Day 25 - Rather a pest

After a restful nights sleep we started walking the 3 miles to the airstrip. We had not walked far before one of the local retirees picked us up and gave us a ride in his golf cart to the airport. Made us laugh. We packed up Mr P. and headed south, following the road as this was the only place to land. It would have been tricky nonetheless if there was an engine out to land on the narrow road surrounded by trees, but it is better than nothing at all and it gives some level of comfort.

The airports around central Florida became somewhat hostile towards trikes and ultralights. We no longer were a rare commodity, rather a pest of an aircraft. I guess you get this when things get busy and a little more commercial. We landed at Crystal River, had brunch and took off at about 12 o'clock going south. The wind was starting to come up, with some really good thermals. At one stage we had the trike going up 1000ft per minute with the engine on cruise in a nice thermal.

The landing at Brooksville was a real challenge. The wind socks at different areas of the airfield were showing a discrepancy of 90°at 12 knots. Anna-Klara is used to landing procedures and looking for wind socks but was a little more amazed than me. I had seen this before yet not to this degree. We did a few low passes to determine actual wind directions where we were going to land. They again were different from what the closest windsock was saying. Life was getting tough, as we were flying around in the thermic conditions. I eventually made the decision to land right up next to the windsock towards the end of a runway on the grass. This worked well yet the airport manager wasn't happy!! Sorry mate but survival and safety come first!

We ordered in a late lunch, and waited out the weather in the air-conditioned FBO airport terminal. At about 6:30 pm we headed further south and found a beautiful local airport surrounded by houses at North Tampa. With a place to park the trike and a nice place to camp, we spent the night there, after walking down the road for dinner. Where the hell was the courtesy car!!??