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Report:
 The
Hopper sat alone on the tarmac, seemingly
excommunicated from playing any of the reindeer
games with the larger commercial airliners that
were scattered along the tarmac on the other side
of the runway. It was around 1330 as GZ and I
ran through the preflight checklist and pushed
back from the gate. We taxied down towards the
runway, an AerLingus A310 faintly visible as she
lifted off the ground. By the time we were aligned
on the runway the A310 was already 7 miles from
the airport as the tower gave us our takeoff clearance
at 1348. We had a late start today if we were
to make it to London City.
 As
we cleared the haze around 3,000 feet, we started
to consume our beer selection for the flight....
Sagres.
Being this close to Morocco, I somehow had scored
a fez hat in a drunken stupor and some unrecognizable
bar in Lisbon. I’m not sure how I obtained
it, and something tells me there is a good reason
for not remembering. George took quite a liking
to the hat after beer number two and decided he
would be the one wearing the fez hat for the duration
of the flight. As we followed some flowing rivers
north of Lisbon and we continued to drink, GZ
was the first to loose the unspoken drinking bet
of who had to "break the seal" first.
As he headed back to the loo, I could have sworn
I heard him mumble, "I gotta get a look at
myself in the mirror while I piss with this fez
hat on..."
After
leaving Portuguese airspace, the Spanish terrain
near the coast began to take shape, some with
little pockets of clouds nestled in between the
valleys. Before you  realize
it, you are over water. In this case, we grossly
misjudged how far it really was from Lisbon to
London. After slowly making progress, we decided
we'd make a pit stop in Merignac (Bordeaux). So
we turned ourselves east and found Bordeaux fairly
easily. I botched another landing way left of
center, and taxied to the gate, popped open our
door and waited for Pierre to deliver us some
beers.
While
awaiting the arrival of the beer in Bordeaux (yes
we realize its wine country) we pulled out a map
of the area to figure how much further we could
get before it was too late. For reasons unknown,
we zeroed in on a lovely city by the name of Brest.
Missing an 'A' or not, we knew this destination
was meant to be, especially since we never made
it to Cannes.
 We
climbed out to 15,000 feet and along the way snapped
some cool photos of the Hopper with a few contrails
behind us. Our approach into Brest was hazy with
low visibility. Again, there were some misunderstood
ATC instructions as we encountered a CRJ100 taxiing
down RWY26L at the threshold! Two puzzling things
about this:
A)
There are insufficient taxiways at this airport
which necessitate that a plane taxi on an active
runway.
B)
We were not informed of this aircraft's position,
and were unable to see the traffic due to low
visibility.
 Additionally,
there is a RWY26R which is barely visible in the
photograph. Already quite a bit behind for the
night, we made a very unorthodox move and skipped
the hassles of a missed approach and simply landed
behind the CRJ100 and quickly exited. This goes
a long way to prove one of the ideals behind this
project: Drunk pilots make bad decisions!
Its
hard to tell from the low visibility just how
spectacular this Brest is, hopefully we will have
better weather on our
departure to London City and points beyond...
GB
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