Today’s Hope Air mission was my longest day of flying yet.

I flew solo from Toronto (CYTZ) to Thunder Bay (CYQT), to pick up a charming young lady and bring her back home. Each leg should take three hours in GXRP under ideal conditions, but today’s weren’t ideal.

The outbound leg was uneventful, maybe even boring, except for crossing a weak cold front, and grossing a weak bladder. The former lasted for something like an hour, and involved ice and some turbulence. Just before going out of radio communication range with air traffic controllers, I remembered to ask for a discretionary range of lateral and vertical movement, so that I could go around the worst of the spots shown on the weather radar. The latter involved two separate TravelJohn units, which were effective (whew!) and nowhere as yucky as one might think.

The return leg was broken up into two halves, with a stop-over at Sault Ste. Marie (CYAM), on suspicion that bladder issues may come up with my passenger. And sure enough, she sprinted to the bathroom and a smoking spot at the Soo once we landed. The final homebound leg was pleasant, included a brief airplane control exercise for the lady, and finished off with a gently airplane-rinsing drizzle.

I was not exhausted after these 8.1 hours of consecutive flights. Maybe I have it in me to fly across the country after all, which should take only about twice this much time.