A day

0300 wakeup. I never handle those well.

Despite my best efforts, crawling into bed at 9:30 p.m. yielded but a few hours of restless sleep.

Part of the difficulty comes from the natural cycle of things. Friday was a tough day. Four instrument approaches, nasty weather and some learning experiences I may write about as my conscience permits. I am still making sense of them myself.

I went to bed knowing today would be as tough, if not tougher.

Exhausted but wired is no recipe for a good night's sleep and I am finally, predictably deep asleep when the alarm blares. This is never good. I almost always wake up before my alarm and when I don't, it's going to be a tough day.

Shower, half a bowl of cereal and a pot of coffee brewed and poured into my thermos for the trip. The drive to the airport is a snap until I turn through the gates.

My truck will not stop, will not turn. We've been treated to freezing rain all night long and the entire airport is covered. Walking across the ramp without falling becomes a ballet.

This is bad.

I check the taxi-way, walking out nearly to one of the runways. My scheduled 5 a.m. departure is impossible. Simply getting to the runway is a hazard. I think about all the things that can go wrong on the takeoff roll and the decision is made: It's a no go until conditions improve.

Still, it's agonizing. I walk out to check the taxiway every 15 minutes. It is slowly, ever so slowly, starting to thaw.

Nearly three hours late one last check and I decide to give it a shot. The airport is alive now. The tower is open and the crews are finally getting out to inspect the runways and taxiways.

The weather has gotten worse. The winds are stronger, gusting to 18 knots now, and the ceilings are coming down. Oddly, I'm only worried about my time on the ground. Once airborne my craft is in it's element.

Ground operations are the challenge, and it is a significant one.

Engines alive and happy, clearance copied and I tiptoe out. The airplane still slides slightly on the taxiway but it is under control. The ground crews are out checking the runways and Glenn is running the tower like the pro he is. He gets myself and the ground crews in their pickup trucks talking directly.

Glenn is an old hand, he has seen this many times before. He has worked some of the busiest sectors in the country and works our tower now in retirement like a master. He is one of the very best.

Taxiway Charlie is slippery but not too bad. The turn onto Bravo shoots the morning off axis.

Bravo is still a sheet of ice. Throttles to idle, brakes locked and the airplane still moves.

A gust of wind and I start to slide cockeyed.

My grand plan has fallen to pieces and I have done something incredibly stupid.

I am impatient and tempted by the challenge. Stephen Coots aptly described it as “Whiskey to a drunk” in one of my favorite books, The Cannibal Queen

A better pilot wouldn't have taxied out at all and instead gone off to eat breakfast or just said to hell with the whole ordeal and gone home.

Presented with a chance to explore the ragged edge of the possible I can't help it and have talked myself into idiocy.

It is a personality flaw that needs repairing. I have been weak and it's time to own up.

I slide into the general vicinity of the run-up area and manage to get my tail in line with the wind. An uneasy stasis is reached.

My airplane is not moving. As long as I keep the brakes jammed, the throttles pulled fully back and the controls positioned just so we do not slide. Every now and again a gust of wind shifts my position slightly.

This is very, very bad.

Finally, some common sense intrudes on my sleep-deprived brain.

I call Glenn in the tower and tell him that no way, no how, am I moving from my current precarious position until conditions improve, the strip of taxiway in front of me is sanded or I run out of fuel, get cold and walk back to my truck in disgrace.

I do not want to give the wind access to the side of my airplane. I have no idea if I will be able to halt the resulting slide, but doubt that I will.

I have yet to drive an airplane off of a taxiway and am determined that today will not change that.

The standoff between airplane, wind, ice, snowbank and humility continues for 30 tense minutes.

Finally, the ground crews arrive and the truck driver gives me a big grin as he pulls in front and lets loose a massive spray of sand. His co-worker is treating the runway with ice melt.

I hold position for a few more minutes until the crews are clear of the runway. Finally, I gingerly release the brakes and give it a try.

The sand has done it's job. I can control my airplane again.

The takeoff is a non-event. The runway is in fine shape.

Two hours and 30 minutes later I am climbing out from Sault Ste. Marie after my first missed approach in years. It is not a pretty sight but it works out well.

I don't bother holding in hopes the weather will improve. There is an airport 5 minutes away and I had decided more than an hour prior that should I miss, as appeared likely, I'd head directly to Chippewa County with an ILS almost directly into the wind and close enough that it would be an easy trip for the courier waiting for my cargo.

The ILS is unremarkable and I am finally on the ground, 8 hours and 10 minutes after my alarm prodded me out of bed. I had expected to be home by now, instead I am only half-way.

The trip back is more of the same. The same strong temperature inversion that has made life so tricky for pilots in a five-state area for the past week is there. At the surface it is a chilly 26 degrees F. At altitude, only 5,000 feet above the ground, it is a relatively balmy 47 degrees F.

This is good in one regard: Icing hasn't been a problem at our modest cruise altitudes, but it has trapped a layer of cold, ice, low-ceilings and low visibilities below.

The result has been 11 instrument approaches for me in only three days of flying this past week. Most have been what would normally be classified as “low IFR,” although “low” is a relative term and perhaps only half have been close to the legal minimums.

I would rather it have stayed frigid. The cold is tough enough, but I'd rather deal with it and bask in a series of easy visual approaches than be warm but suffer through low ceilings and “maybe, maybe not” moments.

On the phone half-asleep and frozen on the Chippewa County airport ramp I relate the day's goings on to our director of operations.

He is a good man and looks out for his pilots. In turn, I try to give him no reason to cause him heartburn.

“Look on the bright side, you'll never be as sharp as you are right now” comes the voice through my cellphone.

He is right, of course. He has done this for years.

Looking back on the morning's string of poor decisions I decide the trick is staying sharp but not cutting myself.