It’s around 6 am and it still looks like a pretty strong wind out there to me. There are white caps on the ocean and the flag poles outside my window are dancing in the wind.

Don and I will be at the airport by 7:30 where we will receive our proper weather report from our agent. The weather report for here and Scotland will tell the tale.

I tapped a really nice computer geeks brains here in Keflavik and now I think I have the solution to our Garmin 1000 Nav Data issues. I’ll know once I hit the airport and plug in the San Disk.

More later….

Our journey to Keflavik, Iceland began yesterday morning in Goose Bay, Canada. We started our adventure after having breakfast at the local restaurant.

While being driven to the desolate Goose Bay Airport I said to the driver, “Looks like snow clouds.” He said back, “Nope, no snow reported today.” I said, “Ah, what does a guy from Los Angeles know about snow clouds anyway?” We laughed and ten minutes later Miss Behavin’ was covered in about 2” of soft snow.

We received our weather report; Don said we were good to go. This was my first take off into snow…quite fun.

Once we were at altitude I unzipped the top of my immersion suit and I was loving the air hose I had Art rig for air conditioning in my mighty hot dry suit. Don had the heat on because he was cold in the minus 19 degree Celsius temperature and this caused my feet to be burning hot…so I turned on my hose rig and cooled off my feet. Don and I had quite a few chuckles about my hose. And that’s all I’ll say about that.

It was a smooth clear ride at 11,000’ straight to Greenland. When we were about an hour out from Greenland we started to see icebergs and they grew larger the closer we got to the coast. What a beautifully wondrous country and topography in Greenland. I’ve got some still photos to show you if I ever get a good Internet connection.

Greenland was the toughest landing I have made to date. We entered a gorge and had to make a very tight base leg turn at about 45-50 degrees of bank to miss the mountains. Then I had to put down on a runway that had half of it closed for repair. We had 2700’ downhill and that was it. Don commented that this is the toughest runway he ever lands on.

We stayed long enough to fuel up 64 gallons at $1245.00 US, get our weather and head over to Keflavik, Iceland.

Well I thought Greenland would be my toughest landing ever…NOT!

First, we encountered about 2.7 hours of Instrument Meteorological Conditions on the crossing…and then Sigmets for severe wind starting coming through for Iceland of 40-50 knot winds…oh boy. As if the dusting of rime icing we were being subjected to wasn’t enough.

I had an hour or so to be concerned about landing in 40 knot plus crosswinds. Don assured me these were some big wide runways and that I could do it.

I shot for a one left wheel landing on the center line but we were blown all the way over to inches of the runway lights on the right. I thought we might actually be blown onto the grass to the side of the runway. It was so windy we almost couldn’t get out of the plane and tying her down was unbelievable. The big jets were having quite a time of landing as well.

This morning we awoke to even stronger winds. Even the German Air Force guys flying a C160 cargo plane decided not to take off. Don and I sat in Miss Behavin’ for a few minutes to check out our Garmin navigation system and we were registering a 38 knot airspeed from the wind.

Needless to say, I’m back at the hotel writing this in hopes of a better day tomorrow to fly off to Prestwick, Scotland and then on to Leeds, England for a repair on my Garmin 1000 navigational data.

More later…

Don and I took about a 6 hour plus flight from Charleston, South Carolina (which was about 90 degrees and muggy). I arrived in Bermuda shorts and was freezing in about 32 degree and windy weather.

We’ll stay the night and head to Goose Bay, Canada tomorrow and immediately jump over to Narsuarsac (sp) Greenland.

It was a great flight today…Don gave me two great compliments…he dozed off over JFK while I was dodging heavy aircraft…and when we landed in Bangor he said to me, “I’d fly with you from the back seat…and that’s a compliment” That felt great!

We flew through rainbows, rain and beautiful landscape.

Now off to dinner.

Later…