By John Wyman, EAA 462533, Chapter 266 Montreal
Things started looking up after our first stop at a gas station halfway through our leg from Leduc, Alberta, to Birch Hills, Saskatchewan. The warning lights were still ominously present on the dash, but the Volvo was running smoothly. Occasionally, new warnings would pop up as the driver’s side carpet was drying out, but they weren’t too serious, serving more as entertainment than anything else on an otherwise deserted landscape. “Low Beam failure” would pop up now and again, just confirming to us that the computer was at least abreast of what was happening with the car. A solid tap on the headlight would bring it back to life “a la Fonzie,” Happy Days style, for those of you familiar with that ol’ TV show.
Disaster was narrowly averted at one point. About halfway to Birch Hills, I had to swerve to avoid a brake drum from an 18-wheeled truck that came within inches of my front right axle. This heavy large chunk of metal would have taken us into the ditch. I don’t know why it was just sitting there without any signs of the wheel or damaged truck anywhere? Perhaps it was something left behind from a crash site the night before, or it fell out of some used brake wheels that were heading to the recycle yard?
We pulled into the driveway where the glider was, about six hours after leaving Alberta. Now came the ultimate test of ensuring that the car would start on command. All the warnings had since disappeared from the dash, minus the check engine light which shows up for literally any small hiccup on these older cars. I shut it down, counted 10 seconds to make sure the gremlins had run away, and then turned the key. Boom! A solid crank and she started right away. Big problem avoided. Now…on to the glider.
After introducing ourselves and reconnecting with the club’s longest member, Keith Andrews, whom I had met 15 years earlier, we set about examining the glider. Keith had assembled a small team of two other members to help with explaining what went where (pieces were removed from the wing during inspection) and what damage they had unearthed about the structure, which it had experienced through the years as it sat unattended in a leaky hangar. One wing was completely stripped of its fabric and another had only its top side covered. Some extensive water damage was evident to the outlying areas of some ribs and webbing, but fortunately it didn’t appear to have penetrated to the spars — so I was confident we could proceed with the sale. Overall, she was in rough shape compared to her sister ship, but she was complete, so I wouldn’t have to scrounge the planet for spare parts.
Now that it was late in the day (10 p.m. at night!), and Emily was suffering from a developing cold, we decided to hold off loading the glider on its trailer for the next day and get a fresh start in the morning.
Load er’ up…
We started early enough the next morning with a team to help us wrap the structure for the big road trip. Here we deviated a bit from the last trip in 2007 (where I used tarps) and decided, with Keith’s suggestion, to try and wrap it all with industrial rolls of cling wrap. I can say, after the trip, that it was a novel idea, but it was probably more effort than it was worth. We’d buy tarps anyway as a back-up. At least the weather ahead was on our side. It was dry without anything bad on the horizon. So, at least the wrapping would remain dry if we could prevent it from ripping apart due to the wind loads on the highway. It took us a long time to load the glider, taking the utmost care to move the fragile, exposed wings and fabric-covered fuselage. Keith and company had done a great job prepping the old glider trailer (originally built in Germany), fixing up some tubing and replacing its custom metric axle bearings with new ones, which had proved difficult to find. It took the better part of the day to load and wrap the glider, finishing up around suppertime and hitting the road with Keith riding behind us for the first few miles, his watchful eyes on the glider. Like my first adventure in 2007, it was nice having the helping hand from the club, especially valuable in the midst of winter coming to an end, with the support of a heated garage (this time), complete with tooling that I couldn’t bring along on the flight. By the time Emily and I made it to our hotel in Saskatoon on our second leg, we were thoroughly tired but happy to be on our way. That night we celebrated with a burger and a beer, confident, after the three-hour drive from Birch Hills to Saskatoon, that the car and glider were up for the trip ahead. Hopefully, we were as well.
Let’s get going…
We managed an early start the next day just after sunrise. Our goal was to drive by day, check in to a hotel before the restaurants closed, and get across the prairies to at least Moose Jaw or, if we were lucky, Winnipeg. Having Emily along would make the trip much more bearable across the flat and barren countryside and, in time, we’d split the driving. For now I was behind the wheel, still cautiously watching the glider in tow and praying that the car’s warning computer (ECM) wasn’t going to go berserk again! Emily was riding in the right seat, with her cold now in full swing, tissue box at the ready. Our Volvo was performing admirably, its climate control working well, with our working radio (a luxury I didn’t have on my first trip) providing the tunes. Finally, I was able to introduce Emily to some of the musical artists that shaped my tastes from when I was her age! The Beatles, Pink Floyd, The Eagles — you get the idea. Specially for the trip, I had compiled a CD (yes, my computer still “burns” them). There was “no escape” from DAD.
For the first few hours into the trip on that third day, we mucked about a fair bit (too much) with the cling wrap on the glider. We did our best to keep it together with red duct tape versus the cheaper grey stuff, which I had learned the first time around, doesn’t stick well in cold weather. The red made-in-Canada roll fared a bit better, but not by much. It let go anyway. However, the tape roll did serve as a great coffee cup holder! Speaking of Red Green type rigging, I also temporarily rigged the driver’s window, which kept sliding down its railings, by using cedar shim shingles to jam it closed. It worked perfectly as long as you didn’t make the mistake of jarring it open, either by bumping it or using the power window door switch. I thought of taping up the switch, but that wasn’t necessary as the heater was working well and the windows weren’t frosting up — and besides, it was still bloody cold outside, so I didn’t dare touch it!
We started out the trip with “dispatch” (Sandrine back in Montreal) organizing our hotels on the fly using Booking.com and other internet reservation sites to get the best deals. However, by the time we reached the outskirts of Winnipeg (Steinbach, Manitoba), Emily had taken the reigns and had found us some accommodation at a Days Inn. She later found us a gem of a motel on the shores of Lake Superior just north of Sault Ste. Marie. This fully renovated motel had the most comfortable beds! She was also a pro at finding Starbucks locations en route. I had pledged from the outset that there was no way I was going to drink Tim Horton’s across the country! My first glider quest had put me off from Tim’s so much that I wasn’t going to opt for it this time around. These are strong words to live by, especially for a Canadian. Tim’s is just everywhere. Starbucks is harder to find. Better coffee? Maybe — I prefer them over Tim’s, anyway. Emily would later learn that these were fighting words, and I was going to resist all temptations to veer from the plan! At this particular motel, the owners had offered their clients sachets of Tim Horton’s coffee for the room’s coffee maker. Early in the morning, before setting out while alternately looking at the coffee and Emily, I blurted “nope, we’ve managed so far to avoid it…I am sure there’s a Starbucks in Sault.” Free coffee or not, I wasn’t going to sway. Reluctantly, she agreed, and sure enough there was one where the Trans-Canada highway turns 90 degrees to the east on the edge of town. I won.
By day four we had already been through a lot and had met some neat people along the way. One of our more interesting stops was finding an amazing pizza restaurant well off the beaten track, late at night, just before we pulled into that shoreside motel. It was around 8 p.m. and we were starving. She had unearthed a gem of a place, oddly enough, at the end of a runway, within walking distance of the Shoal Lake airport. You could have never guessed, without the internet, that such a good place was nearby. The restaurant is Benny’s Astoria Pizzeria, and I will be sure to return (the pizza is that good!) if I ever find my way through there again by small aircraft or car. That night, we enjoyed the spectacle of seeing it filled with local residents enjoying their night out with the owner joking around with the kids, cornering the unruly ones by throwing them into the penalty box that he had created using a local church bench — authentically framed by Plexiglas under the TV where the game was playing. Quite the sight!
By the time we reached Sudbury the next day we knew that Montreal was within reach by midnight. We were looking forward to reaching home. At the same time, we were sad that the adventure was coming to a close. We had laughed a lot. A week later, we’d reflect on the phone just how much we enjoyed our time together and how much fun it was to go on a “mission” like that. More recently, over supper with friends, I enjoyed watching Emily tell the story. That convinced me to write it down before I missed some of the details she remembered. We still talk about it, and I am happy to have taken the time to recollect it now, with words. If and when I do restore this glider, it’ll be sweet recalling that she and I were able to spend that week together on the open road to bring it home. Even if I only use it as spare parts for the other glider, it’s priceless time that I couldn’t have bought with her any other way. Thanks, Kid!
John Wyman, EAA 462533, Chapter 266 Montreal, is a passionate aviator. When he isn’t in the saddle at the airline, he can be found out at the airfield doing any number of things. He likes to fly gliders, practice aerobatics, work on airplanes, and fix stuff.