I'm never driving to Roanoke again....

My business partner got his ticket last month an we have finally been
justifiying the business expense for our training.

Last month we did our first business trip to KROA. Great trip.
Rented the FBO's PA28-180 with VFR GPS. Got there in about 1:45 with
a massive headwind (from 8A6, near charlotte). Beautiful country from
the air. Landed refreshed, picked up a car and was able to spend
about 4-5 hours with the customer. Flew back in about 1:15 and
arrived in charlotte before sundown, about 6:45. A little tired, but
it was our first x-country with his PP ticket, and first trip to KROA
by air.

Woke up last friday to iffy weather. Gusting winds, not bad but over
our comfort threashold. So we trundle off via car to Roanoke. Hit
traffic with 15 minutes in I-77. A semi lost a load of sheet metal.
Great. Finally free, we are OK for a while until our Mapquest and GPS
didn't agree and we got turned around on !-40 business(vs. I-40
regular) and lost about 30 minutes. Arrived on Roanoke tired and
****ed after a 4 hour journey. Got to spend about 3 hours on site.
Left about 5:00 and after a food stop got home about 10:15.


Wretched. Simply wretched. We were spoiled with our first flight.
We are now thinking about scheduling non-critical customer site times
(i.e. face time) with contingency days in case of bad weather.

Anybody else commute to customer sites regularly? How do you handle
the bad days?


Jim

http://www.unconventional-wisdom.org