So this is the long awaited entry about my trip to St. Croix. Okay, maybe not long…or awaited, but here it is anyhow. The guy who runs the company I work for (we’ll call him Doug, because he might read this, and he doesn’t know what I usually call him) has a really cool Cessna 340, and his family has a resort on St. Croix. That’s pretty neat, but then he asked if I would like to fly co-pilot to go down there for a week and hang out in the Virgin Islands, which was way cooler. I have tons of flying stories to tell, but since most of the people who are reading this wouldn’t know or care about the significance of losing the left mag on the left engine, I won’t go into all of that.
The flight is about nine hours each way, consisting of three legs. We flew from Atlanta to Stuart, Florida on the first leg and stayed with his friend Roy for a night. Roy has it made, from all outward appearances. He lives in a fly-in community in south Florida, has a 340 of his own and an N3N biplane, several sweet cars, a beautiful home, and two wolves. Yes, wolves. A male and a female. Very affectionate and beautiful animals, but I wouldn’t want to piss them off- especially the male. He could take your head off with one bite. He weighs about 150 pounds I would guess, and has teeth that don’t stop.
The next morning, we went to Stuart airport and tried to file a flight plan to St’ Croix. We were then told that we couldn’t go there without a waiver from the department of defense or something insane like that, due to a certain group of assholes’ actions last September eleventh. I figure this was the part where I got my butt chewed on, because it was my responsibility to find any restrictions to our trip ahead of time. I found a computer and desperately tried to find the regulation stating that we couldn’t do what we were going to do, but couldn’t find anything. Doug and Roy got on their respective phones and started calling every flight service center from Jacksonville to Puerto Rico, and at one point had the San Juan controller telling the Miami controller that he didn’t know what he was talking about. It was quite an experience. The Miami guy said “no, you cannot do this”, and the San Juan guy said “come on out”. The Miami guy had to clear us once we were on the runway, so we filed the plan with the San Juan guy and hoped for the best. Doug told the guy in Miami that “Just for the tape, if you scramble fighters to come intercept us, we’ll be very nice to them, since we have the whole family on board. Make sure they know that.” We finally got something that sounded like approval after an hour of arguing, and headed out to the runway. Much to our surprise, the Miami guy cleared us and we blasted off out of Stuart Airport. We were headed for Grand Turk, in the Turks and Caicos Islands, where we would get more fuel for the last leg (we thought). We flew over water for 3 hours uneventfully at 21000 feet, and when we got within about 100 miles of our destination, we called Roy (flying his plane alongside ours) on the radio and said something about getting fuel on Grand Turk and heading out from there. Someone who happened to be on the same frequency came on and said “uh, aircraft asking about avgas on Grand Turk, I was just there, and they don’t have any.” Super. Fortunately, we were only three miles off the coast of Provodenciales (another in the Turks and Caicos), and we asked them if they had what we needed. They said yes. Unfortunately, we were still at about 20000 feet at this point. As a point of reference for non-aviators, standard practice for a plane of the size and speed we were in is to begin descending about 90 miles out and be about 1000 feet up when you are 2 or 3 miles out. We were a mere 19000 feet too high, and went about the task of figuring out how to land without a) ripping the wings off the plane, b) hitting another plane, or c) scaring the hell out of Doug’s wife and two young kids who were in the rear of the plane. We decided to throw c) to the wind and concentrate on a) and b). We called the tower and told them what we wanted to do, and he said “okay, descend and let me know when you are on the downwind leg” (parallel to the runway). Looking down, we saw a couple of other planes at various altitudes flying around in the pattern, one of which was an American 737. We were particularly interested in not getting in his way, and started what could be called a descent, but was really more of a controlled dive to the runway. We circled and went down at something like 2500 feet per minute, telling other aircraft in the area where we were every thousand feet. Doug let me fly this approach and landing, and when we got out of the plane, I was a little sweatier than I had been a few minutes before, but not dead.
Let’s get some gas and get outta here, right? Wrong. First we had to go through customs. There used to be only one group of people I disliked as a whole in a completely general way, but now there are two: rednecks and customs employees. At every stop throughout the trip, the customs dipshits did their best to rip us off, hold us up, and generally suck the fun out of the journey. We paid the landing fee, filled out the forms in triplicate, paid other fees that were probably completely invented on the spot, and asked where we get the avgas. “Oh, we don’t have any here.”
Keep in mind this isn’t as simple as flying to another airport and grabbing some gas. This is the only airport on the island, and the nearest island that might have some was a total gamble based on how much fuel we had to get there. We’d make it if the winds were just right, but if they weren’t, we’d either coast in on fumes, or be swimming the last few hundred yards. They said they’d have some the next day, and after Roy and Doug (two guys who definitely don’t like being told something isn’t possible) made phone calls and got explanations, we decided to get a hotel for the night. All in all, there are much worse places to be stranded waiting for fuel. We went swimming and drank a little beer that evening. On the way back from the pool, the kids were bundled up in their towels, walking back to the room. I was about three steps ahead of the four year old, Megan, had turned around to see if she needed a hand, and saw her fall face first into the stair in front of her. Having her arms all tied up inside the towel put the responsibility of stopping her forward momentum solely on her two front teeth. They did a fine job, but left her head in the process. I heard her hit the stair with a crunching smacking sound that makes your butt cheeks clench involuntarily, and heard that noise a kid makes when they are really hurt, and not just in need of attention. Man, what a shitty feeling. I thought she had broken her head, her nose came off, she was on fire, and we only had seconds to save her. As soon as she came up, you could see blood coming from her face, and I thought I was going to be the next to fall. Her mom picked her up, and I saw two little teeth lying on the stair. Doug looked pretty dismayed as he stooped to pick them up, and we all hurried off with crying child to the bar to get some ice. The older of the kids, Dillon, had really no idea what was going on, so Doug stopped him and handed him the teeth and explained to him that those were his sister’s teeth. Dillon was impressed. Impressed enough to get Megan’s attention and hold out the teeth and proclaim “Megan, these are your teeth!” That didn’t help. She recovered soon after she learned that they would grow back, and that Doug and I were going to get her some ice cream and yogurt and stuff.
The next morning at about nine, Roy said that they had the gas, so we all piled in a van and went back to the airport, where they charged us an additional $40 each for spending the night, took about two hours to get the gas on the plane, and then tried to charge us service fees, wouldn’t return our landing fee, made us wait some more, and pretty much took up most of Monday. We finally took off for St. Croix, hoping that all of the excitement was behind us, and we were right. Sort of.
When we got to St. Croix, we flew low over the resort to let Doug’s family know we were there. And to show off a little. We were really low and fast, and I could see people’s faces by the pool, splashing coffee on their shirts and shaking their fists saying “DAMMIT, MAVERICK!!” okay, they didn’t do that…
The hotel was beautiful. Every bit as relaxing as you could imagine. My phone didn’t pick up a signal, and I didn’t try to find a computer. I was unreachable for the first time in years, and it was okay with me. I did some sleeping, laying on the beach, snorkeling, sailing, and played some very energetic tag with the kids in the pool. Doug’s kids have cousins who came to play with them. I couldn’t tell who was “it” most of the time, as they were usually all piled on my back trying to kill me. The third day, amidst a grueling game of “Drown Dusty”, I saw a familiar face swimming in the deeper end of the pool. I started talking to him, and it was…DANNY FREAKIN’GLOVER, my friends! Yeah, me and Danny chatted about his exercise regime, and why he was staying at the Buccaneer that week. Pretty cool. I will post that picture. LETHAL WEAPON, BABY!
That was pretty cool, for a day at the beach. He wasn’t up for a game of tag, though.
The very coolest part was that night at this bar in Christiansted, I met two of the waitresses and a bartender from the hotel for drinks, and up drives Mr. Glover in his rolls looking for some bar food. He comes in, I gave him the “chin raise”, and he comes over and slaps me on the back and says “hey man, how you doin’?” Talk about impressing a bunch of women. That certainly worked. They asked why I was there, and when they found out that I was a guest of the family that apparently owns the eastern half of the island, including the resort where they all worked, I had a whole new image. Later that night I realized that any resident of St. Croix is used to drinking far more alcohol in a given period of time than I can. You wouldn’t believe it if you saw it. I was in college for four years, and compared to this, college was a Mormon Church picnic.
I enjoyed the rest of my week there, and on the way back, everyone had fuel for the plane when they said they would. We did the trip back in one day, and it took 12 hours from start to finish. When we got into Florida, customs once again reared its ugly head in the form of an officer who apparently spent a lot of time in his locker in high school and was now thoroughly enjoying his newfound authority. He told Doug that he was late getting in, and that was tantamount to not having filed a flight plan at all. This carries a penalty of $5000 and possible impounding of the airplane.
This whole exchange between Doug (a guy who is usually on the delivery end of the ass-chewing) and officer Fife (a guy who was all too condescending in his explanation) was very interesting for me to watch. I think it was the first time I had ever seen the guy in a bad bargaining position, and couldn’t wait to see what he did. Were I in his place at that time, I would have explained to officer Fife what a total loser I was and how I’ll never do it again, thanked him for enlightening me on the right way to do things, and headed on my way, where I would mutter to myself about what a dick that guy was…
Doug tried to explain to deputy dumbass that on a six hour trip in a propeller driven aircraft, dealing with customs on the islands, you are lucky to get to your destination in the same week, much less within a half hour of your proposed time. Sergeant Dipshit said, “Well, I’d suggest you call the FAA and see if they can help you out with your time issue. In the meantime, I’m going to give you a warning this time.” Doug turned visibly red, and said, “okay, I still don’t get it, but whatever.” We went back to the plane to re-pack all of the bags that they had to sniff for drugs and nuclear weapons (because as we all know, if you were going to try and get 400 pounds of depleted uranium rods into the country, you would definitely stop and register with customs by choice), and he was pissed. I was stifling a smile and explained to him how sometimes his employees feel the same way after a good tongue lashing for a stupid mistake. He said, “So you’re saying that it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy, huh?” “Pretty much.” I said. He actually laughed about that one.
We took off and climbed toward Atlanta, flying through some beautiful sky, and touching down in Atlanta at 9:00 pm. I learned more about flying in the 21 hours I spent in that plane than I have in the entire 60 I have in the other plane. Some was good, some was bad, but it is all knowledge.