It was supposed to be such an easy flight. Oh, there was some weather that was supposed to move in that evening, but I’d called Flight Service five minutes before leaving for the airport, and they’d told me it was clear below 12,000 feet, with 10 miles visibility all along my route. And forecast to stay that way the rest of the afternoon.
So, okay. The Livermore Airport, where the Cheetah is living at the moment, is a 45-minute drive away from my house. And I needed fuel, so it was probably another half hour after that before I was wheels up. And the Salinas Valley, which I was following on my way down to Santa Ynez, is probably another half hour’s flight from Livermore. So as much as a couple of hours could have transpired from when I talked to Flight Service and the point when I decided that their forecast must have applied to a parallel universe in some other, more benign, weather dimension.
