John & Anne Wiley

2009/10/06

Another Santa

Filed under: Big Adventure — John @ 06:11

We had a glorious flight from San Diego to Santa Fe, which as you probably know has much in common with Santa Barbara. Like much of our flight today, we’ve been here before and intend to come again. Since everything we fly over from tomorrow onward will be new to us, we decided to only stay overnight with some dear friends. So we didn’t even divert a couple of miles to look down into Meteor Crater, or take five minutes to cruise the unbelievable sights of Sedona. Before takeoff tomorrow I hope to send a brief photoessay to EdHat (see the Words link on this page) and post some shots on my Photo page (see link). Hopefully internet access will be easier tomorrow than tonight! Meanwhile, all’s well and we’re reasonably on schedule. Our re-exploration of the glories between our two Santas have already bestowed ample scenic gifts.

2009/10/05

Angel Over Us

Filed under: Aviation,Big Adventure,Flying — John @ 04:23

Another Good Omen: an angel passed over our heads today, delighting everyone. We were in a car driving from Ramona to Black Mountain, and the Blue Angels aerobatic team was doing a show over Miramar. We tried to spot them in the distance, managed to see a close formation and a magnificent vertical blooming maneuver. As we talked about that I saw one coming at low level and high speed. It passed directly over our car in a 90 degree bank with vapor trails coming off the wing tips. Breathtaking! I know you’ll want to see the excellent image I captured of this. Alas, I know of no way to download it from my vivid memory and there was nowhere near enough time to grab the camera. So I hope these few words can evoke something in your heart akin to what we felt watching this fortuitous brush with aeronautical greatness. We’d intended to actually attend the show, but got distracted with everything else. Tomorrow we hope to get out early headed for Santa Fe, and pick at least one stop to stretch and refuel.

2009/10/04

Sleepy Saturday

Filed under: Aviation,Big Adventure,Flying — John @ 02:21

We were pretty tired today, so we slept until 9am. Dad’s 90th is tomorrow, so we joined the family taking him to the Wild Animal Park today. There’s more planned tomorrow, but also of interest to me today: driving the freeway we saw a 4-jet formation that I think was the Canadian Snowbirds team. They did a low pass with one leaving a dotted smoke trail, then returned to do a formation loop above the show just as we passed. Since I wasn’t driving, they then treated me to a formation spiral. Just before we were out of view, I was able to look back and see two of them passing low above the show with one inverted. Now that is fun!

Fun Thursday = Late Friday

Filed under: Aviation,Big Adventure,Flying,SB Region — John @ 02:11

We played hooky from packing Thursday to partake of SB treats. We had SB Zoo passes about to expire, so in one sweet hour we saw a diverse array of animals with a relaxed stroll in that took just an hour (details & pix in my EdHat post). Then we rambled an especially lively First Thursday on upper State, where we had several friends involved. We paid the price on Friday by leaving late, but it was worth it. We saw a few more SB treats from the air leaving town (words & pix in the above-mentioned EdHat post). We managed to get a route into San Diego that gave us a distant view of the Miramar Air Show, with two aerobatic jet teams parked amid acres of other fun flying stuff.

2009/10/02

Heavy Boating

Filed under: Aviation,Big Adventure — John @ 09:47

We’ve weighed everything with tally in a spreadsheet, and are about 75 pounds below maximum weight with full fuel. Alas, that doesn’t include the 40# kayak. It’s pretty amazing what it does include though! We’ve bagged it all into about a dozen bags of various sizes, and will weigh it all again tomorrow in groups of about 40# to get a more accurate reading from our digital bathroom scale. I’m confident we’ll be at or below our current total that’s rounded up from weighing things in the assorted 4# to 20# bags. So the good news is, when we arrive at Santa Fe with about half fuel we’ll be about 200# below max. weight. Now we get to distribute the weight for best flight handling, and find ways to lash it all down. Looks like we’ll have plenty of space for everything. We figure there will be some things we forgot, and can buy in San Diego. Other things we’ll get along the way can be offset by mailing home anything we’re not using. Plus we won’t be doing any high altitude flying after Santa Fe, so it’s ok to eat up a little of that 75# reserve later in the Adventure.

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