All 50 States by 55 Years Old

“Fifty by fifty five” is an Aviation goal that I have.

It used to be called “fifty by fifty” but seeing I turned fifty last year and hadn’t achieved it yet I changed the name.

The idea was for me to have done a take-off and landing in each of the fifty states by fifty years old. Our target date slipped a bit with the economy tanking in 2008 along with the opening our flight training business in 2010. All of that coincided with my wife getting real busy at work, so being pragmatists, we’ve extended the deadline.

All of the states east of the Mississippi river took a number of years, but the eastern seaboard went pretty quickly, as one of the primary reasons I got my pilot license was to fly to Florida. I go to Maine quite often and destinations in that direction are close, so we’ve explored that territory pretty extensively.

Hawaii and Alaska are the real difficult states. Hawaii for the obvious reason and Alaska for the time required to travel there.  With Alaska there is an entire continent to cross with a significant quantity of real estate left to cover once departing Washington heading Northwest.
I picked up Hawaii in a rented Cessna 172 on our fifteenth wedding anniversary back in October of 2001. I only flew on the big island from Kona International and not from the three other Islands we visited while there.  I had the flight school owner and chief pilot in the right seat and what started out as a checkout became a tour.  He was an interesting guy, flying helicopters in Alaska in the summer and running a single plane flight school in Kona the other half of the year. Having him and his local knowledge on board netted us dozens of spectacular pictures, each vivid enough to flood my mind with memories.

I’ve flown in California out of Van Nuys and Orange County to Santa Catalina in rented planes. The Golden State is one that I really want to explore by air,  so that trip would require a couple of weeks at a minimum just to do it justice. Naturally if you flew all the way from western Connecticut to California you’d probably want to pick up Oregon and Washington States at a minimum because you would have no way of knowing when life would allow you to pass that way again. 

This is what you do when you’re “whoring for states” as Judy calls it, you tend to start to think that way and plan your trips accordingly.

An Example - we attended a wedding in Memphis a few years back and on departure, with a long day of flying back to Danbury ahead of us, blasted off M01 and turned left, climbed to one thousand and entered the left downwind for West Memphis Arkansas (KAWM) airport where we did a touch and go. Departing there we hung a right and received a Bravo clearance at 1500 over the top of Memphis International (KMEM) and vectors to Olive Branch Mississippi (KOLV). Before switching us to the Unicom frequency the controller asked us if we were the same 58 Victor with an IFR on file to Louisville’s Bowman field (KLOU) due to depart in ten minutes.  When we told him it was us, he gave us our clearance and void time and told us switch to the advisory frequency and to report airborne just like that we picked up Mississippi.  It added .7 tach to the trip which took an additional 7.9 hours  that day to complete, as we had a blistering 95 knot ground speed for much of it -flying on the backside of a low that had recently passed. My logbook  entries only detail the times and the five states we picked up on that trip.

It’s a problem, I know.

I need Minnesota, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas, Montana, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Washington and Alaska for a total of thirteen remaining. Many of these places I really want to see more of than just the airport, and that adds on some time.

We picked up Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming and South Dakota visiting my brother and his family in Golden a while back using our annual Oshkosh vacation as a springboard for westward exploration.

Someone once told me “by the time you can afford the plane you really want you’ll be too old to fly it”. I believe this to be true and I’ve seen it a few times with friends of mine.  I can also interpolate that expression into – “if I wait until I can take the time to make these trips I’ll be too broke/unfit to fly them”.   

It’s an interesting dilemma, one without an easy solution. Some may say “oh get over it, you’re unfulfilled, poor you, welcome to the real world” and in a large part I’d likely agree with them. But this general aviation thing that we’re all so hopelessly addicted to, is of a fragile nature.  Fuel prices, user fees, maintenance, parts availability, are many of the things that threaten our ability to foresee whether what we love doing today will be possible tomorrow.

If 100LL Aviation Gasoline were to disappear from the market either through federal regulations (contain's lead) or  manufacturers simply find it unprofitable to produce, what alternative fuel is ready to replace it?  A more likely,scenario has 100LL Avgas  priced out of affordability. How many of us could justify taking airplane vacations or maintain currency when fuel hits eight, nine, or god forbid -twelve dollars a gallon? At six dollars I already hear pilot friends saying  “ We took Jet Blue, It was $250 a person round trip, How could I fly?” .

I know in one way they’re correct but here are a couple simple truths to think about.

·         Flying won’t get any less expensive tomorrow

·         You’re not getting any younger

·         You won’t become a better pilot sitting in economy cabin of an Airbus A318

When you take the airlines.

·         The vacation fun doesn’t start until you arrive at your destination

·         The vacation fun ends when you check out of your hotel

Whereas when you fly yourself

·         It’s an adventure

·         Flying is an aging antidote for the mind and body.

·         You exercise the privileges of your license.

·         Freedom to come and go as you please.

So get in that airplane and go, now rather than later.  And when you see me ask me how I’m doing on those last 13 states. I only have three more years to get them in.