Orchard Supply Hardware is closing it’s doors. I find this incredibly sad. It was purchased by Lowe’s some time back and Lowe’s has decided to shutter all the OSH stores. I’ve been shopping at our local OSH for 30 years, ever since we moved to this dusty town. I went to the store this morning to see what was left. Everything is 40-60% off but there wasn’t much left. I saw a few long-time employees slowly dismantling the shelving and one cashier surfing her iPhone. It was a sad sight. I turned around and walked out. I’ll miss you OSH. Say hello to Sears when you see it in the land of broken dreams.
Author: The Flying Dutchman
I am a man who loves Christ, loves my wife, loves my family, loves my church, and loves aviation. In that order.
Celebrating 31-derful Years!
It’s not our wedding anniversary for another couple weeks but I decided to go ahead and book a trip for my wife and I to Las Vegas to see The Moody Blues. What’s left of them anyway. There are only 3 surviving members that I know of and one, the drummer was ill and couldn’t be at the show. That left the two lead guys.
Anyway, even though these dudes are in their 70’s they can still rock it! We wanted to see them because their song “Your Wildest Dreams” is “our song”. When we were dating it seemed to play on the radio every time we were together so we have fond memories of that song.
That was then… this is now:
We walked back to our hotel afterwards and pretty much collapsed. It was a long day. A seven hour drive followed by a concert, yeah, time for some sleep!
The next day we just kind of wandered around. We got breakfast at Starbucks over at Ceaser’s Palace. Cristy browsed the shops at Ceaser’s and kicked back and surfed my phone.
We decided to walk down the strip for lunch. We made our way to Urban Eats down at New York New York. We got there via what I like to call urban orienteering. Meaning, we went from casino to casino walking through the middle of the buildings rather than just down the side walk. It took all morning and we were pretty hungry by the time we got to the restaurant. Plenty tired too.
I didn’t get any pictures of our walk but I did get this movie of a chocolate fountain inside The Bellagio…
After having lunch we were too tired to walk back so we grabbed a Lyft ride back to our hotel. We napped and watched movies all afternoon. It was awesome.
Later that evening we walked back over to The Bellagio for dinner. I had always wanted to see the water fountain at night so this was my chance. We had dinner at another sushi place. We shocked the waitress when we asked her if we could pray for her. She almost didn’t know what to say but she did make a small request so we lifted that up to God in prayer for her. Dinner was VERY good and afterwards we made our way out to watch the fountain show…
Afterwards it was back to our hotel to relax before our long drive home the next morning. At least… relaxing was the plan. We fell asleep around 11pm or so. At about 1am our next door neighbor came home incredible drunk and incredibly loud. And he brought friends! They were so loud it sounded like they were in our room! We tried to ignore them because after all, it was Las Vegas on a Saturday night. But finally at 3am we couldn’t stand it any more and called the front desk. About 30 minutes later all was quiet and we finally fell asleep.
There was nothing special about the long drive home so no pictures or description. But despite the final night’s setback we really enjoyed our anniversary trip. Every year with this woman just gets better!
Time Off From Work
I’ve taken the latter part of this week off from work. I definitely need it. The pas few days I’ve been doing my best to practice for retirement. Though as you can see from my countdown ticker it’s still several years away. I got up before the sun each morning, hitch up my trailer and drove out to New Jerusalem Airport. Both days the air was smooth and nice. I guess the wind thought I was at work. The P3 performed flawlessly, the engine never stuttered or skipped a beat. Two days in a row I flew past a local elementary school and got the kids all excited. They were jumping up and down and waving. I waved back of course.
It’s a wonderful feeling to be just sitting up in the air in a comfortable chair watching all the commuters rush to work, watching food being harvested, watching life from above.
Yesterday I a local balloonist was out as well. It’s always fun to watch them set up and launch. It’s the only aircraft that is more trouble to set up than my own.
I’ll leave you with a few more photos of the past few days.
Happy landings everyone!
Is It For Sale Or Not??
I’ve been flying my P3 more now that I have it up for sale. Or is it for sale? I was going to take it off the market and keep it but there has been a sudden interest in it from a few different parties. In fact, this caused some confusion on the part of the good folks at Six Chuter but all is well now. So if the sale falls through with these new folks, then I will OFFICIALLY take it off the market in every way shape and form and just sell the trailer. But know this potential buyers; it’s not going to sit and collect dust!
Here’s a video of this past Saturday’s flight. What a great morning!
More Air!
It’s Labor Day weekend here in the USA. I’ve been blessed to be able to fly this morning and a wonderful flight it was! The air was cool and calm. I flew “feet off” meaning I didn’t have to do much steering; just point it in the direction I wanted to go and then rest my feet on the bars. Here is a quick video clip recapping this morning’s flight.
I’ll be back at it again tomorrow morning! Happy Labor Day!
40!
What’s the significance of 40? That’s how may pounds I’ve lost! I started changing my eating in December of 2017 and as of August 31, 2018 I’ve lost 40 lbs! That’s about 2.9 stones for our British friends! This isn’t a diet. It’s a lifestyle change and has to be lifelong for me to keep the weight off.
So my rate of weight loss is 3 to 4 lbs per month. So at the 1 year mark I expect to have lost 52 lbs! Let’s hope!
Pattern Work Before Work
Winds were forecast to be calm(ish) on Friday morning so I decided to try to get in a little flying before work. I didn’t have much gas and I didn’t have much time but there was just enough of both for me to get in 4 circuits around the runway. I was a little dubious about the visibility but again there was enough to fly safely.
I was up at 5am without the alarm. I took that as a sign that I should go ahead and hitch up the trailer and head out to New Jerusalem. I headed west out of town on a dark country road. Then pulled into Friday commuter traffic on a dark country highway. They are all driving to the San Francisco Bay Area. I’m only driving to New Jerusalem. No hurry. They can all cut each other off and drive like lunatics. I take my time. Turned right onto another country road. A short time later I turn on the the dirt farm road that leads to the gates of New Jerusalem. No literally. There is a fence around the New Jerusalem airport. Luckily the good folks at the City of Tracy shared the combination to the lock so we can get in and enjoy this little gem of an airport.
I parked, put up the wind sock, unloaded the P3 and started the engine so it could warm
up. It was really chilly this morning. It felt and looked more like winter than August. I got into my ski pants while the engine warmed up. I could just make out the sun as it started to rise. The haze was really thing this morning. A combination of smoke and fog.
After warming up the engine and doing a run-up I taxied the P3 about halfway down the taxiway and setup for takeoff. There was a light wind blowing but it was straight down the taxiway. I started the take off roll, waited for the parachute to settle down, and then applied full throttle and gently started climbing skyward.
I flew about 4 circuits and the landed to pack up and head to work. The rest of the story is pretty boring so I’ll just leave with a short video of a portion of today’s flight.
P3 Lite Is Running Great
I took my P3 up for a quick flight this past Sunday morning. Turned out to be a perfect morning and if I didn’t have to go to church I would have flown longer. The smoke from all the wildfires we have here this year had backed off to the north and east and the air was crystal clear over New Jerusalem. Just flew around for a bit to stretch my wings and set back down so that I could make it to church in time with my wife. Made it home with 15 minutes to spare!
Here are a few photos and a video from the flight.
Salinas River State Beach
The smoke is finally starting to clear here in California’s vast Central Valley but at the peak of the smoke problem Cristy and I just had to go find some clean air. We decided to head to the beach! Our favorite beaches are near Monterey. Monterey Bay has numerous beaches and wildlife so is one of our favorites. Plus it’s fairly close to us.
We trekked down I-5 to Highway 156 and over the hills. The Diablo Range specifically. On the way we stopped at Casa De Fruta for some snacks to take with us to the beach. It’s a good bathroom stop along the way too. If you have kids its a great stop with a small train, petting zoo, and lots of stuff to help the kids expend their energy.
We continued on to the coast and stopped at Sand City Beach near, you guessed it, Sand City. We actually park in a large shopping center just before Sand City. We got on the Monterey Peninsula Recreational Trail and walked the short distance to the beach. We walked up the beach a bit and then set up our chairs in a spot next to the cliffs that was sheltered from the wind. Although it was forecast to be 104F back at our home, the high temperature in Monterey was forecast to be 69F. At the moment it was only 59F! But we had brought our jackets and the view under the coastal fog was wonderful. And the air was spectacular. It was the first non-smokey air we’d had in weeks. We just kicked back, watched the little ground squirrels (beach squirrels I guess) scurry around us looking for scraps. I tossed them a couple of raw almonds. SCORE! We also watched the paragliders silently soar along the cliff sides.
The ONLY thing we don’t about this beach is it tends to have a lot of seaweed and associated seaweed smells. So we decided to move along. We drove north towards Moss Landing to see we we could find a better beach. Just as I was approaching the Moss Landing city limits I saw a sign for Salinas River State Beach so I decided to turn off and check it out. To our surprise the parking lot only had 7 or 8 cars in it. We unpacked our chairs and walked down the sandy trail over the hill to the beach. We walked a short distance along the beach and set up our chairs. At this point the fog was starting to break up and the warm sunshine felt good.
We decided we had sat enough for the day and took our chairs back to the car. I noticed a sign for a nature trail so we decided to walk down it to see what that was all about. So glad we did the views of the backside of the dunes were stunning. Dozens of varieties of flowers, sea grasses, and succulents lined the trail. We walked down it for about a mile before taking a side trail that lead over the dunes back to the beach. This section of the beach was entirely deserted except for one jogger and later a train of horses and riders. It was absolutely wonderful and we’ll definitely be back to this beach.
We walked back down the beach to where we first entered the beach earlier and headed back to the truck. We then drove up across Elkhorn Slough to a small marina and had dinner at the Pacific Grill. We had lovely views of the slough and the sea otters and kayakers that were out on it as we had dinner. After dinner we just sat in the truck and watched the otters and kayakers on the slough until the sun sunk into the re-forming fog. All in all a wonderful day!
California Is On Fire
Not all of it. But it may seem like it from the news reports. And the smoke in our area is intense. Please pray for the firefighters who are battling these blazes and for the people who have been displaced and lost homes.
Here is a map of the fires.
Air Prayer 