Actually, this should have been the third flight, but Hope Air administrative delays and other factors blocked its last-minute arrangement. Our second completed flight was to Elliot Lake, again co-piloted by Nathan Myers.

The weather forecasters predicted an uncomfortable ride, and they were right. Up at our cruising altitude, we encountered continuous turbulence, and for the first time in the season, serious airframe icing. The airplane handled it as well as can be expected, but less well than I hoped. All the deice equipment appeared to work; we were rewarded by the sight of ice chunks flying backward, or their sound bouncing off the fuselage when flung off by the props. With so much supercooled water in the tall clouds and sticking to the wings, plus having to rob the engine of some of its power (using “alternate induction air” to prevent blockage of air filters with ice), GXRP could not quite climb to my desired altitude (10000 ft) and maintain a comfortable speed. On the bright side, the on-board weather radar pointed out the bad weather before we got there-if only I had taken its advice and steered around!

The Elliot Lake airport is located in the middle of wilderness. with no obvious signs of civilization nearby. I’m sure the town is there somewhere, but we didn’t see it. Maybe that was because the sea of rolling hills everywhere, covered with the nicest colours I’ve seen this year. I apologize to my breathlessly anticipating photography addicts for not taking my camera along on this trip: you will just have to imagine. We found a talkative lady waiting for a ride to Toronto. After rigorous endless security checks, including intimidating conversation like “Hello! You’re the only person in the terminal, so you must be Jane Doe waiting to go to Toronto.”, and thorough scanning of the outside of her baggage (some pockets suffered from zipper malfunction), we got under way.

The return trip was relatively calm, and not just because we chose to cruise well below and away from the same problematic clouds we ran into on the way North. (We could still see a big mass of them towering, now to the east of the Bruce Peninsula.) The ride was also calmed by the absence of cabin heat (a piece of airplane equipment unhappily died on the way up), and not counteracted with sufficiently exothermic simulated tapdancing or the invigorating and seemingly endless discourse. We could see city lights from 100km away – a sliver at first, but soon covering the huge tract of land that is the greater Toronto area.

Our landing was an appropriately sloppy end to the trip. We had strong gusty crosswinds relative to the only lit runway at the island airport, and it was a successful but uncomfortable approach. My hat (were I to wear one) would be off to that loony student pilot who at the same time was practicing takeoffs & landings in an even lighter airplane. Still, a few minutes later, our happy passenger was at her hotel, and I drove home in a comfortably warm car.