Since it’s supposed to rain this weekend I decided to get in another flying session this morning. Besides, I really need the practice. My launch was not as good as yesterday’s launch but much better than the launch video I posted a few days ago. All but one of my touch and goes were great. Here are the highlights of this morning’s flight.
Are You Sure You’re Autistic?
I just got done reading a blog post from someone claiming to be autistic. She was very eloquent in her description of how “neuro-typical” people treat her and how she acts around them. Now, I don’t know what it’s like to be autistic but I sure know what it looks like. You know, just because you’re socially inept that doesn’t mean you have autism. I mean, you could just be really annoying. You know?
I always explain autism this way, and I could be wrong but this is how I see it. Imagine you have been abducted by aliens. They come and grab you in your sleep and whisk you off to their planet. They dump you off right in the middle of their society and leave you. Now what do you do? They communicate in ways you don’t understand. They do things that make no sense to you. They get angry at everything you do because everything you do is considered wrong in their society and you are incapable of learning to do what they do. I ask again, what do you do? How do you get along? How do you react? Do you turn inward? Do you become frustrated and then angry? THIS is autism.
I don’t know whether that blogger is autistic or not. Autism is a spectrum disorder so one can be mildly or severely affected. That being said, being rebellious is not autism. You can’t start acting anti-social and then just declare yourself autistic. My son is autistic and he hates that label. I don’t look at him as autistic. He’s just my son, and he’s pretty cool.
Lazy Wednesday Morning Flight
Since the weather was going to be as perfect as it could be this time of year I decided to sneak in an early morning flight before work today. I had originally wanted to work on taxiing my trike. This is where I would just drive along the ground with the parachute canopy (wing) inflated and practice steering it. However, the winds, such as they were, were not aligned with the runway and I would be taking off crossways. I made a deal with myself to quickly kill the engine and start again if the wing got out of control and set up again. As it was the wing came up perfectly. I throttled up and when the wing came up, I throttled back a bit letting it stabilize and steering to stay under it. The wing looked nice and stable so I slowly squeezed the throttle and felt myself lifted into the air.
There was none of pendulum-like rocking I experienced on my last flight. Just a nice stable ascent. I climbed up to about 500 feet and levelled off. I must have had my anti-torque strap adjusted correctly because I also didn’t experience any right turning tendency like usual. I was able to stow both brake toggles and fly with my hands in my lap. The brake toggles are what you steer with; pull the left one to go left, pull the right one to go right, pull them both to slow down before you land.
Sadly I did have work to do so I headed back to the field and landed. Total time: 30 minutes exactly. It was a practically perfect and peaceful morning at New Jerusalem Airport. Something I very much needed after the recent news I received. So how far can you get in a PPG going 25 mph? Here is a map showing my ground track:
My Own Domain
I’ve seen two blogs in two months convert from wordpress.com to wordpress.org and lament about losing data, users, whatever. If the point is just so you can have your own domain then you can keep your wordpress.com account and just purchase a domain name. You don’t have to change anything. At least, I didn’t. But then I’m not selling anything and I don’t engage in any kind of intracate web magic.
All I did was purchase a domain name through a web hosting provider that allows me to retain ownership of the domain name. Some providers will assist you with purchasing a domain name and setting up your blog but as of the time I first set mine up several years ago, the web hosting provider retains ownership of your domain name. It’s usually free as long as you retain their services but if you ever want to change providers…uh oh, they own your domain and will sell it to you for whatever amount.
That happened to me with my old domain name: airprayer.com. So I set up a new domain name: airprayer.net and had the hosting provider simply point it to the web address of the wordpress.com blog: airprayer.wordpress.com. This way I can take advantage of the security and features provided by wordpress.com. Now, I don’t know how things work if peopel are trying to monetize their websites. I’m certainly not. I’m kind of old school in that regard. I’ve still got the mindset of the web being a free exchange of information. Though… I’m a dying breed.
So if you just want a personalized domain name that’s one way to do it.
Behold, I Am Doing A New Thing
The title is from Isaiah 43:19. Don’t worry, I’m not going to get preachy (but if you would like to hear about Jesus just ask me!) My wife had some dreams last year where she kept hearing these words, “Behold, I am doing a new thing”, “Look, I’m doing something new!” After those dreams, our life started to change.
I’ve been an avid pilot my whole adult life. But since I’ve been convicted to scale down our lives I decided to sell my airplane and get into a more affordable type of aviation. I couldn’t sell the plane no matter how much I lowered the price. Then I crashed. Not a bad crash mind you, in fact, I crash better than anyone I know. (With apologies to Mel Gibson in Air America). Only the landing gear was damaged but it was damaged beyond economical repair so the airplane was totaled by the insurance company. I got more than I could have sold it for and with the sale of my hangar, I was able to retire all our consumer debt and put a sizable chunk away into savings.
“Behold, I Am doing a new thing”
Over the Fall, my autistic son became more violent. To the point we had to call police and take him to ER multiple times. Eventually we had to throw up our hands and turn to the county regional center who were able to find him a home to live in (because we couldn’t handle him any more). This gave my wife and I the breathing room we needed to think this through. I’m leaving a lot out for his privacy’s sake but bottom line is my wife was able to find him a new psychiatrist and get him on some medicine that actually works instead of making things worse. He is now living in a group home about 2 miles from us and seems to be doing much better. He wanted to move out anyway. Now he has and we have respite from 23 years of raising an autistic boy and man.
“Behold, I Am doing a new thing”
Last week I get news that I am being laid off in 4 months. Not just me, not just my group of 6 network admins, but the entire IT division in our corporation. All of us from managers on down are being let go. We also “get” to train our replacements in India. But the silver lining is we also get a severance package so I should have full pay until mid-October some time. This news would have been so much harder to take if my son were still living here, if I were trying to figure out how I was going to sell the airplane and hangar still.
“Behold, I Am doing a new thing”
Since my wife’s dreams all of the pieces of life have aligned to put us in a stronger position relative to losing my job. A stronger position relative to pursuing my dream of living a full time traveling lifestyle. I’m at a crossroads in life. Do I do Life 2.0 and “do a new thing?” I’m already applying to jobs that are in the field I’m qualified for. But there is something nagging at the back of my brain to work with disable children and adults. Do I do what I’ve always done and wait for that job to lay me off? Or do I do a job that will really make a difference in someone’s life?
Maybe it’s time to do a new thing.
Almost Blown Takeoff
I decided to get in a quick flight before church this morning. I made my way out to New J and found a couple other PPG guys out there and a hot air balloon. Should have been a nice easy takeoff but it was a little crowded. I should have moved farther down the runway. I should have oriented more into the wind. I should have a lot of things. Don’t worry, nothing bad happened. My pride got a little bent but nothing else.
As I was taking off my wing started to oscillate. Rather than slow down and dampen it properly I fell back on my fixed wing roots and gave it full power. I got off the ground but it wasn’t pretty. So I need to go back to New J and just do some taxi practice.
If a picture is worth a thousand words then a video is worth a million…
Saturday Morning at New J
I got out to New Jerusalem kind of late this morning, close to 8:30am. When I arrived I found I had company…
It was kind of interesting talking to the pilot in the blue ballon as he drifted over about 30 feet above my head. We spoke in conversational tones. “I like your wind sock. It’s the perfect size for us.” “Thanks!” Came back my reply. So odd not to hear the sound of an engine when an aircraft is climbing out of the airport. I took care of the lack of engine noise.
The gentleman in the blue balloon didn’t fly much longer than I did. The wind was negligable on the ground but very switchy and thermally about 100 feet up. I spent a lot of time swinging back and forth. I’m still trying to get used to this feeling. I think I need to fly with more paramotorists so I know what’s normal and what’s not. At any rate it wasn’t comfortable for either of us so we landed.
I put my rig away and then drove over to watch them pack up. I offered to help fully expecint them to say no, but the joke was on me as I was employed as a third set of hand between the pilot and his ground handler. I learned a lot about how they are constructed how they are flown and handled. Very interesting. I invited them to the High Sierra Fly-in. I hope they show.
Short Video Clip Of The Stanislaus River
Just thought I’d throw together a quick and dirty video of flying over the Stanislaus River near the New Jerusalem airport. The winter rains have made everything so green and beautiful. But then God’s earth is beautiful. It declares His glory.
Easter Picnic
I posted a bit about the Easter picnic I attended at the Red Hills Ranch. Here is a great video my buddy Rich Finkle put together on the event.
<p><a href=”https://vimeo.com/160811600″>Red Hills Easter 2016</a> from <a href=”https://vimeo.com/user1348439″>Richard Finkle</a> on <a href=”https://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>.</p>
I Have Been Co-Sourced
That’s the term Lockheed used when I worked there. Whenever a program was cut the employees were declared surplus to company needs. I guess this was supposed to help with our delicate psyches or something. All through the 1990’s the buzzword was “outsourcing.” A really nice way to say, “Hey, we really appreciate all the hard work you’ve put into the company but we’ve found we can pay people in other countries far less.” I’ve seen lots of jobs at my present employer outsourced to overseas companies. Basically your job was given to someone overseas and then you were out the door.
Now there is a new term; “co-sourcing.” As best I can this means, “We need you to train your overseas replacement and THEN you go out the door.” So, for the next few months I will be doing my part to train my replacement at a company overseas until early August. Now, the company is being as nice about it as they can be, offering a fairly generous severance package and the usual grief counseling. It’s still rather a shock and a surprise.
So why don’t I feel worse about it? Maybe because I won’t be on-call anymore? Maybe this is a good opportunity to finally change careers? I have to say God has been preparing me for this in ways I didn’t even realize. About 3 months ago I suddenly felt the need to find my son a place to live outside our home. It wasn’t just the fact that he was getting violent, it was just time. God also placed in in my heart to pare down the number of our possessions. I believed it was for living full-time in an RV but as He usually does, it was also in preparation for something else. So we’re going to continue in pare-down mode and keep trying to “downsize” our lives.
There are a lot of things to think about such as medical coverage, prescriptions and such. But we’re pretty sure God has already handled that for us. We’ll see what it is when the time comes. I have employment until the first week of August. After that the world is wide open. I’ve got several ideas but one thing I’m not going to do like when I got laid off from the bank; I’m not going to panic this time. God loves me and He certainly loves my family. He will provide a way for us and I’m anxious to see what that is.
Air Prayer 