Day 11: Pittstown, NJ; Trenton, NJ; and Philadelphia

Day 11: June 10th. I began the day at Joan's apartment in New York with almost no sleep. I awoke at 11am to find that my sore throat had improved somewhat. The strange thing was that my uvula was still inflamed, which produced a very strange sensation. Joan & I made our way to the Society Coffee shop, where we could enjoy some coffee, a sandwich, and the Internet. I planned my flight online and determined the weather would be adequate to proceed to the next stop: the Alexandria airport in Pittstown, NJ. Conditions once again dictated the filing of an IFR flight plan, as ceilings were pretty low, about 1500 feet. Also, since I was departing Linden, NJ, a mere five miles from Newark, I was right in the approach corridor for their main runways, so getting an IFR clearance was the best way to expedite a departure without having to skim around their airspace VFR under my own navigation.

Joan & I finished our lunch and we boarded the subway after a short stop back at her apartment. I gave Joan a firm hug goodbye and I disembarked at Penn Station while she continued on to her destination further downtown. It was great to see Joan after many years. She is really a wonderful person and was also a great host for my New York City stop. I look forward to reconnecting again after her move to Boston.

I made my way through Penn Station and was able to find the NJ Transit regional trains pretty easily. I had already purchased a round trip ticket, so I just needed to find Track 15 and hop aboard. A train was waiting and it departed about 5 minutes after I boarded, so my timing was perfect. After a quick cab ride from the Linden train station to the airport, I was paying my $30 landing and parking fee and began preflighting the airplane.

I picked up the weather and called Newark on the radio to receive my IFR clearance. He provided a very strange routing in which I would fly right over the Pittstown airport (35 miles) and continue west all the way to Allentown (another 30 miles), before turning back around and landing. One never knows why air traffic control maintains these circuitous routes, but you encounter them, especially near large airports. I was pretty certain that I would not have to fly to Allentown and back. The controller said that he was finding an opening in the traffic flowing into Newark to allow me to take off. Once I received the clearance, I took off and contacted NY Center for further instructions. I climbed up through the clouds and leveled off at 4000 feet where I was above the overcast cloud layer. I flew directly to the Solberg VOR, a radio navigation aid, and continued on to N85, Alexandria airport, located in Pittstown, NJ. I asked ATC for a direct routing to the airport and they obliged. They were then able to give me radar vectors to the final approach course, which is an easterly course. That is why you can see me flying to the west of the airport. What you don't see are the subsequent right hand turns where I was lined up to approach the airport from the west heading east. I descended through the overcast cloud layer and sighted the airport before I reached the minimum descent altitude on the type of instrument approach I was flying. After landing, I sent a quick text message to the friend I was to meet there, Chris Wuestefeld. He sent back a quick text message indicating that he had just arrived at the airport. We quickly found each other and began catching up on the over 20 years since we had last seen each other.

Chris and I lived in the same dorm at RPI during freshman year. We were big into our Atari computers back then. It was 1984, and the first IBM PC had only been around for 3 years at the time. Most of us had either Atari or Commodore computers which offered the opportunity for some programming, but more importantly, provided for video games, something the IBM PC had few of at the time. So, Chris and I had much in common at the time as we liked to "hack" on our Atari's. He was a computer science major, I was physics. Chris now works for a big E-commerce provider. I recently reconnected with Chris on Facebook, as I have with many other old friends. It's amazing enough to find old friends and catch up online, it is yet another thing to meet up in person, and that is what Chris and I were able to do on this day.

We drove off from the airport for a quick lunch at a local Chinese restaurant. I had to apologize for my distraction, since my plan involved continuing on from here to Philadelphia to spend the night with my sister-in-law Amy and family. I looked carefully at the forecasts and radar maps using my iPhone while we ate Chinese. What I noticed is that pop-up thunderstorms were erupting to the west of Philadelphia. It appeared to me that they would probably be over Philadelphia by the time I was to arrive there. It looked like a quick flight to Trenton, NJ, 20 miles to the south, should work well. I filed an IFR flight plan, but decided to take off VFR and pick up my clearance in the air. This was the fastest way to get off the ground, and speed was important due to the approaching thunderstorms. On a trip like this, you have to be capable of making impromptu changes like this, and it turned out that this was absolutely the right decision.

Once in the air, I got to 1500 feet in marginal VFR conditions and decided to just proceed to Trenton without activating the flight plan. A short time later, I contacted Trenton tower and landed. Trenton actually works as a gateway to my destination, because a train runs directly from the West Trenton station (1.5 miles from the airport) all the way to Swarthmore, PA. I didn't know that at the time and took a cab to the main Trenton transportation center, where I took a train to downtown Philadelphia and had to switch to another train for Swarthmore. Now, I know that the West Trenton station is within walking distance from the airport.

I arrived in Swarthmore and was greeted by my sister-in-law, Amy Bug, and my nephews Murphy & Moses. Despite having tragically lost my brother last year to suicide, I remain close to the Bug family and cherish time spent with them. This was an important stop. A slight miscommunication had Amy thinking I was coming on the next day and I thought that they would be leaving for Massachusetts the next morning. Luckily, we were all off by a day and I got to spend some quality time with the Bug family, the only real family I have left.