B had some business to do in a city that would have taken about 6 or 7 hours to drive to, so we took the plane.
I went along for the ride since I’d not been to St Paul before (or really in Minnesota, except as a stopover) and it was a nice chance to do go someplace we hadn’t been before.
B’s also much better at taking pictures than I am (I’m too busy gawking) so he got some lovely ones of central Wisconsin and of the Mississippi much closer to its source. The only one that’s mine is the top one and that was on the return trip.
St. Paul is a weird place. Definitely walkable and I only got yelled at once whilst wandering during B’s meeting, which is surprising for a big city. Found Legacy Chocolates, which has some pretty good offerings. And Uber is definitely your friend when in strange cities. No worries about parking or one way streets that exist for no reason.
ATC on the way back was, for the most part, pretty good. Had one dude that no one could understand (mumbling is not good for that job), and there was a metric butt-ton of VFR traffic that we got routed around, over, and through. B’s teaching me how to work the radios which both gives me something to do as well as lets him handle everything else.
I was treated to a couple of very sweet landings, especially when we got back to our home airport. There was a boatload of traffic in the pattern with one guy indicating that he was about five miles closer to the airport than he was (and that he was faster than he was moving as well).
So B had to do some extending to get us into the mix as well as to give the guy some room when he also did an…. interesting…. missed RNAV approach/circle to land.
There was an instructor that B knows who came in third behind us and used what happened as an example of why good calls are important with his student.
But with all of the chaos, that landing was smooth as ice. Like on rails smooth. Which is par for the course for B, but it was the perfect icing on the cake.
It was an interesting trip and it was fun to see a new city and new landscapes together.
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