Story time, boys and girls.......

It all started innocently enough..... I got home from work, mowed parts of the lawn (most is slightly brown and not growing), went for a run, ate some Cheerios and it was only 7:00P.M. I decided to get a little flying time in, as the wind was calm. Stopped for a can of gas, went to the hangar to fuel and do the pre-flight inspection. Before leaving home, I had called Peg's phone and left the message that when she got done with her scout meeting, she should come to the airport and I would come down and pick her up. That meant staying in the immediate vicinity of the airport so I could see her arrive. I was still hot from running and the weather was warm and humid, so I left the doors off the plane. I was in shorts and tee-shirt, but I put on a light flannel shirt cause it sometimes gets chilly in the wind. So I took off and did a couple of lazy 360° turns about the airport, about a two mile radius I'm guessing. The air felt a little cooler so I kept it climbing. I could see my truck easily and new that if Peggy arrived I would see her white car. Around 5000' the air was getting noticably colder! I could now see Turtle-Flambeau flowage and many other smaller lakes around the area. The tiny lakes were disapearing as I went higher. I had been up to 5400' one other time, so I decided to go to 6000' just for the heck of it. Still no Peggy, so I kept going and when I reached 7000', Turtle flowage was very easy to identify by shape, not only size. Man, it was getting cold up there! My right hand on the control stick was getting really chilled. So I decided to try for 8000'. Don't ask what the logic was there.....
Somewhere around 8000' I realized that the strange looking area to the north was Lake Superior!! There cannot be any other feature in that direction that is so large. Seems that I could see the shape of Chequamegon Bay and the Bayfield penninsula going farther north. Hazy to the south, a few clouds to the west with the sun trying to shine through them. I was realizing that the altitude gain was becoming slower, I suppose due to the altitude and thinning air. At 8500' I decided to try for 9000... go figure. By 9000 I was getting seriously cooled off. I kept switching hands on the controls so I could warm the cold hand by sticking it inside my shirt. I realized that I was only 1000' below the maximum altitude that a sport pilot permit allows you to go. So I thought, "what the hey, might as well hit the limit". Who would have thought I would decide that???? So I slowly made my way up another grand and watched the needle touch the "10,000 feet above sea level" mark on the altimeter. Wow! Things on the ground looked pretty small, although the airport was very distinct and Phillips was still easily seen, but not with much detail. So I made about a 180° slow turn while crusing at 10,000 and then thought I better think about heading down cause it was getting near sunset, my official quitting time. It had taken the better part of an hour to get up to 10,000 so I thought I would get down a lot faster than that. I adjusted the throttle so the engine went from about 5800rpm to 4000. Pitched the nose down so I was going about 65mph airspeed. This seemed a little rough, so I kicked the rpm's up to 5000 and pitched down enough to go 70mph. This seemed really smooth and I was able to bank into a turn tight enough to only have a radius of about half a mile. This descent was pretty awesome and I kept switching from left turn to right to get different views. Even at this rate it still took about 10 minutes to reach pattern altitude of 2500'. I then returned to the airport and landed. The warm air at the surface felt pretty darn good at this point!! So that was my high-altitude adventure today. What a thrill! I have been thinking about this 10,000' cap and what it would be like to fly that high. I knew that someday I would have to check it out, I just didn't know it would be this soon......

I gotta go, Carlo