Meanwhile in the midwest . . .

I woke up in Dayton to disgusting cold weather and rain. I braved it all just to get a breakfast at McDonalds. Dayton was everything I remembered it to be -- sad looking buildings and all. When we reported to the airport, it would seem that Dayton was having the best weather in the entire region. Despite my numerous instrument approaches in the last few weeks, the weather has been decidedly un-winter-like. That all changed in a day. When I flew in to Appleton the previous day, I could see green grass on my approach. 24 hours later, 12 inches of snow covered the landscape. What was snow west of the lake was freezing rain and ice pellets to the east.

My deadhead from Dayton to Detroit was holding over the airport for almost an hour before finding a gap in the ice storm. Once there, we went to our assigned plane that we would fly to Chicago Midway. I was personally not looking forward to landing a jet in a Chicago snowstorm onto icy runways that are notoriously short. After setting up the flight plan, the gate agent came down and told us the flight was canceled. The captain and I gave each other a fist bump. Midway's runways were closed and nothing was getting in or out. I had just scarfed down a Potbelly's chicken salad sandwich and was now regretting this decision. Now I had over three hours to kill before attempting to fly another plane out to South Bend. The anger and stress was clear on people's faces in the terminal, so I tried to make myself scarce. Eventually we made it to South Bend after getting rattled around in fairly significant turbulence all the way in.

I had most of the day to relax before our scheduled report time of 5:00pm. This would soon get pushed to 10:00pm. I went for a stroll back to Notre Dame's campus. I was greeted by unforecasted snow flurries. The campus was fairly dead. Feeling a bit cold, I got excited when I saw a sign for Au Bon Pain. Glory be! -- an ABP! My enthusiasm for hot soup and pastries was soon dampened by the sight of chairs stacked atop tables. I had forgotten that students are on their winter break and everything is pretty much shut down on campus. Lunch would have to wait. I made a stop at the bookstore to warm up for a bit and then made my way over toward the stadium and a mural of what has come to be known as "Touchdown Jesus."





I received a text from the captain that stated our scheduled depart time had now jumped to after midnight. I looked back up at Touchdown Jesus. Perhaps he is not signaling a touchdown, but rather using his arms to gesture and say, "The plane was supposed to be over here in Atlanta, but in fact it's circling somewhere over there above Sheboygan. I eventually got lunch at an Irish pub called Fiddler's Hearth. As far as my ethnic food sampling goes, this seemed like a good fit other than the waitress who seemed annoyed when I ordered a water. Look, I know it's a pub, but it's also noon on a Tuesday. I didn't want to have to explain FAA alcohol regulations, so I left the whole, "I'm a pilot" bit out. Those Irish are just looking for a fight. Nevertheless, my piping hot shepherd's pie was a welcome warmup from the cold weather outside.

As our departure time kept fluctuating, I realized I had time to get some dinner as well. I went to a Thai restaurant with the confusing name of "Cambodian Thai." As there was nothing Cambodian on the menu, it would be akin to opening a deli and naming it "Mexican American." Nonetheless, I kept it tame and ordered Pad Thai. I asked for it spicy, which adequately cleared out my sinuses. It wasn't terribly flavorful, however. It had really good reviews on Yelp, so I was somewhat surprised at my disappointment, but then I reminded myself that I was in South Bend, Indiana. It's best to stick with the Irish pubs perhaps.

South Bending

I have been doing a lot of flying in and out of Detroit as of late, but have not been overnight there. I have had some pretty interesting instrument approaches there, however. Today it was freezing fog in Detroit with a visibility at one point of just 1/16th of a mile. Over the radio, we heard a few airlines make a call that they had to divert. One even remarked that they were going to return to O'Hare. It's a sad state of affairs when the better weather option is Chicago. We brought the throttles back hoping the visibility might increase enough for us to get in. We executed what is known as a CAT II approach. It is where my eyes are glued to the digital displays as I fly the airplane down to within 100 ft of the runway. During this time, the captain is looking outside the window (at mostly nothing) until the last few seconds, when the runway lights fade into view and we transfer controls for the landing. It's an interesting experience to say the least and I've done two of these types of approaches in the last 24 hours. That is rare. Even the captain said he's only seen weather that bad once before in his flying career.

When I took the picture here, the weather in Detroit had improved to a visibility of more than 1 mile and overcast at 400 feet. After dealing with 1/4 mile vis. and fog on the ground, this seemed like pretty excellent weather in comparison. At the end of the day, we arrived in South Bend, Indiana. All I really knew about this place is from watching Rudy, and  a brief moment from my youth when my dad drove us through Notre Dame's campus. Again, it's not entirely what I envisioned. We are staying in downtown South Bend, which is actually quite nice other than the fact that everything is closed on Sunday evening. I tried to get Thai food, but it was closed. Maybe this was a blessing in disguise. Indiana Thai food is probably on par with Iowa Mexican. I don't know why I'm drawn to ethnic food in all these towns. I suppose it lends itself to more interesting blogging. Nobody really cares if I go to Arby's. In the end, I got a couple slices of pizza at a place called Bruno's, which appears to be a local chain. It wasn't anything special, but it was the only place open, so for that I am grateful.

I ended up walking to the Notre Dame campus, which was a bit of a hike. When I finally got there, I immediately got lost. I didn't have any particular destination in mind, but I hadn't really realized just how large the campus is. The old architecture and the landscaping made it seem like something out of a movie. This might actually be normal in the rest of the country, but my college campus had no green since it was in the middle of Washington, DC. During my wandering, I walked by a big church. I'm sure it has a name and is probably famous, but for now we shall just call it "big church." In the back, I found the grotto which I vaguely remembered from my youth visit. As it was getting late, and I was a bit tired, this is all I really had the energy to see. My dad described the area surrounding the campus like the streets of Compton, so I didn't want to stick around too long. Tomorrow is the last of my four day trip. Then it's back to beautiful Minneapolis for 24 hours.

UPDATE:

At about 130am, I received a call from the airline. Apparently a plane couldn't get to where it was supposed to go, so my flight out of South Bend to Detroit followed by exciting new trips to Dayton, Ohio and Brainerd, Minnesota was not to be. A day of five flight legs was altered to one flight leg from South Bend to Atlanta and gave me an extra few hours of sleep. I'll take it. This also gave me a couple hours to see beautiful South Bend during the day. I hunted for a place to eat breakfast. At least places were open for a weekday. I went to a diner-esque place called "Le Peep." This is also evidently a chain, but I've never seen one before in my life. The staff simply assumed I wasn't eating alone and set the table for two showcasing why I struggle with finding a place to eat where I don't feel weird eating by myself. I ordered something called "cookie cakes." They were supposed to be like chocolate chip cookies, but what kind of monster likes oatmeal cookies? I brushed this abomination of a topping to the side so I could enjoy my pancakes.

After the meal, I went for a walk by the St Joseph River. There was a wooden plank path to a small island where I got a view of . . . a dam? I guess they've tried to make it look aesthetically pleasing by lighting it up with different colored lights at night. I would compare it to Long Beach's attempt to disguise oil platforms as tropical islands. It was a nice little walk and it appears to continue down the river a ways, but I had to return to the hotel to prepare for my flight to Atlanta.