That was way too easy!

Sometimes we get to fly the painless trip. That is when nothing goes wrong and everything else happens so easily and simply. I picked up a two day trip, one leg LAX to JFK, 24 hours off, and one leg back. Easy! The leg out was a redeye. We taxied out of our alley to see a clear path to the takeoff runway. Nobody was in front of us. We had just leveled off when we were asked if we wanted to go direct somewhere down the road. I had noticed in the dispatchers’ remarks in my flight plan that the winds were favorable for “directs”. We accepted and were given a direct to a point about 150 miles east of JFK, about 2000 miles. Sweet! Taking advantage of the tailwinds we arrived about 45 minutes early. After we taxied in and shut down the engines I looked at my copilot and said, “That was too easy”. We came back 24 hours later to good weather, a jet that was ready to go with cargo and fuel on board, a friendly gate agent, and all the paper work ready. The passengers were boarded and we pushed back early. We were told to expect to takeoff at a runway intersection directly in front of us and that we were number one. We actually had to wait 45 seconds for our engines to warm up the required minimum amount of time. We were scheduled for 50 minutes of taxi time and we only used 8. We flew back to LAX at 38000 feet with mostly clear skies. Our route took us north through New York, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Albuquerque centers airspace. We arrived 40 minutes early in LAX. At the gate in LAX, I told the copilot he must be charmed because I never have things go that well. What was different about this flight is that from New York to the western part of the Grand Canyon there was a continuous layer of snow covering the ground for as far as we could see. Were talking 1500 miles or more of just snow. The picture here was taken at 38000 feet north of Lincoln Nebraska, heading west. I do not think I have ever seen that much continuous snow, ever. Be Safe, FlyGuy