Jen had said that her favorite place in New England was Edgartown, on Martha's Vineyard...so that's where we were heading for the day.
Norwood, MA to Edgartown, MA to Provincetown, MA to Norwood, MA
Going to Martha's Vineyard? Yeah...but who would land at MVY proper when you've got a great grass field like Katama just sitting right there in Edgartown? This would be my seventh landing on the grass at Katama, so I had no qualms whatsoever about landing the RV on this grass strip...although it would be my first experience on grass in 14D. I have been tempted to land on the grass at Corona like all the Stearmans do, but after watching a Kitfox land on that grass one day and seeing its tailwheel bouncing like crazy, I made a hard and fast decision NOT to do that. Too many ruts, too rough for me. I don't want to beat the crap out of the plane just for the sake of having landed on grass. But Katama was different, at least as I remembered it. There are three runways that form a triangle, so you can pretty much always land into the wind...and the runway surfaces were more "packed" than grass per se. Nice and smooth, relatively.
I entered the pattern overhead and made left traffic for runway 21. I made a terrific wheel landing and touched down very softly. The landing and rollout were fine, but as we taxied north on the grass "parallel" taxiway, I swear this RV took more of a beating than it ever has and ever will again. It sure didn't look bad, but with the flexible gear on the RV the thing was rockin' and rollin' and humpin' and bumpin' the whole way, regardless of speed. With clenched teeth (not exactly an RV grin) I taxied to the grass transient tiedown area and shut down. At that point the plane was canted to the left, and I swear to cheese and rice I was expecting to see a bent gear leg. Really -- the landing was fine, it's that friggin grass taxi area that just threw me for a loop. I had only landed there in my old Warrior, which had the nitrogen struts. I guess I really took for granted how well those work!
So I hopped out of the plane in a hurry, thankfully remembering to get the headset off my head, and I ran around front to look at my bent gear. Look at it here...just sitting there leaning to the left. Yikes!
Well, it was just sitting in a rut. No bent gear. But I'll tell you, Jen had to yell at me to get me to stop looking at it. I kept walking further out in front of the plane, crouching down, and staring at the assymmetry of its present position. It's sitting in a rut...it's sitting in a rut...it's sitting in a rut. I had to convince myself. I'm sure I was just being overprotective after having felt my baby get bumped around like that, but do you blame me? The wheel pants took a beating in the grass as well. They were chipped up a bit and there was a 7" long gouge on the inside of the left wheel pant. Glad I don't have paint!!! And I also noticed that the trailing edges of the upper gear intersection fairings had cracked where they meet the leg fairings. This sucker took a beating, I'll tell you. That's probably the last time I land this thing on grass unless I know by reference from other RV pilots that a particular field is in good shape.
Well, we were there. It was beautiful, just how I remembered it. They were barbecuing on the deck, and the Waco was coming and going and giving rides. I got a ride in that red Waco one summer years ago. I split the exhorbitant price for a 20-minute sightseeing flight with another guy, and we both squeezed into the front seat. The pilot took us all around the east end of the island, did a couple of wing-overs, etc. Open cockpit over gorgeous island scenery. How can you beat that? Oh yeah, with an RV you built. Happy anniversary Jen, we're in Edgartown.
We hung out in Edgartown for a while, got lunch, wandered around, and then caught the bus back to the airport. We took off and tooled around over the Cape for a while. Here's some really pretty scenery on the bay side somewhere northeast of Hyannis.
I dig this stuff.
I love how off the California coast, if you get the noon sun just right, and if the water clarity is there, you can see the underwater canyons and "mountain ranges." It's breathtaking. Here on the Cape you don't get the dramatic dropoffs, but you get the other end of the spectrum, the shallow, gradual thing. It makes for some pretty scenery from the air.
Sick of it yet? I wasn't.
We landed at Provincetown...
...where we left the plane in transient parking. Of course the plane sat perfectly level again. I'm not a religious person by any stretch, but thank frickin' god the gear wasn't bent. Here on the ramp there was nothing like our little unpainted speedster. I'm kind of used to flying around in southern California where you can't throw a dead cat without hitting an RV.
We walked across the street and the dunes to the beach. There was some interesting stuff there I had never seen before. Here's a thing that shows how they used to perform rescues when ships would run ashore. Crazy. Hanging there, probably undulating like 10 or 20 feet up and down over crashing surf as they reeled you in, watching your ship get slammed...must have been nuts!
If you're not familiar with where Provincetown is, well, here it is.
Here's a much more interesting map, which shows shipwrecks off the Cape. More than just a few. One of the six or so T-shirts I wear constantly (Jen hates my wardrobe, oh well) has a map like this showing Martha's Vineyard shipwrecks. I've never dove any of those or these (yet). Who knows if anything remains of all but the big wrecks. Ever read the book "The Last Dive"? It's crazy. Pure stupidity. Different topic for a different web site...I digress...
After getting fully sunburned, we walked back to the airport and stopped in at the "terminal" for some cold drinks. That building was air conditioned, and we kind of found ourselves sitting in the terminal in the little lounge area where the soda machines and coffee machines were...we noticed there were some puzzles there, and the next thing we knew we were doing a puzzle and chilling out in the terminal. Weird. Not how I would have pictured our anniversary, but that's what we did...we did a puzzle in the Provincetown air terminal lounge.
At some point we got tired of pretending we were one of those poor souls who had to depend on others to fly them around...so we got the heck out of there in style.