Flight to Myrtle Beach

What a day! Today I made my first cross country as a licensed private
pilot. I just took my checkride last Wednesday. My wife and I had been
planning on flying to Myrtle Beach since well before I received my
license. She had never been in a small plane and really doesn't like
flying anyway. She agreed to go up with me though. It wasn't that far
of a flight as we live in Wilmington, North Carolina. I put everything
together this morning and the forecast was for possible thunderstorms.
We had the same forecast yesterday but the day was completely clear. I
decided to go with the thought that if something did pop up in the
afternoon that we could just wait it out. There are 4 airports on the 62
mile route that I could divert to if there were a problem too.

So we loaded up the Cessna 172 and took off from Wilmington International
(KILM). I tried to brief my wife as well as I could before hand but I
remember the first time I felt the plane lift off the runway. She was
nervous to say the least. I tried to calm her down as best possible.
She said she was more afraid of the heights than the flying itself. I
don't think that she looked out the plane much on the flight at all. She
said she would be ok looking out but not down. She did point out one of
the miniature golf courses that we had played at in Myrtle one time when
we were down there though.

When we got to Myrtle Beach International (KMYR) I had a pretty good
landing. It wasn't my best ever but it was smooth. We parked at Myrtle
Beach Aviation and rented a Neon at $10/hour. Their courtesy car was
already out but $10/hour isn't too bad. We then went to the Olive Garden
for lunch.

A couple of hours later we returned to the airport and I took a look at
the weather computer. The sky in Myrtle was hazy but their weren't any
clouds in the area. The weather computer showed some thunderstorms in
Wilmington so we stayed for awhile. I felt the "get-there-itis" but we
held tight. My wife took a quick nap and I watched TV and played games
on my Palm Pilot. Finally, about an hour and a half later things opened
up in Wilmington.

We saddled up again and took off over the water from KMYR and headed up
the coast. It was very smooth but my wife was still pretty nervous.
This time we climbed to 3500. About half way we encountered some
scattered clouds below us but I decided to go over them since
Wilmington's ATIS was reporting no clouds below 12000. The landing
wasn't stellar but my wife said it wasn't bad I think she was just happy
to be on the ground. I was too as it was pretty hazy in Wilmington.

I just thought I would share my story with everyone. I was happy that I
made the right decisions with the weather. Its easy to make a go/no-go
decision for a local flight but much more planning needs to go into the
cross countries. We had a good lunch and even though it took longer than
expected, it was a good day. My wife says she will go up again. She is
going to try to get more and more used to it. I really hope that someday
she will enjoy it as much as me!

Jeff Frey
PP-ASEL 55.6 Hrs.