Why I Didn't Fly to the Annual Fishing Trip

I’m in Ely, MN this week (closest airport: ELO) for the annual fishing trip. It was a grueling 5.5 hours drive from Chicago to Rhinelander, WI (RHI) to pick up my father and his new boat. Then it was another 7.5 hour drive to Ely. Not my idea of a fun day.

Why didn’t I fly to Ely? After all, flying up for the annual fishing trip was one of my primary motivators for getting a pilot’s license. Three reasons.

1. My mother and brother were in Rhinelander and needed the car I drove up to get back to Chicago. Of course, for the amount of time it took me to drive to Rhinelander, I could have flown up there, picked them up, flown back to Chicago, dropped them off, and be most of the way back to Rhinelander again. Assuming my mother would be willing to fly in a small aircraft, which she’s not. Fear of heights.
2. Midway Aviators might have let me take the plane for most of a week and only put 7 hours on it—if nobody else was already on the schedule. However, the weekend I needed to leave had people scheduled in the airplane for both Saturday and Sunday.
3. I’d have felt bad leaving my father to drive the trip from Rhinelander to Ely, and from Ely to Rhinelander, to Chicago by himself.

So, I drove. I don’t know that I’ll drive again next year, though. It’s just too much time to be cooped up.