What a day! After flying toward Mt Whitney close to sunset, we flew on north to Bishop. Next morning I ran to get my camera as this helicopter hovered before landing. So wanting to get him mid-air, but too late, yet still loved the action of the dust billowing around him, close to our parked plane.
0515 Helicopter at Bishop, early morning
by ~Anne
We’re just back from a thrill-packed twenty-four plus hours of flying fun, family garnished. Haven’t taken time yet to review our hundreds of pix, but some are totally breathtaking. We took off from SBA in the late afternoon, headed direct to Mt. Whitney (tallest mountain in contiguous U.S.). For most of our years together we assumed that at some point we’d join the throngs on an arduous hike to the summit. Seems that we’ve now released that notion, so our focus had shifted to seeing it from the air. So when we saw Friday’s forecast for unusually low winds there, Tripp’s stellar ability to climb high was put to the test.
1176 Smokey Mountains
I feel fortunate to be flying in the era of online weather info and GPS. One thing that I’m still missing though, is a good online source for smoke data and forecasts. CA is blessed with the most geological diversity in the U.S. (maybe the world), but unfortunately that includes large areas subject to wildfires. I’ve yet to find a way to anticipate how much smoke will be in an area we’re planning to fly. As we approached the high Sierras, this smoke-strewn horizon had me seriously considering a complete change of plans.
1217 Whitney At Last
Happily we carried on, and were treated to relatively clear (and calm as forecast) air next to Whitney. The mountains there are all very high, so for added safety margin over the high valleys and a better look at the peaks we reached 13k’ – our highest altitude to date in Tripp. Due to leaving late the light was fading, so in addition to living our dream of getting up close we also kindled a new dream for return flights in clearer air and better light!
1247 High Tea
In this shot looking back toward the southeast you can clearly see the shack on top where people can leave a record of their summit. Also presumably a shelter for anyone caught up there by a storm, I like to imagine a cup of warm tea. It wouldn’t be hot because water boils at a pretty low temperature that high above sea level (unlike nearby Death Valley where it boils hotter than anywhere else in the U.S. due to being below sea level).
We (hopefully Anne too, cuz she got some great shots) will be sharing more spectacular pix from this trip in coming posts. Meanwhile I’ve posted a few different ones on my Photo Page.
ps-here’s a dusky Eastern Sierra mountain lake we passed descending into Bishop for the night. Look how many fish seem to be jumping, leaving all those ripples!
1268 High Lake Dusk
Today was especially special for us. We did a variety of things, with emphasis on those Anne loves best and at a pace fast enough to be exciting but slow enough to savor each activity. After an afternoon swim we hung around home for a while and then went for a sunset spin in Tripp. Anne learned how to do radio calls, and I explained some of the things that go into flying. We’ve talked many times about doing that, but somehow either I’ve been too busy flying or she’s been too busy enjoying the view or doing something else. Today she seemed to begin getting a grasp on the simplified steps that help her grasp the process of transitioning Tripp from flying to landing. If I review the steps again for her next time we fly, maybe she’ll remember them and have a better sense of what had seemed to her a confusing blur of hand movements that goes into every landing.
Since the moon will be full in three nights it was up early and I got this shot of it over the Mesa. I just snapped it without taking a moment to check settings, so it’s not a technically good photo but I like the effect and maybe it’s worth what you’re paying. 🙂
1157 Waxing Mesa Moon
Off to our left a moment later we passed Hendry’s Beach (tourists know it as Arroyo Burro), where we’d thought about going for a beach walk and maybe stopping at the restaurant afterward. Instead we enjoyed the golden glow of sunset washing over other couples strolling the beach as Tripp thrummed her quiet sound slipping along offshore at low speed. So beautiful!
1160 Hendry's Sunset
Back on the ground, we drove into town shopping for a quiet meal. Cruising our Altered State Street we settled at Pascucci’s. We used to go there often, but tend to spend all our money on flying lately. By splitting a meal it ended up pretty inexpensive, and we enjoyed the new menu. Sitting at a quiet table by the fireplace we celebrated the approaching end of a special day.
There seem to be ever more days lately, that find us many times feeling a serene joyfulness permeating our awareness. Often we’re noticing it simultaneously and other times one of us tunes into it, looks at the other who notices, then in timeless eye contact we journey to a blissful state together. We spoke with a friend with some mobility challenges about happiness recently, and another friend from Sri Lanka today about his joyful anticipation of returning to that country to care for his aging parents. If the days grow colder and we face new medical, financial or other challenges I hope we can embrace those times with some measure of the deep joy we feel now. May your days bring ever more consciousness of the beautiful and fleeting life we all share.
When I was little, my family drove along the California coast several times to visit relatives and in our moves from SoCA to Bay Area and back. When we’d pass what I now call the Oil Island between Ventura and Carpinteria, I’d gaze at the palm trees out there and imagine exotic South Seas adventures. When we flew near it on our return flight to SBA Tuesday, I noticed the reddish hue of an algae bloom in the water just off the beach at the lower-right and imagined glowing waves breaking in the moonlight that night.
1092 Oil Island
I guess musings like those are why I thought of this place as Fantasy Island. I wonder whether that reddish hue really is the kind of algae that creates bio-luminescence, and whether the people in those beach houses splash in the liquid light on warm nights.
Closer to Carp we saw people surfing, sunning, and this pair walking their dog.
1094 Beach Walk
Sure reminds me of all the beach fun we’ve had in this area. I can almost hear the soothing surf fizzing in surges of white noise, and feel the moist sand between my toes. Does it make you take a long, deep breath like I just did?
Picture yourself in a boat on a river. The water is serenely moving to your right, and not far on the other side is a small cove with trees dangling down to the quiet water on either side of a grassy bank where your picnic awaits. As you leave shore, without thinking you point the boat slightly to the left of your inviting destination. You’ve made a course correction. Further out into the river, the speed of the placid river subtly increases and again you turn slightly more to the left of your idyllic goal. Another course correction.
Basically the same thing happens when you’re flying, except it’s air moving over the ground rather than water moving over a riverbed that you’re reacting to so as to fly a straight line to your destination. Another sort of course correction we’ve made in our flying adventures has to do with changes in our destination. In the river analogy, it could be that you see the picnic being moved to another cove so you change course to go there. Or perhaps a large bit of flotsam or another boat drifts into your path, so you turn right or left to go around it. Maybe someone arrives on the shore you just departed, so you return so they can join the picnic. We’ve made far too many course corrections to count on our various flying adventures. So it is with life, when we set out to do something and end up doing it sooner, later, differently, or not at all.
Well in case you haven’t already guessed, last night we made a major course change for our MerriTimes Adventure. We’re not going this week. That means we’re not going this year, because weather is already getting marginal on the most northeastern part of the route: the leap of faith we contemplated from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland. That hop would involve about 20 minutes of flying over open water beyond reach of land in the exceeding rare event of a sudden and total loss of power. Rare as such things are, it’s also rare that I fly anywhere there’s not an open flat field or road within gliding distance to land. To increase the glide distance, I fly higher when good areas are more distant (1,000 feet altitude = 1.5 mile glide). Since the “Newfy” hop is over water my plan was to climb until Tripp lost her lovable eagerness to go higher (probably 16k’ or so), to minimize the “no option but water” portion. Flying that high means I’d want few if any clouds to contend with, which in turn means reaching that part of the Adventure in mid-September. Not happening.
There’s an even bigger factor in this course change though, related to our Inner World. If you’ve read much of this blog, you already know that I often wander off into the realms of psychology and consciousness. In fact, I’ve done that often enough and far enough from the academic interpretation of “Psychology” that I’ve just now renamed that Category on the blog. Everywhere I used that tag in the past, it’s now changed to “Inner World.” I like this better, because for me it evokes an expanded and integrated sense of studying the psyche (psych-ology) to include what some might call spirit, trans-personal, or consciousness.
So this inner course change is a major detour into an exploration of all the things that have been moving us off course for our early September launch into the MerriTimes Adventure. This stuff is very powerful, and very deep. Last night and this morning we’ve already taken an epic inner journey into impressions, thoughts, feelings, needs, and behaviors related to that delayed departure. We’ve touched some beautiful inner shores that reach back to childhood, navigated some scary rapids, paddled flat out, glided lazily downstream, and endured some daunting inner weather. There’s clearly a lot more to come on this journey, and maybe Anne will share some of her experiences along the way too. Meanwhile, we’re flying closer to home for a while in the outer world.
Speaking of which, anyone still reading might enjoy as I just have, a few more memories and pix from our latest short flight: Santa Paula. Maybe you’ve already seen the larger version of this one on my Photo Page, but I had to share it here because it just takes my breath away every time I see it.
1060 Santa Paula Beautiful
I love that there’s something so beautiful and so different from all the other beautiful places within an hours’ flight of SBA. One of these days we’ll need to venture out to that “red barn” farm (bottom-left) from the airport that’s at the base of the mountain on the right just beyond that white horizontal strip (you can probably make out the runway if you click to see the large version). This farm is in what seems to be a red barn area that had a fun looking pumpkin patch in another of my photos, so maybe they always have some diversions for the public. Here’s another angle on it with a closer view of the “color code.”
1063 Color Code
What I mean by that is the various-sized patches of bright colors give me the impression of a code. Like those collections of colorful little pins that each signifies something on the chests of generals. Or the carefully arranged symbols of some extraterrestrial race, that our earthly farmers plant as they do without knowing what moved them to choose those plants and arrangements. Is some subliminal code the reason I seem endlessly fascinated with such fields, or is it just that from this relatively intimate height in the air they remind me of a carpet or blanket I drooled on as an infant?
1068 Baby Blanket
Climbing out of SZP (the airport) on the short hop back home I saw another reminder of childhood in this rural estate.
1071 Miniature
I used to imagine myself alone in a small plane when riding my bike along dirt paths in empty lots. The weeds were trees, and everything else would take on that scale. An empty beer can became a large propane tank, and a finely-crafted doll house like the one above would have invited a “landing.”
Within a couple of minutes we were passing Ventura framed by the Santa Barbara Channel Islands on the horizon. Such an incredibly beautiful place – how could we have imagined leaving this on a MerriTimes Adventure?!
1086 Ventura to Anacapa
Say, does anyone else have that old Beatles song running in their head now from reading the first sentence of this post?
John & Anne Wiley 
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