Raining Cats and Dogs and…Rain

All of our crazy and fantastic weather usually happens when I am far away from home in an airplane. I even get pictures from Hubby of snow on his car windshield or of terrible thunderstorms.

If I hadn’t seen photo proof of these things, I would question whether they really happen. I’ve rarely been able to witness crazy weather in our parts myself!

But a few weeks ago…all of my wildest, stormy dreams came true!

For some reason, we were blessed with a thunderstorm in March. Which is just the craziest thing ever. We weren’t nearly warm enough for that battling hot air rising to mix with cold to create such a storm. This was just a freak event!

And, oh boy, was it awesome! We had good, solid rain for about two hours. In the desert, where water can’t hide, we had a river running outside in no time at all!

Can you see all of that water pouring off the roof? Luckily, this happened just after Hubby patched part of our roof to fix a sneaky leak. His timing couldn’t have been better! This storm would have caused quite a bit of damage otherwise!

There were pools and puddles of water all over the backyard, which is still very much a work-in-progress. Someday, this will be a lush oasis for us.

And this rain was helping a little too much in the wrong direction for that…we don’t want weeds!

At least we can gaze at this picture and see where we still need to do some leveling before the sod goes in, huh?

The tiller has since gone back to its home with Hubby’s dad. But it sure helped us while we had it!

Hubby was using this barrel to level things for a while. It has since been relocated to a storage spot near the shed. After the mud cleared out from this storm, that is! Look at all that wet stuff!

Since the water barrel was in the way of Hubby installing sprinklers a few months ago, it wasn’t in place when this downpour hit! Which only meant that we had a whole lotta water hitting our backyard today!

We might as well get some fish to put in this pond back here! It was a foot deep in this part of the yard! Holy smokes!

A not-as-mean storm a week before had made these little lovely weeds pop up. Before I could manually get rid of them, this monster storm hit and made a whole pool of water near our sitting area. Can you see all of that standing water?!

But out front, the storm was taking an even greater toll. Can you see how our entire planter box here is filled with water?!

Other than some of our mulch floating away to a better life, this actually wasn’t a bad thing. These little guys need water. Even in March!

After just a few minutes of this, there was certainly a river flowing down our street! The desert isn’t very good at handling lots of water in a very short amount of time.

And you can see all of that water coming off the roof, too.

I actually love weather like this. Mostly because I know that it is very short-lived, but also because this is perfect pajama-and-book-reading-and-hot-chocolate weather. And I happen to love pajamas and reading and hot chocolate.

Bonus.

Even our little solar-powered house numbers light was drowned enough to lose its focus.

Does anyone have any inner tubes? This river shouldn’t go unappreciated for long.

Rainbows and Unicorns

OK, we didn’t actually see any unicorns on our flight home today. But you wouldn’t believe all of the rainbows! We should have cold fronts move through more often! I think my total count of rainbows from our flight to Van Nuys and back home empty was five.

Five. Five rainbows. Ah ah ah (in a Sesame Street’s Count von Count voice, please).

The Pentastar Aviation lobby is nice. I’ve spent lots of time here waiting for passengers to arrive since this past February when I started my new job.

Can you believe that it’s already been that long?

Pentastar is a small FBO chain that originated in Detroit in the early 1900s. That explains why the lobby has a bunch of really cool and ancient photography on the walls from Ford Motor Company and some early airplanes associated with it.

I want this picture. I need to decorate with more airplanes in my house, that’s for dang sure.

It’s such a beautiful cockpit.

And these are my absolute favorite shoes right now. Have you ever heard of Bobs by Skechers? They give a pair of shoes to a kid in a third-world country every time that I buy a pair of shoes. That’s a wonderful idea and all, but I am in love with the shoes because they are awesome, too.

My best friend, Ann, calls these my mermaid shoes. She was with me when we went shoe shopping a few months ago. Because of their white soles, I was afraid to wear them for a month or so. As you can see, I certainly got over that fear of potential dirt damage!

I get so many compliments on them, and they are so comfortable! I love them.

This picture showcases the pages that we have up on the Multi-Function Display, or MFD, when we start the engines on Gladys. I am usually in back with the passengers, handing out drinks and giving passenger briefings as necessary, when engine start takes place.

Because we were empty on our way home today, I closed the door, checked for seven green tabs to ensure that it was properly locked, and then climbed up front. Watching the entire starting process is always a treat!

We landed on Runway 34L just a few hours earlier and had a long roll-out to end at the Pentastar ramp. Luckily for us, a short taxi resulted from them switching to Runway 16R just before we took off from Van Nuys.

This beautiful Gulfstream V was headed out just in front of us.

Van Nuys is a great airport to base news and hospital helicopters because they can easily escape the LAX airspace from this satellite airport.

Here is a little Phenom 100 on final approach, and a small prop airplane on its final approach for the parallel runway just a few hundred feet away. This airport is one popular place.

This Falcon was also ready to leave. The Gulfstream left first, then we were next in line, then the Falcon behind us.

It had only been a few hours since we flew through all of that yucky weather to get here this morning. It was still lingering around California for our takeoff and had even moved into Arizona, too. It was a weather-filled ride home today.

Goodbye, Van Nuys!

I love going through clouds in a jet. Sometimes, it’s hard to grasp how fast we are zooming along until we burst through a cloud. I love that feeling! And the beautiful blue skies above remind me that I left my sunglasses in my flight bag waaaaaaaaaay back in the cabin.

I wasn’t even thinking of sunglasses when we were under such murky skies just a few moments ago!

These clouds were left behind from the cold frontal pass. Little did I know that I was flying home to freeze all weekend.

So we stayed up high today instead of descending into Phoenix on the arrival. We needed to fly over the Phoenix VOR (Very-High Frequency Omni-Directional Range) radio beacon to record our RVSM (Reduced Vertical Separation Minimums) accuracy above 29,000 feet.

We simply flew over the checkpoint with all of our equipment transmitting down to the station. In a few weeks, we can check their website to see how well we did. It was the perfect time to perform this flight test since we were empty in back.

Look at the pretty virga again!

Let’s get our rainbow counting skills prepared for the rest of our flight back into Phoenix airspace now. Can you see our first one from our return trip? I love the gorgeous sun rays shining down near the rainbow.

That’s probably where the Lost Dutchman hid his gold, in case you’re wondering where to dig.

After our check, we were cleared to Willie VOR, then to Phoenix VOR, then to Scottsdale. I sweet-talked a shortcut to the north instead to set us up for our landing on Runway 21. Here you can see the Superstition Mountains underneath some gorgeous storm clouds.

I just love how the lighting plays such beautiful tricks when storm clouds move through. We are just ahead of the cold front moving into town now. The worst will be here later tonight, but we will be safely down by then.

This is one of my favorite shots of the day. It just showcases some of our typical Arizona desert so well. And, again, the lighting is just incredible!

Holy smokes. Not just one in this picture, but two rainbows?! What is going on today?!

I’m not complaining, mind you. I love all of these rainbows. It’s been years since I’ve seen one, and today I saw five! Is it March? Should I be pinched?!

Oh my goodness. This is so beautiful that it almost looks fake! Definitely my favorite shot of the day! Look how defined the rainbow colors are.

Hello, Home. It’s good to see you. I’ve haven’t been this close to you since…this morning! I guess we’re done with all of our rainbows for the day.

Or so I thought! Look! Another pretty rainbow by Tower. Should someone sing a song or something to channel all of these rainbow sightings?

We pulled onto our ramp and starting prepping Gladys for just a few nights in the hangar. We have another flight in just a few days with five people in back. Guess where we are going?

If you said Van Nuys again…then you’re right! I have all of the frequencies memorized because we’ve been there so much lately! How fun!

This guy pulled in right behind us. Ironically enough, the pilot in here used to fly with El Capitan in my old job in the Beechjet! He’s been flying Pilatus PC-12 airplanes ever since he left that company six years ago.

Good night, Gladys! Thanks for all of the rainbows today! See you bright and early in a few days!

Salsa and Beer is the Name of a Restaurant?

I’ve been to Los Angeles a lot this month for work. My passengers have had lots of productive meetings to attend, which meant that Gladys has visited Van Nuys Airport quite a few times over the past few weeks.

I love it.

Because they were washing the hangar floors, lots of beautiful airplanes were on the ramp today. It almost looked like Gladys was invited to a play date, huh?

Here they are on the swing set before they started playing kissing tag…one guess who’s idea kissing tag was?

This pretty CJ4 was actually the other airplane considered by my company before they decided to purchase the Embraer Phenom 300. Even though they seat the same number of people in back, Gladys looks like a giant next to this Citation. She is definitely a few grades ahead in school, if you know what I mean.

I’m so glad that we got Gladys. Something tells me that she is glad of that decision, too.

This big beauty, the Sovereign, can actually make it all the way to Hawaii. I wouldn’t mind a rough work trip to Hawaii here and there. That could be fun. Gladys is just shy of having enough fuel to make that long trip.

We don’t talk about it much. I prefer to focus on her many quality characteristic traits instead.

But we all have to agree that I fly the best-looking airplane of them all! Isn’t this thing gorgeous?!

Nope, not biased at all. Why do you ask?

I love that the passengers can see the flight progress as we go. As soon as a flight plan is entered into the Flight Management System (FMS) up in the cockpit, a bunch of pertinent information shows up on two screens in the back.

As we fly along, the moving maps update location, speed, altitude, and all sorts of information I’m sure that they don’t even care about! I just think it’s cool. We had something much older similar in the Beechjet, but it rarely worked properly.

I am all about passenger comfort, so it makes me very happy when these blankets, which I lovingly hand-selected from my favorite Homegoods store, are used often in the cabin. Even though Gladys has an awesome temperature control system, I just love snuggling up in a warm, fuzzy blanket. Not that I do that with these, but my passengers do.

And that makes me happy.

Away we go! We are actually just dropping off two passengers today, then flying back home. We have an avionics test to run on our way back. But we’ll talk about that in tomorrow’s post.

That’s what we call a “teaser,” by the way. It makes you want to read tomorrow morning, too. Right?

This was the nicest weather that we experienced today. For the rest of the flight, we were mostly in storm clouds of an awful cold front moving through. California was still feeling the effects the frontal pass, and we literally flew right into it today.

This is Prescott, Arizona from the air. Until I moved to this great state, I didn’t know how to properly pronounce this town’s name. Silly me for thinking that it was said the way that it was spelled!

Just to prevent you any future embarrassment, and so you can impress your friends at parties in the near future, I will teach you how the locals say it!

Say the word, “Triscuit,” like the cracker. And then put the “P” in front of it. It almost sounds like “Press-kit.” But you can get lazy when saying the last half of the word. It rarely comes out fully when the locals say it.

Now you know. You’re welcome.

So now the fun really begins. Actually, I kind of liked the weather on today’s flight. I’ve made this trip so many times lately that it was neat to have such a different perspective for our one-hour trip over to Los Angeles today!

Can you see this ragged layer of clouds? That is called “virga” and is simply rain that doesn’t reach the surface of the earth. It usually means bumps when flying through it, but it is always so pretty to admire…from afar.

Since it was on the arrival today getting into Van Nuys, of course we flew right through it. Hold on, everyone!

Some normally-sunny-and-bright towns that we fly over were covered in ominous leftover clouds from the cold front today. The bad news? That same cold front moved in for our entire weekend in Phoenix.

Do you have any idea how cold sixty degrees is for a high?! (Yes, I realize that I used to live in North Dakota. What’s your point?)

We went from ninety-two degrees to sixty degrees in one day. It was terrible. Hot chocolate had to be invited to that party.

Anyway, I really loved the clouds on our flight today. It made for lots of interesting things to admire, such as this gorgeous rainbow! What until you see how many rainbows we see in tomorrow’s post…

Another teaser? Wowsers!

Soon we were out of the clouds and looking for Van Nuys Airport. For a place that is usually clear, this was a surprisingly nice change. I really love overcast skies, in case you didn’t know that by now.

This place is usually pretty hazy, so we often have a hard time finding the airport. Today was no different, but the reason was because of low clouds instead of haze. As we flew along for our hour to get here, the weather kept improving in Van Nuys. We happily watched the ceiling get higher and higher.

Yes, we can check the weather from Gladys! Isn’t that so cool?!

Under cloudy skies, we touched down on Runway 16R and taxied to our usual FBO, Pentastar Aviation. We love them. And, for how much we’ve been there lately buying fuel, I think that the feeling is mutual.

Usually, it can be annoying when we are told that another airplane is going to butt in line ahead of us during the taxi ride. But, in this beautiful case of following a Bombardier Global Express for a mile, I didn’t mind at all.

Not one bit.

I’m just trying to imagine what it feels like to fly an airplane so big that the wings don’t even fit on the taxiway!

I always wonder where these big guys are headed when I see them pull up to the beginning of the runway. My imagination goes crazy. Is it Singapore? Venice? Moscow? With such a giant airplane, they could go anywhere!

Realistically, they probably just flew a short hop to somewhere exotic on the other side of the mountain! But we can pretend, right?

We were among more play date friends here at Pentastar. Did I not get the memo for today or what? This pretty Learjet was staged for departure when we arrived. I like the paint scheme, though I would paint an airplane with blue stripes if I had the choice.

Surprised? I didn’t think so.

Ha! Look at that! Another CJ4, just like we saw this morning on the ramp at home! I’m still glad that we have Gladys and not one of these. What would I even name something like this?!

Like they always do, Pentastar treated us royally and immediately began fueling Gladys for our flight home. She looks pretty under cloudy skies and blue skies both! Amazing.

After fueling but before our trip home in an empty airplane, we decided to grab some lunch. We love asking the Customer Service Reps where to eat because they know all of the good places. She simply said, “Why don’t you try salsa and beer.”

El Capitan and I looked at each other…maybe she didn’t understand that we were flying home right after lunch? The FAA is thankfully pretty strict on that whole eight-hours-bottle-to-throttle rule. And neither of us drinks alcohol, either, so that makes it easy.

She laughed at us when we explained our predicament. Then she explained that it was only the name of an awesome Mexican restaurant that she strongly suggested we try. Though they do have salsa and beer. I tried one of them.

We humored her and gave it a whirl. And it was one of the best meals I’ve ever enjoyed in California. I’ve been back since this shredded beef burrito, even!

It was a great trip to Van Nuys today, with lots of fresh and interesting weather to enjoy. Tomorrow, we will get to fly home in a little rocket with incredible sights. Don’t miss it!