The Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art was ordered shut by Covidcrats in 2020 and allowed to reopen in February 2021. Just a couple of months later, the museum closed for a renovation that was supposed to be complete in 2024 but, according to the lady who sold me a ticket to the temporary exhibit space in a nearby underground mall, is now on track to be finished in 2028.
What’s in the temporary space? “Velvet Terrorism,” an exhibit on the decade-long protest by Pussy Riot against Vladimir Putin and Russia’s military operations in Ukraine.
From the brochure:
The first couple of rooms:
What was one of the punishments that a Pussy Riot member suffered? She was unbanked, exactly as the Canadian truckers who protested forced Covid-19 vaccination were unbanked by Justin Trudeau using “emergency powers” (NYT). (Separately, I met a Canadian who had gingerly approached some of the truckers at the time. “They were the nicest and most peaceful people you ever met,” he said. “I was afraid to stay too long, though, because I didn’t want to become a target myself.”)
Pussy Riot’s war under the sacred Rainbow Flag was covered:
(It is unclear to me how Putin can be considered responsible for “killings and kidnappings of gay, lesbian, transgender and queer people in Chechnya“. Russia has had tremendous difficulty in its attempts to control what happens in Chechnya, resulting in at least two full-scale wars.)
The public were invited to write down and post their thoughts in response to the exhibition. Most seemed to have been written by Anglophones. Almost nobody seemed to be thinking about Vladimir Putin, Ukraine, the lives of 2SLGBTQQIA+ Russians, or any of the other issues raised by Pussy Riot. Here are some of the notes that were off the main topic:
What were a plurality of the signs about? Here’s a sampling:
Although the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”), which is the elected and overwhelmingly popular government of the Palestinians, is not famous for celebrating Rainbow Flagism, there was the inevitable…
If Al-Shifa Hospital gets fixed up, the Montreal museum visitors are imagining gender affirming surgeries happening there:
Those who identify as feminists also want to see a corner of the world ruled by the guys who raped, maimed, and murdered women on October 7 (nearly all women who were born long after the events of 1948 that is the root of Arab grievance, so it is unclear how they can be blamed for the Nakba):
Ironically, after viewing an art show about criticism of Vladimir Putin, patrons were motivated to trumpet their alignment with Vladimir Putin’s position regarding Hamas (it is unclear that Putin supports “river to the sea liberation” (i.e., the elimination of Israel) but he is more supportive of Hamas than the typical national leader in Europe or North America).
This is a report on the spectator experience at the Thursday evening Formula 1 practice session in Las Vegas 2023.
My friends had $1,500 three-day tickets in the West Harmon bleachers (the cheapest seats; the average price paid was, supposedly, $7,000). One week prior, I bought a Thursday night resale ticket for $180 plus $35 in Ticketmaster fees, managing to get into the same row as my friends.
The obvious hotels were Planet Hollywood, Paris, and Horseshoe, which are walking distance from the West Harmon entrance. These were available in the $100/night range (plus fees!). However, I was concerned that my flight from Burbank, California might be late and didn’t think that it would be possible to get from the airport to a hotel inside the track after 7 pm. (In fact, we saw cars and taxis going in and out continuously. There is at least one temporary bridge that was built over the track to allow access to hotel-casinos inside the track.) I booked a Hilton near the convention center for a slightly higher price and took the monorail with my friends.
How could hotel rooms during this event have become so cheap? Las Vegas has roughly 150,000 hotel rooms. “F1 claims a healthy 315,000 fans attended the grand prix over four days” (ESPN). That’s only about 100,000 people on any given day. If the predicted traffic and hassles scared off non-F1 tourists, the inevitable result was a lot of empty rooms.
The F1 hype began at the airport:
Our ticket enabled us to go in at 6 pm and begin eating the included Wolfgang Puck food and drinking the included non-alcoholic beverages. We arrived just after 7 pm to poke around the fan environment. A big screen displayed a pre-race TV show. There were a few fun activities for fans, but most had long lines. The food options included a weak hot dog, too-far-from-the-grill grilled cheese, a strange dry ramen box, chicken and waffles (cultural appropriation? they were good in any case), a purportedly Chinese-style chicken salad (more cultural appropriation), cider donuts (terrible), and churros (did not try). Lines for food were reasonable to non-existent. There were huge lines at the store until quite late:
Our bleacher seats had a good view, but the legroom was tight for anyone over 5’6″. The temperature was about 55 degrees. Here is what it looks like (1) walking up the stairs (note portapotties in the background; they really needed people to perform hourly cleanings on what became disgusting environments), (2) the (distant) environment for the rich and famous, and (3) the view of the track from near the top of our bleachers (we were actually sitting quite a bit closer).
When the cars began zooming by at 8:30 pm, it was impressive to see the showers of sparks from cars scraping minor bumps in the road in front of us. At around 8:39, however, the race was halted because, we were told, a manhole cover’s concrete frame had failed. I was deeply confused by this because the course is on a public street. If trucks drive over the manhole daily and don’t break it, how could an 1,800 lb. F1 car, even with a downforce multiplier, break it? I haven’t figured out the full story. The F1 folks say that a concrete frame failed, but not whether it was a new concrete frame installed for the race or the standard frame put in some years ago by the city. I think that the answer to the “why didn’t it fail when a truck drove over it a week ago?” question might be that the F1 car broke the cover/frame with force in the opposite direction. I.e., the cover was sucked up rather than pushed down. This is a force direction for which manhole covers aren’t normally engineered.
The second practice was scheduled for midnight. Quite a few people stayed to drink $12 beers and $39 LED-lit trophy-style glasses of booze:
We walked out to the nearby Horseshoe casino (formerly Bally’s) and relaxed. Even with the track being hot, people were getting in/out via taxi:
My friends went back to their apartment around 11 pm. They were unconvinced that the midnight practice would happen on schedule and were planning to return for Friday and Saturday. I decided to reenter the fan zone. The monitors displayed messages saying that there would be an update soon. There was no longer a line for podium photos, so I got a picture to take credit for winning the race on the damaged track via rugged Honda Odyssey:
At 12:30 am, the monitors promised that the next practice session would start at 2:00 am. I bailed out because I needed to get on an 11:20 am flight from LAS. What happened to the diehard fans who stayed? The organizers kicked them out of their seats at 1:30 am, then ran the practice beginning at 2:30 am with no spectators. It was like a CIA torture scheme in which the enemy is kept awake for hours and then denied what was promised.
I’m glad that I didn’t buy anything at the store because everyone received a follow-up apology email from the F1 folks with a $200 coupon for merchandise as compensation for the missed hours of racing action. Which two hats will I be able to get with this $200 coupon plus $50 for tax and shipping?
The next day I went past the Greenspun College for Urban Affairs and very nearly found the DEI gates:
Inside the terminal, I found Sainz’s car after the manhole cover encounter:
Would I go back? Even with the monitors provided, it was much more confusing to try to follow the race live compared to watching on TV and having things explained. For Jho Low types who don’t mind spending $10,000+ on a three-day ticket, I’m sure that the luxury zone with pit tours is fun and comfortable. It’s a permanent building so probably they have some decent bathrooms at least. I guess it would be worth it if you’re plugged into the international set of other people to whom $10,000 is pocket change and the event would be a chance to see a lot of your friends.
For everyone else, perhaps a last-minute ticket to the Friday evening event would make sense followed by watching the main race on TV in order to (a) save money, and (b) learn what was happening. It is straightforward to go in and out by monorail. If there is a long gap between races, it is easy to go out of the event, find a relaxing place to sit at a restaurant or in a casino bar, and then return.
Readers: Who understands the mechanism via which the manhole cover failed? Also, who enjoyed watching the race on TV?
A friend washed off all of the Playa mud and shared his experience of Burning Man 2023, Rain Edition.
What was great? He arrived on Thursday before the official event began and enjoyed a week of “Unnaturally perfect weather; no dust.”
His favorite art was a gigantic cube made from intermediate bulk carriers (IBCs). An IBC out of IBCs. Each cube had a light and became a pixel. “People could climb it. A few broke ankles,” he said. “The perfect example of ingenious art that is awe-inspiring by its simplicity and beauty out of materials that can be reused after it is taken apart.”
Overall, though, he felt that the art was not as awe-inspiring as in previous years. “There was a proliferation of laser-cut sh*t all over the Playa, including the otherwise-magnificent Temple. That’s a lazy way to build something intricate.” Perhaps this is because some of the A-listers didn’t show up this year. Unlikely in a typical year, tickets were easy to come by. What else wasn’t so great? “There are still too many plug-and-plays. The ebikes. They move too fast and the riders are like Tesla drivers: annoying people in a hard-to-explain way. Burning Man bikes are supposed to be crummy and hard to pedal. It shouldn’t be effort-free to move around.”
How about the art cars, now that Mayan Warrior has been destroyed by fire? (“They spent at least $8 million on Mayan Warrior”) “Titantic’s End is an art car iceberg is supposed to raise awareness about climate change. It has an interior room chilled to 32 degrees, lasers, massive sound, and everything else than can be done with an unlimited CO2 budget,” my friend noted. “We were not impressed.”
After a week of good luck, the rain began on Friday morning. With only shreds of mobile phone service, which immediately collapsed as soon as the event began in earnest, attendees had limited access to weather forecasts. “Rich people had Starlink, but everything went down after it started raining. The rangers told us no more rain coming and it f**king poured for days,” he said. What would he have done if he’d been better informed? “We would have partied way harder at the beginning and then left Thursday night.” Was it that bad? “It was a crisis made for social media and schadenfreude, but really not that different from going on a ski vacation and getting injured after a day or two. Some people kept partying, but we were discouraged so we stayed in our tents. Nobody could drive an art car, bike, or even walk in shoes. You could walk barefoot, but it was nasty.”
Dare we touch on the bathroom situation? “Porta-potties never became completely full, but were really gnarly, even for hardened ravers. We ended up finding a plug and play with $10K composting toilets on the last day. They had graciously opened their toilets to everyone. People had been prepared to pee in bottles and poop in trash bags, but it didn’t quite come to that.” Was the situation inevitable? “Toilet pumping and camp water deliveries stopped Friday morning. The cops had heavy equipment and super off-road dune buggies, but they just disappeared. Maybe they could have parked a pump truck at each station and kept pumping, for example.”
Was he sorry that there wasn’t a muscular response from President Joe Biden? “All the camps were sharing. Nobody went hungry or thirsty. The vibe was a little like Central American post-earthquake.”
What about the escape? “We tore down and mooped over a couple of days and I made a run for it but the rented car got stuck. I managed to walk back and pull myself out with my team and our biggest truck and return to our now-empty campsite for a cold and wet night. The next morning, Monday I guess, I mapped out the best route by foot, around bad streets and stuck vehicles. I deflated the rental car tires and went for it, but still got stuck. Some a**holes aggressively yelled obscenities at us for trying to escape, other people came out and pushed us. Once I got to K street, I cut out on playa and just plowed thru the swampy parts and banged my way out onto the gate road and out.”
What about the fact that the gate was closed for both in and out? “I heard that people were being stopped and could not get out, but when i decided to blast my way out early Monday morning there were no cops in sight. The gates were open, but not advertised as open. A campmate who arrived in a Toyota Land Cruiser managed to get out on Sunday night. He has a lot of experience off road and had traction pads with him.”
Who cleaned up the mountain of muddy trash that he left behind? “We did a full pack and moop before we left. We left a guy behind with the 4×4 truck and 8000 lb. trailer and supplies. He stayed till Temple burn left the morning after. So we cleaned up; not like the f**kers who ‘walked it out’ leaving all their sh*t behind.”
Summary? “We were well prepared so mostly it was the loss of part of the event and being stuck at camp a few days, but I got out right before Exodus so other than the nail-biting stress of getting to pavement, it was totally easy drive.”
What about the folks who waited for the official opening of the gate? He sent me this photo of Exodus:
Will we get a more thorough dissection of what could have been done better from the burners who know the event best? My friend says “No. People aren’t comfortable complaining about the Burning Man organization. They get over it or stop going.” Does it matter that failings won’t be examined? “In the end, Burning Man is like California. It’s so resource-rich that no amount of mismanagement can ruin it.”
This is a report on the coronapanic level in Panama observed during a February 2023 visit.
One of the first sights stepping off our Royal Caribbean ship was a mask directive in the duty free shop:
Walking outdoors in the sunshine near the canal:
Two years after coronapanic began, compliance with these indoor and outdoor directives was spotty. Note the chin diapers on the supermarket employees below, for example, and on a gal in an ice cream shop.
On April 1, 2020, the government of Panama introduced a gender-based lockdown in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. This meant that women and men were only allowed to do essential shopping on alternate days. … An unintended consequence of this measure was that police and private security guards began to single out transgender people for profiling for being out “on the wrong day.” In some cases, they arrested and fined trans people, or prevented them from buying essential items like food and medication. These cases of discrimination occurred when security agents’ visually identified trans people, or after they checked the sex marker on their national identification cards.
Panama was celebrated by the United Nations for its California levels of school closure (more than one year). What were the results achieved by locking up the trans shoppers, kicking kids out of school for 1.5 years, forced masking, and coerced vaccination? Panama ended up with a slightly higher COVID-tagged death rate than no-lockdown, no-mask, no-school-closure Sweden (statista).
What if a Panamanian emerged from his/her/zir/their bunker having survived COVID? Our guide explained that Panamanians pay roughly 20 percent of income in tax. “That covers retirement and health care,” she said. “There is no property tax and you don’t have to pay anything when you go see the doctor.” A tourist from Canada asked if there were long waits to see doctors. “Oh yes,” the guide responded. “Sometimes you have to wait for two weeks.” Women retire at 57, men at 62, and police after 25 years of work (age 43 if they start at 18). Life expectancy is almost the same as in the U.S. (ranking), about 82 for women and 76 for men. Thus, women enjoy 11 additional years of retirement compared to men (5 years from the younger retirement age and 6 years from the longer life expectancy).
One mystery is how the life expectancy in Panama can be comparable to what we have here in the U.S. We are informed that abortion care for pregnant people is life-saving health care. The U.S. is the world’s abortion care capital. By contrast, “Abortion in Panama is illegal except in instances that the pregnancy is life-threatening or the health of the woman is at risk, or if the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest. … The punishment for a woman who has an illegal abortion is one to three years in prison. The punishment for a doctor or other person who provides the procedure with the woman’s consent is 3 to 6 years in prison.” (Wikipedia) If abortion care is rare in Panama, how are Panamanians able to live just as long as Americans?
Panama is an underrated tourist destination. The wildlife is as interesting as in Costa Rica. The historic old city, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is a lot more pleasant than Cartagena. Everything is easier for the traveler because the country is so much richer than these neighbors. Let’s have a look at the old:
Some fancy church interiors:
The “latino style” shop:
(I stopped in to ask directions to the Latinx style shop.)
What pays for it all? Global commerce! Ships going through and also 500,000 containers per year being transferred to another ocean via the Panama Canal Railway.
Now that the 125-degree heat is winding down in the U.S. and readers in the soon-to-be-frigid north are planning their winter escapes, some thoughts on a popular warm destination…
The culture nerds in Paris designated Cartagena, Colombia a World Heritage Site back in 1984:
Situated on the northern coast of Colombia on a sheltered bay facing the Caribbean Sea, the city of Cartagena de Indias boasts the most extensive and one of the most complete systems of military fortifications in South America. Due to the city’s strategic location, this eminent example of the military architecture of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries was also one of the most important ports of the Caribbean. The port of Cartagena – together with Havana and San Juan, Puerto Rico – was an essential link in the route of the West Indies and thus an important chapter in the history of world exploration and the great commercial maritime routes. On the narrow streets of the colonial walled city can be found civil, religious and residential monuments of beauty and consequence.
… The components that make up the Port, Fortifications and Group of Monuments, Cartagena, are authentic in terms of location and setting, forms and designs, and materials and substance. The property constitutes an exceptional example of Spanish military architecture of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, and the existing fortification works remain authentic examples of some of the most important military engineers of this period, including Juan Bautista (Giovanni Battista) Antonelli, Juan de Herrera y Sotomayor, Antonio de Arévalo, Ignacio Sala and Juan Bautista MacEvan.
The US Secret Service prostitution scandal involved as many as 20 women, 11 American agents and some military personnel, senior US officials say.
Senator Susan Collins, briefed by the Secret Service director, said 20 women were found at the US hotel.
The incidents took place in Cartagena, Colombia, ahead of last weekend’s Summit of the Americas.
The BBC article includes a subhead “Dog-handlers investigated” with no explanation or elaboration.
Hoping to catch up with Hunter Biden, I visited in February 2023 via Royal Caribbean’s Vision of the Seas (onboard Internet made it a work trip with a colleague in which we stopped to stretch our legs periodically).
Coming into the historic city and docks as viewed from the deck:
Let’s check out the iPhone 14 panoramic capability:
Here are the smart folks walking 50 steps and getting on a tour bus:
Our decision to walk took us through a fun welcome center:
As soon as we got out of the port, we were besieged by taxi drivers who told us that it wouldn’t be safe to walk into the historic center. We ignored them because we wanted to get a feel for the town and they were partly right. The first 15 minutes of the walk is on narrow sidewalks that are in poor condition. The streets are jammed with traffic and it was already uncomfortably hot by late morning.
Nonetheless, it was interesting to see a few views that the tourist who zips straight to the historic center might miss.
The tourist center is jammed with… tourists:
The cathedral offers some escape from the sun and heat:
The local museum features some good views of the plaza below and also some practical ideas for Covidians:
The Ring doorbell people could take some ideas away from here:
The town was previously fortified by a wall and now is protected against invasion by a ring highway as well as the wall.
This is unfortunate because the town can’t truly meet the water. We walked to the 16th-century Castillo de San Felipe de Barajas, watching our step carefully:
Then it was an Uber (less than $3 for the luxury option) back to the port.
Note the young slender local wearing a mask (voluntarily, I think, because some other employees did not have them). Colombia had a “mandatory nationwide lockdown” for approximately six months. Children lost more than a year of education as “most of the schools remained closed during most of 2021”. Borders were closed until May 2021 with testing and vaccine papers demands after that. The population was ordered to wear masks outdoors through at least February 2022 (Reuters) while indoor masking was required in 2023. (What was the short-term effect of these efforts? Colombia has suffered from a 23 percent excess death rate (versus 5 percent for no-lockdown no-mask Sweden) since January 1, 2020.)
Were we sad to sail away? Did we wish we’d booked a hotel and stayed three or four days? No and no. The old city of Panama is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the Panamanians are much wealthier than the Colombians, which means they can afford to restore everything, including the sidewalks, and they don’t need to be aggressive in trying to sell stuff to tourists. Also, there is much less car and truck traffic. If we wanted to vacation in the midst of an old Spanish colonial city in the region we would choose Casco Viejo.
If you’re planning to visit, maybe stay in the richest part of the modern city and hit the historic stuff for one or two days. Or check it off your bucket list by visiting via cruise ship! December through April are the agreed-on best months to visit and this is also when cruise ships sailing from Florida are unlikely to encounter any hurricanes (end of November is the end of the season for nautical and property insurance woe).
COVID-19 is dangerous enough that one should wear a mask, but not so dangerous that one should shop for books on Amazon?
We are informed that marijuana can cure almost any illness, yet below is a marijuana shopper who feels the need to protect him/her/zir/theirself via a mask (Fauci-approved cloth version). If he/she/ze/they is about to inhale healing cannabis, why does he/she/ze/they need to worry about a minor bug such as SARS-CoV-2? Note also the trans-enhanced rainbow flag on the front door.
Speaking of rainbow flags, nearly every merchant had one, but only some featured Black Lives Matters or Trans People Belong signs.
Note the tattoos behind the Sign of Justice:
The University of Vermont featured both indoor and outdoor maskers of the young/healthy/slender variety, but unfortunately I was too slow to get good photos. Even more upsetting: the “intentional intersectional space” was closed.
Shout-out to Heritage Aviation at KBTV for the usual awesome service. Also to U.S. Customs at Burlington for hassle-free clearance inbound from the Land of Blackface and Political Unity.
I’m celebrating on Mount Desert Island, home to Acadia National Park, having arrived here via ghetto-class Cirrus SR20. I’m staying in a neighborhood of oceanfront houses that were worth $2-4 million pre-coronapanic. This evening, about 30 folks gathered for dinner two houses over. Everyone who wasn’t a full-timer had arrived by air, either private or scheduled, to the BHB airport. The lockdowns and Internet (lucky to get 80 Mbits down and 10 Mbits up here) added a lot of value to these houses, but I think that aviation is responsible for much of the value.
I can’t find any economic analysis of how much out-of-the-way vacation spots have increased in value now that they’re accessible by air. These places were worthless before the railroads. Bar Harbor became conveniently accessible via rail, it seems, in 1902 (Wikipedia). The place took a hit from the invention of modern air conditioning by pioneering female engineer Wilma Carrier ( A/C made staying in New York City or Washington, D.C. more tolerable) and then got a boost from improvements in aviation. The overnight sleeper trains from NYC might have been as comfortable as today’s Cape Air flights, but coming to Bar Harbor from Alabama (we met some folks at a restaurant who vacation in Acadia every year) was impractical.
[If we’re climate change alarmists, which I hope that we all are, we can also look at the benefits to Bar Harbor, Maine from CO2 emitted by aviation. Maine isn’t a pleasant place to swim yet, but if Greta Thunberg is correct this could be the next Miami Beach.]
Some over-sharpened iPhone pictures from a carriage road in Acadia:
View from my friend’s back yard:
Cars and Coffee at the Seal Cove Auto Museum:
The big hotel in downtown Bar Harbor:
The only rainbow flag that I could find downtown (note the lack of trans-enhancement):
What it has looked like most of this summer:
Climate change has brought a wet/cold summer to Vermont, Maine, and Quebec.
From a recent trip to Mauritshuis, a house-turned-museum in The Hague. The curators say that the house was built with profits from slavery in Brazil, but apparently they refuse to give the house to Brazilians who are descended from slaves and then pay rent:
A few additional photos of/in the museum:
The most famous Vermeer was pressed into service for righteous shops, reminding customers to wear a mask:
Speaking of disease, the museum has a great Rembrandt, The Anatomy Lesson:
The other big art experience in town is Panorama Mesdag, which convinces you that you’re standing on a dune using the best technology of 1881. The foreground is real sand:
Europeans who love Americana seem to be more passionate about their hobbies than we are. The Dutch Pinball Museum in Rotterdam confirms this general observation. I asked Gerard van de Sanden, the founder and collector, why he closed at 6 pm. “All of the American pinball collections stay open until midnight and sell as much alcohol as possible, which is how they make their money.” He replied that the late-night crowd didn’t treat the machines well and preserving the machines was more important to him than making a higher profit.
Compared to arcades in the U.S., the Dutch Pinball Museum is as quiet as a church. All of the machines have had their volume turned down low so that it isn’t deafening when the museum gets crowded. Visitors are friendly and enthusiastic. I talked to one couple where the husband has 11 machines in a backyard shed. They’d driven 3 hours from the farthest corner of the Netherlands to spend a Saturday here. The wife wasn’t an enthusiast, but joined nonetheless. On the way, they picked up friends, a couple where both husband and wife play. They have 5 machines inside their house.
It’s made in Holland by the Dutch Pinball company. Despite the obscurity of the manufacturer, the owner says that the machine is not difficult to maintain (though metric tools are required).
Unlike the typical “play all you want” arcades that call themselves museums, this one makes an attempt to educate:
This is a great machine for playability, but I don’t love the theme, perhaps because I am not a horror movie fan and have never seen the Elvia TV show.
It’s Europe, so the collection must include a soccer game:
If you love space, the collection includes Black Hole and Stern’s fascinating innovative Orbitor 1:
With five technicians working in the background, the collection is quite strong on playable older machines. Example:
When you’re done, take the water taxi back to the city center.
Then hit the Markthal:
Where else can one experience great pinball in Europe? The owner suggested Krakow, Poland.
Separately, Rotterdam itself offers a mixture of Western debauchery and Islamic rectitude. A strip club is close to Halal Fried Chicken, for example:
Related:
the world’s largest pinball museum, in Banning, California, closed during coronapanic and never reopened (it was replaced by a marijuana-growing operation; the New York Times story mentions that the 1,700 games could be worth $7 million, but fails to note that marijuana will succeed pinball)
Here’s a report on a crossing from Belfast, Northern Ireland to Canada in July 2023 in a Cirrus Vision Jet (my review).
The machine: one engine, one parachute, 31,000′ service ceiling, cruise speed of about 310 knots, range of about 900 nautical miles. It lacks almost everything that the regulatory gods want to see for an aircraft crossing the North Atlantic. There is no HF radio. We could not spell or pronounce CPDLC, much less operate with it. We were one letter behind on ADS, being equipped with ADS-B rather than the more impressive ADS-C. Nonetheless, we were entitled to fly the most sensible route for a short-range airplane at altitudes up to at least FL280 and sometimes all the way up to FL310 (the accessibility of RVSM flight levels is tough to predict, even for the experienced planners, so make sure that you have enough fuel to make it at FL280).
A common route for short-range aircraft… EGAA, BIKF, BGSF, CYYR:
The biggest challenge with this route is that Greenland, because it remains a colony of Denmark (the natives would prefer to have accepted Donald Trump’s proposal and become part of the U.S.), has only two decent airports, both built by the U.S. military. Kangerlussuaq, which started out as “Sondrestrom” during World War II, is where all of the jet airliners land and where any general aviation pilot who doesn’t imagine him/her/zir/theirself to be a hero should land. The Cold War-era Thule, now “Pituffik Space Base”, is too far north to be a useful alternate and is generally closed to civilians (see Project Iceworm for what we did up there without telling our Danish hosts). Nuuk, BGGH, might be a reasonable alternate when they finish extending the runway (delayed until 2024 due to coronapanic). See charts below.
There is always the possibility that BGSF, which lacks a parallel taxiway, will get shut down due to a disabled aircraft. I wouldn’t advise any attempt at crossing unless BGSF is forecast to be good VMC (visual meteorological conditions).
A lesser challenge is the long leg between CYYR and BGSF, which is readily doable with a tailwind, but crosses a lot of water and takes an airplane out of communication range at 30,000′. Why not skip this by substituting CYFB (Iqaluit, Nunavut; not to be confused with “Frobisher Bay“) for CYYR? Now the leg is 487 nm instead of 872 nm and much of the route is within gliding distance of land.
We had an additional challenge on our trip. The owner-pilot of the Vision Jet had been in Europe for a couple of months with his family and we were tasked with bringing a furry child back to the U.S. Iceland and Greenland are unfriendly to Canine-Americans and, therefore, it would have been extremely ugly if we had gotten stuck due to weather or mechanical issues. Maybe the pup would have been locked down in quarantine for weeks (like a California K-12 student!). Maybe the owner would have had to sleep with her in the plane. In theory, dogs are not even allowed out on the airport ramp/grass to pee.
Although apps such as fltplan.com and ForeFlight can provide good weather briefings and performance calculations, most people making the crossing elect to use a planning and dispatch service such as Air Journey or Shepherd Aero. We used Shepherd and, in addition to the high-level and low-level planning, they provided a raft and survival suits in Belfast that we later dropped off in Bangor, Maine. They also handled the paperwork requirements for approval to operate in the North Atlantic high-level airspace (“NAT HLA”; see link at the end).
Our day started around 6 am at a Hilton golf hotel where we checked weather and navlogs over breakfast. The TV described “millions of public sector workers” getting raises in the UK. Fortunately, we are assured by top economists that a wage-price inflation spiral is impossible.
We showed up before 8 am at Global Trek, the FBO at the big airport in Belfast.
We unlocked the baggage door so that the local maintenance folks could top off the oxygen bottle. If a jet depressurizes at the midpoint of one of these legs and descends to an altitude where oxygen is not required, the additional fuel burn will result in a failure to reach the destination. The only way to avoid a swim is to put on the oxygen masks and stay at least reasonably high, e.g., 20,000′. The mask is also a great tool for avoiding a deadly SARS-CoV-2 infection from one’s co-pilot. #AbundanceOfCaution:
(What if you don’t get the quick-don oxygen masks on after an explosive decompression? The Vision Jet, thanks to the Miracle of Garmin and having seen a cabin altitude above 15,000′, will automatically descend to 14,000′. In theory, the pilots will then wake up. If they don’t, the Garmin AI will try to Autoland (I’d like to see that in Greenland! Autoland requires a GPS approach with LPV or LNAV/VNAV at an airport within 200 nm).)
What about a weight and balance calculation? Given long runways, cold temperatures, and mostly-smooth air, being slightly overweight is not a significant risk (not a tough issue for us because all of the back seats were not only empty, but had been removed). Would it ever make sense, from a risk management point of view, to leave out fuel or survival gear in order to hit a book number? (In Greenland, the fueler didn’t even ask whether we wanted to be topped off. He simply topped off the plane because nobody would be dumb enough to depart over the North Atlantic in a light plane with less than full fuel.)
Prep for the unlikely event of that single turbojet engine breathing its last? As with Caribbean flying, it is essential to have a life raft and as many EPIRB/PLBs as one can reasonably attach to one’s raft and person. In addition, however, one must have a survival suit to protect against the cold and wet. Here’s me suited up for the crossing and/or the Climate Change (TM)-induced floods in the Northeast (photo taken at the end of the trip, in Bangor, Maine; note the sun-reddened face due to the Vision Jet’s less-than-complete UV protection):
How does it work to operate the latest generation of touchscreen avionics with hands like Zoidberg‘s? What’s conventional is to wear the survival suit up to one’s waist and be prepared to don the rest in a worst-case scenario. The folks who do this all the time get constant-wear dry suits that have separate gloves ($4,000 in pre-Biden money).
We departed with full fuel and full oxygen at 9:00 am local time, just as planned, climbed to FL300, and stayed within radio and radar range for the entire nearly-3-hour trip to Iceland. The only old-school task that we had to perform was tell Reykjavík Control when we expected to enter their airspace at RATSU. Radio communications on the entire trip proved to be easy and informal. The controllers are nowhere near as busy as FAA controllers, so you can always ask for a clarification.
We were able to get to FL300 and found the temperature, due to humans ignoring Greta Thunberg, to be ISA+4. True airspeed of 315 knots plus a tailwind of 10-20 knots.
Landing in Iceland is relaxing because BIKF is a huge international airport with two runways and, in the event of shutdown by fog or mostly-peaceful protest, BIRK is next door and also has two reasonably long runways. The wind was blowing 29 knots when we landed, which made taxiing in certain orientations challenging and also required some thought regarding parking orientation for the restart. The powerful wind was forecast to continue for four days, so we were glad that we hadn’t planned to stay. Our canine companion was not allowed out of the plane and immigration came out to meet us in a shack to check passports, despite us having expressed no intention to leave the airport or stay longer than required for refueling. Elites sometimes need to stop here in their Gulfstreams, e.g., if on their way from Los Angeles to attend a climate change convention deep into the Mediterranean and carrying a full load of sycophants. Consequently, there is a reasonably nice FBO with a full array of free drinks, a jail, and a children’s play area. Delicious pizza was delivered, but I had just one slice due to concerns regarding the bathroom facilities on the SF50 (none).
Here’s our beauty contestant on the ramp (n-number obscured):
(If you disagree that the Vision Jet is beautiful, remember that we crossed during the same week in which a person assigned male at birth was crowned the most beautiful woman in the Netherlands (BBC).)
The fuel truck in Iceland is more like a Mississippi River towboat with a fuel barge behind it:
It was then time to fire up and head for Greenland, another three-hour leg. The planning elves filed us for FL280. Our route took us directly over BGKK, an airport on the east coast of Greenland with a 4,000′ gravel runway. We could see a handful of buildings from the air, but nothing resembling a settlement.
Being “over land” in Greenland is not quite as comforting as it would be in the Midwest. Can you see a good place to land via parachute?
The weather had been forecast to be great for landing in Greenland, with ceilings of more than 5,000′. Nonetheless, the approach to the runway is right alongside enough terrain to get a pilot’s attention. Here’s our GPS approach on the Garmin G3000:
The closer to the airport you get, the more straightforward the view, but notice the mountains behind that would complicate a go-around or a departure:
Safety tip: fly every procedure as slow as possible. That gives you more time to think about whether you’re following the procedure precisely and, if you’re in an auto-everything aircraft like the Vision Jet, to see if the magic is set up properly.
Because only peasants who can’t afford a Falcon or Gulfstream would ever visit this airport in a private airplane, there is no FBO. Airline passengers are welcomed in a terminal, but light aircraft park in the middle of nowhere and are shuttled back to an airport management office to use the restroom or call CANPASS to report an expected arrival (only the pilot-in-command can do this and we waited on hold for 40 minutes; the regulars told us that this Canadian government service went downhill during coronapanic and never recovered).
(Don’t tell anyone, but our passenger escaped to the side of the ramp for her own restroom action.)
BGSF is an inefficient airport because everyone tries to land 09 and depart 27 (in from the fjord and out toward the fjord). We had to burn fuel on the ramp for about 20 minutes before the arrivals were all down and it was our turn to depart opposite direction (the wind was actually favoring 27). This is another good reason not to plan on a maximum range leg out of BGSF.
It is always nice when the last leg of the day is the shortest and the final leg to CYFB, which was forecast to be reasonable VMC, was uneventful until we got the weather report… clouds at 200′ above the runway and visibility roughly 4,500′ down the runway. The approach minimums are 200′ and 4000′ of visibility. It would have made sense to go somewhere else except that there isn’t a lot else around. Fortunately, as I pointed out to our planners (channeling the New York Times; see also this story about the invention of computer programming), we could thank the female engineer who invented approach lighting. Runway 34 is equipped with approach lights that a pilot will be able to see at 200′ above the ground even when visibility
