green

Ted’s dad volunteers weekly with the Asheville Area Habitat for Humanity and we spent part of the day touring some of the subdivisions he’s been working on, including the organization’s 200th home.  They’re really great looking neighborhoods, and their program has proven very successful in getting families into permanent homes.

Since the storm knocked out power and paralyzed much of the city for several days the annual Faber Cookie Extravaganza had not yet entered full swing, so we spent part of yesterday and today making up for lost time:

Asheville had gotten hit hard earlier in the week with the biggest snow storm they’ve had since 1993, getting about over a foot of snow in a 24 hour period.  Power lines snapped, streets were  blocked by motorists abandoning their vehicles, and recovery resources severely taxed as efforts to plow streets and restore services slowly spread throughout the area.  In Ted’s parents’ area, they were without power for about 36 hours; their street remained snowy, icy in parts — in fact, the visitor they were expecting this morning couldn’t get up their hill, so Ted and his dad went down to help her out.

After a truly amazing breakfast at the Sunny Point Café, we visited Ted’s sister Bethany at work, where she gave us a tour of the Brumit Center and award-winning Hot Food Team facilities.  A little touring around the area, then back home to start making the Christmas cookies…

Night flight, with an awesome landing into AVL (Ted even got an atta-boy from the tower

Checking the charts

Panel by night

And here’s a little video of our very smooth landing at AVL:

A few snaps before the sun sets…

During our stay, Ted kept an eye on the weather and saw some large winter storms heading our way.  Our original plan was to leave TX on Wednesday, spending Christmas Eve through the weekend in NC, but with the turbulent weather on the way he decided we should depart a day early to avoid them.

Tuesday morning was calm as we left Texas, with clouds below and haze above.  This leg was short and uneventful, just the way we like it: a little panettone for breakfast, a little knitting, and watching clouds out the windows.

The Greenville FBO lent us a van to drive into town and directed us to Sherman’s Restaurant for lunch, one of the few remaining local-owned restaurants (they like to support local businesses, and we do, too).  After the Sherman’s Burger and some southern sides, we headed back to the airport for our next leg of the day…

A fun day just hanging out with the family.  G & K prepared a wonderful dinner — carne asada with all the trimmings (including a multitude of salsas and bean dip from Big Rock), plus tres leches cake and graham cracker/frosting sandwiches for dessert.  Then Yahtzee and Wii games into the night…

Sunset over McKinney…

Texas sunset

Landing @TKI

Ted saw some icing forecasts in yesterday’s weather reports and thought we might need to wait until midday to depart, but the morning’s reports were far more favorable, so off to the airport.

The Santa Fe night was quite frosty, however, so the plane needed to be de-iced before departing (I spent this time in front of the FBO fireplace; sometimes it’s good to be the passenger

The landscape during this leg was far less dramatic and colorful, so not so many highlights this time around.  We crossed over the VEGGE intersection (woo), and I spent some time working on my Lizard Ridge project.

The excitement began when we were coming in to land at Amarillo.  Runway 4 at AMA is big.  Really big.  13,500 feet long big  (To put this into context:  our home airport is big for us and that’s just shy of 5,000 feet long — half that is a very comfortable length, says Ted).  As we landed, I noticed this huge gray plane off to the right.  It was so low to the ground I thought it didn’t have wheels and must have been left there as more of a decoration, but as we neared it was clear this was a very active plane with all four propellers spinning.

It wanted to depart; we wanted to leave the runway and it was occupying our nearest exit (and the next taxiway would be a considerable distance ahead — did I mention how big this runway is?).  So rather than have us keep going and slow up the festivities, the tower directed the C-130 to pull out into position so we could sneak around behind it and out of the way.

The C-130 is ginormous–the kind of plane you use to transport large cargo–and it looked heavy as it took off.  The view of this behemoth directly in front of us on a runway is something we’ll likely not see again for a very long time.