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Report:
We expected the trip to Greenland to be about as exciting as the old AMERICA song, "I've Been Through the Desert on a Horse With No Name." But things are not as they seem, our 1,200 horses share the name Hopper, and this desert had too much water. While not passing time in flight talking about the fine merits of La Fin du Monde, or listening to George’s side splitting rants about Squirrel Girl and the Amazing Scotty (editor's note: a future American musical standard-bearer), we really did have some serious business to tend to during the flight.
 Back on the tiny gravel runway of Port Hope Simpson we toasted our departure of this five horse logging town and indeed North America itself, it will be many months before we are back on its soil. Winds were mild at a steady chop from 177 at 05. Real-Time weather was AGAIN overcastwhich meant once again, even our short time over land would not provide us sufficient visibility to enjoy Ruud Faber’s World scenery textures. We’ll be hitting Europe in the summer, so we’ll have plenty of time to marvel at his wonderful creations then, in the meantime our double-segment Trans Atlantic flight awaits us. We wasted no time getting Hopper off the noisy gravel runway, and as we turned to our flight plan course heading, we rocked the wings a few times as a farewell thanks to the kind folks of Port Hope Simpson for taking care of us this last week.
 Climbing through FL120, visibility was poor but we could still make out a few lakes and rivers in fact, I tried to point out “Lucky Lake” which I dubbed not only for my personal record of fish caught in one afternoon, but after the exhibitionist couple I spotted a few yards away that were getting it on and causing a stir that I originally mistook for a pair of mating wolves. I’m still amazed the fish were biting. By the time I had finished that story, we were climbing through FL150 and had finally broken free of the cloud layer and it was blue skies ahead with the little fluffy layers beneath us.
As we left the coastline and began the long flight across the Davis Strait to Greenland, the clouds had cleared but the invisible fun had appeared in force. Initially it was only an 18mph headwind, which increased with our altitude to 39mph at our cruising level of FL300. Slowly, the Hopper started getting knocked around which made pouring the beer a very careful task. As if we were flying through the Bermuda Triangle, the winds strength was consistent but the wind directions changed in a clockwise motion around us and eventually became a nice 40 mpg tailwind which helped improve our groundspeed nicely over the desolate waters.
 This only lasted a short time, and again the winds changed and we were getting pushed off course. We ended up locking our autopilot heading to the flight plan loaded on the GPS, and Otto Pilot handled the rest for us. Good man he is. The waters were a deep dark blue, and there were some nice puffy clouds below us. I had hoped to grab a screenshot of some clouds that looked like the Virgin Mary, but didn’t see her on this leg. At one point however, we did see some bizarre water texture formations below. Blocky sections of dark blue water and a more greenish blue water texture that looked like giant Tetris pieces in the ocean. Probably the US Navy again doing some deep water sonar research. Look for some beached sea mammals in the coming weeks.
 After a good 3 hours over the water, we finally had the rolling coastline of Greenland in our sites. About 20 miles out, Nuuk ATC cleared us to land straight in, and we obliged. However, we spotted a Cessna 182 on the taxi way a few miles out. With flaps at full, our gear down and throttle dialed back to land, around 300 ft off the ground the moron in the Cessna takes off in front of us! I quickly made some adjustments, and adjusted our throttle and gained altitude to a second approach attempt. Second time around, the airport was clear of craft and we made a nice landing on RWY 5 with no winds to contend with. Total fuel used on this flight: 54%. We’re looking forward to our short time here in Nuuk, and can’t wait to tour the spectacularly dessolate landscape here, and of course we can't miss the Carlsberg brewery in the area.
The next leg will be nearly as long, taking us to Iceland. While there, we'll go in search of Bobby FisCher so we can kick him in the shins.
GB
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