Last night I drove up to Lewiston to do a night dual crosscountry with a friend who owns (and restored) his 269b. Earlier that afternoon I’d looked at the weather to the north and thought we’d have a 50-50 chance of making the flight. Isolated T-storms in the area, ceilings coming down some during the evening, and the satellites showed cumulus clouds and a big fat band of moisture being sucked into the region from the north. Not to mention that anything less than ideal conditions would make me jumpy: from the perspective of flying in the dark, the area around Lewiston looks like a black hole, with the only reliable ground illumination coming from a small, 2-lane road that heads north. On top of that, logbook says it’s been 6 months since I had any night time, but realistically it’s been more like 10. We came up with a flight plan over pizza (KLWS → S73 (Rosalia) → KPUW (Pullman) → KLWS), discussed altitudes and weather minimums. Before heading to the airport, the weather looked good. Calming winds, precipitation localized to our east. KGEG TAF forecast isolated light rain showers in the area, but was otherwise uninteresting. Flight Service said the radar throughout the route was clear and the weather looked great for the flight. (It is was a little disconcerting to have to tell the briefer what airports to look at in the region though.) We picked up and headed north with good visibility and CIG about 7000.

I thought the flight was fine. It wasn’t as dark as I had expected. Still dark enough that, if we’d had to make an emergency landing, we’d wouldn’t have had much of an idea what we were going to be coming in on at the end. Scattered ranches and houses provided visual references all around us, and the times that I took the controls I felt like I had no more difficulty maintaining a cruise attitude than I did during the day. Navigating via Hwy 95/195 and the distant cities was pretty straightforward. There are always more small, lighted, and uncharted towers than the sectional shows–I like to use towers for night navigation, but I’d forgotten about that caveat. I think over cities the small ones get lost in the background clutter, but in the desert you can see every single one.

We put a little too much faith in the Standard Briefing, and I think were a little taken aback by the showers that started popping up in the Pullman area and further north.  I thought some looked sufficiently intense that I wouldn’t have attempted to penetrate them. Partly this is out of inexperience (my typical training flight, day and especially night, was CAVU++), but the blackboard that the towns in this area are dotted on made it hard to figure out if we couldn’t see through the showers or whether there was nothing to see behind them. Either way, the showers cooperated and held off to our east. We had light rain on the windscreen for most of the flight north of KPUW. That, BTW, is a pretty interesting airport–the beacon sits on higher ground to the north; as it sweeps around, you see that the runway is in a horseshoe formed by hills to the north, east, and south. When working the pattern there, I found myself more comfortable climbing until the terrain faded below the landing light, around 700 AGL.

We made it back pretty early, and I was in bed shortly after 00 PDT. As always, discussing flight training and helicopters with K.S. was enlightening and disheartening at the same time, and my dreams reflected what was on my mind at the time. These were the long, drawn-out dreams that come in the early morning when you’re half asleep. I won’t bore you with all of it. The set up was a stop-over in some po-dunk town while on a  cross-country drive with my parents, high school ex-girlfriend, and FAR/AIM. I know it was small town USA because the only place to eat was a McDonalds. I haven’t set foot in a McDonalds in probably 20 years–everything except the McRib I find pretty revolting. So I was pretty disgusted by the whole idea of having to eat there. I decided to make up for it by doing some studying, brought along the FAR/AIM and my usual barrage of books and set up shop at one of the booths. During the meal I got distracted by a spectacular Perseid showing and left my beloved FAR/AIM at the table, somehow expecting the McDonald’s clientelle to show it due respect. After psychoanalytically interesting (but otherwise irrelevant) encounters with the parental units, scowling ex-girl friend, and a runaway horse leading to a 9-1-1 call, I returned to find my booth overtaken by an overeating family. The McDonalds was greasy and getting ready to close. My FAR/AIM was nowhere to be seen.

The unsympathetic response from the staff wasn’t surprising. Why did I care about some stupid book? Probably didn’t help that I described it to them as “big, boring, and completely unappealing to just about anybody.” But my notes! My careful highlighting! God, it doesn’t matter that in a couple of months I’ll have to start anew, what mattered is all that I’d put in to this edition. I searched under every greasy table, behind the counters, and begged to dig through their trash. Finally they gave me access to their lost and found. And this was the surprising part of the dreamscape. McDonald had a library of abandoned books, to the extent that they’d taken to cataloging them between the vats of vegetable oil and hamburger buns. And, there was a whole section dedicated to…FAR/AIMs. Apparently this was one of the most discarded books at this neon red and yellow apparition. None of them were mine. I moped back to my room, and found my dog-eared FAR/AIM tossed carelessly on the floor. I picked it up, flipped through the florescent-highlighted pages, and read a few regulations. I was happy again. Complete.

Obfuscation aside, this dream was obviously about how heavily I still depend on that one book. Does it have to be installed, operational, in operation? For this certificate, when can I log night time? What’s the definition of night time for carrying passengers? For operation of aircraft lighting? Can I…? Like an examiner once told me, “You almost know the regulation. Where’s your FAR?” It’s the one book that’s pretty much always with me, there to clarify that last detail. Even though it’s not the friendliest read, without it I always feel a bit lost. That, and I’m irritated that I was out late and didn’t see a single damned Perseid.