Last month, after lots of planning, starting in March, I flew my 2 seat Cessna 150 from Long Beach, California, ‘low and slow’, about 85 – 95 knots across the country to Oshkosh! It was awesome! Thirteen legs over four days getting there, twelve legs and three days, returning. I planned fuel stops roughly every 2 hours or about 200 miles, being conservative. I attended the world’s largest aviation gathering, or celebration if you prefer to call it that. Oshkosh is aviation ‘mecca’ for one week each year, normally the last week in July.
The next day, Saturday, the ‘mass arrival’ was planned, during the early afternoon, with just over 100 Cessna’s flying in formation, 35 ‘flights’ of three aircraft each, stretching out several miles. All coordinated with Oshkosh ATC, of course. See the image with ‘Xs’ for airplanes, at right, that illustrate this. It’s a very highly organized, well-planned, ‘arrival’. What a blast!! It took about 50 minutes for this flight…
And then the weather moved in. A typical Wisconsin summer afternoon thunderstorm moved in on us at around 5 pm, with a torrential downpour and wind gust 
s up to 50 mph! It lasted over an hour. Some tents were blown down. It was a bad start to the week for some campers. Fortunately, I was staying in the dorms. For the rest of the week, the weather was excellent!
So after a crazy busy week, I had arranged to leave on Saturday morning, July 30, and 
flew 90 minutes south and east to north suburban Chicago, to the same airport where I had learned to fly in 1977, after college. It’s still there, but now ‘rebranded’, like so many other things. The former ‘Pal-Waukee’ Airport is now renamed Chicago Executive Airport, because of the large presence of corporate jets that are now based there. It is a really nice facility.
After a fun weekend visit with family, who wanted to hear all about my adventures so far, I delayed my departure on Monday morning because of early morning thunderstorms and the lingering adverse weather conditions that followed it. And one of my brothers drove my mother and I to the airport on Monday morning. So, they finally got to see my airplane! That was nice.
Finally, my 3 rd
day, I left Santa Fe early, then flew west to the small city of Gallup, NM. There a new fuel vendor was just starting in business, and there were a few things that weren’t ready. Like the credit card kiosk. After my credit card was declined several times, I went to their office and told them about this. They quickly took care of me, and I was able to get fuel and leave.
After lunch, I took off and because of the hot sun shining through the ‘skylight’ windows overhead on my airplane
(only a few Cessna 150’s have them), both my iPad and iPhone soon overheated! Ugh. I turned both off and moved them out of the sun. I knew what heading to fly and headed south and west across the rugged, mountainous, southern California desert. It’s a harsh landscape! Especially in the summer heat! I’d hate to have a forced landing there because of engine problems.
