$100 Hamburger

Happy Veteran’s Day! It is always a little random when this holiday falls in the middle of the week, but I’m certainly not complaining about my pair of 2-day work weeks. The weather was spectacular, so Jose and I took Becca up on her offer to be passengers on a quick flight down to the Brazoria County airport near Angleton for lunch at the Windsock Grill. (Jose hasn’t flown in six months because of our crazy schedule this year, so FAA regulations require that he do some touch-and-gos as a refresher before he’s allowed to carry passengers. He played navigator instead.) Jason and Debbie joined us for lunch but flew a different plane.

The beautiful weather meant that the airport was busy, and we had to wait for this plane to land before we could take off. We were on our way soon enough though.

We passed this fly-in community called Songbird on the way. See how all of the houses are lined up with the small runway in the middle, and each house has a hangar next door? Nothing like flying right to your doorstep! There are a couple of these communities around here. The closest one to us is called Polly Ranch, and it’s in Friendswood. Jose’s flight instructor lives there and Becca has been talking for years about buying a house there someday. I bet most people don’t even realize it’s there.

Since I sat in the backseat, I really couldn’t see anything out front. But there’s plenty to see out the side windows. I like looking down at the fields, since many of them have interesting patterns.

We also flew right past the go kart track where we had so much fun last month. In this picture you can see the much larger track they have for actual cars. The go kart track is the much smaller one with darker pavement.

The Brazoria County airport is less than 30 miles by air from the Pearland airport, so it only take about 20 minutes to get there. It’s the perfect destination for a “$100 hamburger,” as all the pilots call it (since you spend $100 renting the plane). Just don’t try to go on Sunday; the restaurant isn’t open on Sundays.

Becca flew us in and had a great landing. Actually, both her landings — going and coming — were pretty great. It’s fun to harass pilots if they bounce the plane on landing, but that did not happen today.

We sat outside on the patio of the Windsock Grill, and from the looks of this picture, Debbie drank about 10 gallons of coke. Ha! I got up early this morning to redeem myself from Sunday’s aborted long run and did 7.1 miles. Needless to say, I was HUNGRY. We all had the grill’s “famous” pie as well. Jose and I split a piece of the pumpkin spice cream pie and it was AWESOME. I guess I forgot to take a picture of it; it didn’t last long anyway.

Jason and Debbie took off, and I played around with my Lensbaby camera lens while Becca and Jose filled our plane with gas.

This is the airport beacon. All airports have them. If you know what you’re looking for, you can often spot them at night when you’re driving down highways and back roads in Texas; there are a least a couple that I always see in the distance when Jose and I drive to Corpus Christi. They spin around maybe 20 times a minute like a lighthouse and alternate flashing white and green. The color pattern changes based on what kind of airport it is. I’ve only ever seen white and green, which is your basic civilian land airport.

You have to run a grounding wire to the plane when you’re fueling it. I’m not exactly sure why. Static electricity?

Soon enough, we were pulling back on the runway to head back to Pearland.

We took off and started climbing before we’d even gotten back past the restaurant, since the runway is way longer than a small Cessna really needs to take off. You can see the picnic tables where we’d just eaten our lunch! This picture reminds me that we saw something very unfortunate happen right after we’d landed, parked, and were walking over to the restaurant for lunch. We all heard a very loud scraping noise and whipped our heads around to see a small plane recoil as its propeller hit the concrete on the ramp. The plane had stopped short for another plane passing in front of it. It wasn’t entirely clear whose fault it was, but either way, a propeller strike is BAD NEWS for an airplane. It bent the propeller and probably damaged the engine. After a prop strike, you can’t fly the plane — at all — until you get it checked out and repaired. And fixing a propeller + engine, as you can imagine, is not cheap. We all felt really awful for the poor guy. That’s his plane near the middle of the picture with the cover on, where it will probably remain for the near future. 🙁

As we left Angleton, we flew over the big statue of Stephen F. Austin right off Highway 288. Perhaps you’ve seen it. (It’s just like the Sam Houston statue off I-45 on the north side of Houston.) But did you know there is a Texas-shaped pond right behind it? I didn’t.

Like I said, it really was a beautiful day for flying. A little hazy, but not too bad.

I wonder if those cows are at all concerned about the noise-making machines that occasionally fly over their heads on approach to the runway in Pearland. Soon we were back on the ground and headed home.

I’d say we took full advantage of our day off, wouldn’t you?