but our trusty steed tied down on the ramp of the wrong airport.

These things happen and the FBOs that rent planes are accustomed to these things happening, but these things are still a pain in the butt.  When you rent a plane, you're only paying by hour for the hours that the engine is running.  If the plane is sitting at another airport somewhere, you're not paying... and neither can anyone else.

In this case, the plane we were renting is used as a trainer, which means that folks had booked it for Monday evening classes.  I'd really be helping out if I could get the plane back to the school before that
happened.

There were two problems.  The first was that it was still cloudy.  The second was that even if the weather cleared, I was in Santa Barbara, the plane was in Santa Ynez, and the plane needed to be in Goleta.

There was nothing to be done about the weather, so I went about solving the second problem first.  If I drove to Santa Ynez and flew to Santa Barbara, I'd fix the problem with the plane, but create two new
problems: my car would be at IZA and I would be in Goleta (where SBA airport is), not in Santa Barbara, where I live and work.

This is like the wolf-cabbage-goat problem (as XKCD notes, the solution there is to take the goat and cabbage with you and leave the wolf, because WTF did you have a wolf for anyway?).  In this case, the answer was my lovely wife, who would drop me off at IZA and pick me up at SBA(or IZA, if I couldn't get back).

I called the FBO I rented the plane from and explained my plan.  They were all for it, and said they'd call if it ever looked like there was a big enough gap in the cloud cover over SBA that I might be able to get the plane in.

A few hours later, the call came and the game was on.  I picked Melch up at work and we drove to IZA, looking at the sky the whole way there.  It didn't look too encouraging on the ocean side of the mountains, but Bill from Above All had assured me that things were more clear out in Goleta
than they were in Santa Barbara proper.

I checked the weather at the two airports, looked at the latest RADAR for the region, did my pre-flight, re-checked the weather, went to the bathroom, re-checked the weather, and then re-checked the weather.  It looked like there might be some big holes over El Capitan beach to the west, or Oxnard to the east.  Things were clear as could be on the inland side of the mountains, so I figured I could take off with no danger and look for a path down on the other side.  If I found a good one, I would take it.  If not, I would return to IZA.

Bill agreed.  I told Melch to drive halfway and I'd text her from wherever I ended up.  That would guarantee the shortest time for us to get back to work, even if it might mean that she went halfway from IZA to SBA, then back again.

The wind was pretty calm and coming right down runway 26, so I took off heading west but turned around shortly after takeoff to climb out toward the east.  I figured I'd get some altitude over the ridge line and see what I could see.  If it was the other side of the mountain (the other side of the mountain), then I'd be good to go.  If it was a sea of white, it was back to IZA again.

It looked a bit like a sea of white at first

As I crested the ridge, I initially told Santa Barbara approach that I was planning on looking for a gap between Ventura and Santa Barbara, to the east of the airport.  As I got closer to the ridge though, I found a straight shot between me and El Capitan beach (to the west of SBA).  I told the tower that I preferred that option and was given a clearance to enter over the 101 and land on my trusty home-turf runway: 15R.

A hole!

Visibility was definitely VFR but a bit hazy.  The wind was light and the approach was uneventful as I basically glided the plane in all the way from the ridge.  My 169th landing was reasonably smooth, if perhaps a little further down the runway than I'd like.

I taxied back to Above All, tied down the plane, paid my tab and met Melch in the lobby.  Christmas was saved, I got a fun flight in on my lunch hour, and it was time to head back to work.