Today we checked out of the cottage, drove to the airport, loaded the plane, returned the rental car, got a ride back to the FBO...and then the chaos began. Well, not chaos, but a little more challenging flight planning than I had hoped.
Before leaving the Boston area about five days prior, I had rechecked fuel prices and gotten U.S. Customs contact info at various spots. Pease (Portsmouth) was my top choice for an airport of entry. It was basically either that or Bangor, and Pease had much cheaper fuel. Here's the catch, though. When I tried to call customs at Pease, I couldn't get through. It's apparently not exactly the round-the-clock operation that Bangor is. I wasn't able to reach a customs officer at Pease. So ok...let's try Bangor. I was able to reach customs at Bangor no problem. I figured, screw the extra cost of fuel. Go where you know it's gonna work. So Bangor became the landing spot of choice. This was a decision I made last night when making the initial phone calls to customs.
Well, now, the next morning, the weather sucked in Maine. In fact, most of Maine was socked in with low stratus and fog. The terminal forecast was calling for Maine not to improve, but rather for rain showers to move into the area. Low pressure moving in. The Portsmouth area was also IFR at this point, but it (and Massachusetts) were forecast to clear up and be VFR by late morning.
So again it came down to having to leave now or risk rain storms building into the area. And regardless, it looked like getting into Bangor VFR was not gonna happen today. Ok, well, let me try to get through to customs at Portsmouth. This time, I got through, and I made arrangements for our arrival. Except...and I didn't realize this until later...I had miscalculated the UTC offset. Having spoken to a briefer from Halifax, I was all screwed up about time. So I accidentally gave the customs officer an arrival time that was one hour prior to our actual arrival time. Oh...did I mention that I didn't realize this until we were airborne? Can't exactly hop back on the phone to Portsmouth. Anyway...
Finally I had reached flight service again, filed our flight plan, got fuel, and we were ready to get out of there. Departing was no problem (it was VFR at PEI), and the weather was pretty decent until we got down near Fredericton. Up at 8500', we were cruising above what developed into a broken to overcast layer below as we flew southwest. So anyway, it was about then that I started looking at the ETA time on the GPS and doing some mental gymnastics to try to rationalize the arrival time I gave the customs officer...um, no can do. I was off by one hour. Great. By that point we were just about over the US border, and the first US controller I spoke to was Boston Center (if I recall correctly). I told the controller that I "needed to amend my arrival time at PSM." (Ahem.) He actually was cool about it and said he'd pass the word on. I had my doubts...and in the back of my mind were visions of getting fined by U.S. Customs for violating their regulations about on time arrivals and stuff like that. Oh, well.
After each controller handoff I would ask the next controller to pass on our amended arrival time to customs...and everybody seemed to be in the loop already. I was stressed over nothing, basically, because when we arrived at Pease, first of all the weather was fine -- hazy, but VFR -- and second of all, the customs officer said we were right on time. He came out to the plane and gave it a once over. He had several basic questions about where we had gone in Canada, what the purpose of the flight was, were we bringing anything back in, yadda yadda. The baggage area behind the seats was pretty filled up with bags. I had hoped we wouldn't have to take all that crap out and have to sort through it all. Fortunately, the officer just kind of poked around a bit. Surprisingly, the deepest he got into it was when I mentioned I had a bag of tools. He wanted to know where that bag was. I said...it's that tan bag at the bottom of the pile (and lifted up enough stuff that he could see it was there). We went inside, bringing all the documents with us, and in the end he didn't even look at our passports or paperwork at all. We just filled out and signed a form and that was that.
Did I mention my passport was expired? I probably forgot to mention that in classic "Dan" fashion, I realized TWO DAYS BEFORE WE LEFT HOME that my passport had expired in March. Yikes! I looked into express renewal service, but it was something like 16 days turnaround time at a minimum. I forget exactly what it was, but there was no way in hell it was gonna get to me before we got to Canada. Ok, no problem...all I need is a birth certificate to get in and out of Canada, right? Right. Ok, but where the hell is my birth certificate? Jeez, it must have gotten shuffled around in the move. Great.
Fortunately, since we were travelling to the Boston aree, I would be able to drive up to Haverhill, MA, which is the city in which I was born, and go to City Hall there...and snag a new birth certificate. Ok, there's an out. We're off the hook. It'll just ruin at least half of one of my days in Boston that I wanted to spend with friends...but you gotta do what you gotta do. We're not skipping PEI, that's for sure.
Long story short (and made less climactic), I searched high and low and found the friggin' original birth certificate...right where I left it no less.
Regardless, I brought my expired passport with me just in case it was gonna be problematic not having a photo id other than a driver's license. What's funny is that the Canadian customs officer looked at the passport, not the birth cert. I pointed out that it was expired and that I had my birth cert with me...and he said it didn't matter, expired was fine. Um, ok!
Well, I figured getting back into the "seriously secure" U.S. of A. wouldn't be quite as lax, but the officer at Portsmouth didn't even look at our "creds," believe it or not. Sign the form, done deal. Wow, ok. Much ado about NOTHING -- as usual.
Portsmouth, NH to Norwood, MA -- 30 minutes, about 5 gallons
We topped off and took off out of Pease, and the weather was getting even better. The haze had mostly burned off and it was a beautiful day. We made the short hop down to Norwood. That's where I took my first flying lessons ever, in my father's old 1977 Piper Warrior in 1988 (I was 14), and that's where I eventually finished my Private Pilot training in early 1995...and where I based my own 1974 Piper Warrior, the first plane I owned. So as you can guess Norwood has some personal significance to me. It was great to fly back there in the RV.
Not much has changed at Norwood since 1996, when I packed all of my crap into my Honda Accord and drove across the country to start a new chapter in my life. It's exactly how I remembered it. Ignorant jet and turboprop pilots pull into Wiggins (now Eastern Air Center) and blast the crap out of the flight line with no consideration of what's behind 'em. Maybe it's just the way the ramp is oriented. Naw, it's the stupid ass corporate pilots who have no regard for aircraft owners like us who don't want their plane sandblasted. Just point the other way, dumbass. Don't want your high-profile passenger to have to walk around the plane to get to the door? Ok, I understand that, but have a little awareness when you run those friggin' twin turboprop engines up.
ADS Flight Center, the flight school where I got my license and instrument rating, is still there, and remarkably the same planes I rented when training are still there. It's wild. I just kept pointing around and saying to Jen, "I flew that plane. I flew that plane. I flew that plane." We were thousands of miles from home but it felt pretty familiar to me.