John & Anne Wiley

2010/08/16

How UCSB

Filed under: Aviation,Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,People,Random,SB Region — John @ 22:40

It seems to me that how You See SB depends on your perspective. In looking through aerial photos from our Friday flight around town, I realized we hadn’t shared this one of UCSB.

0848 UCSB Gate & Engineering

0848 UCSB Gate & Engineering

Then I remembered my first flight lesson at SBA. I’d toured the campus many times on a bike and the bus, and even more times by car and of course on foot. Never had I seen it from the air, except a brief glimpse from an airliner during landing or takeoff. As the instructor lifted off from one of the two “15” runways  that the small planes mostly use, we passed very close to the East side of the campus and the view just after liftoff was very much like this. I found it very difficult to concentrate fully on the instructor’s running commentary as I kept glancing and even sometimes staring at the magnificent setting of this place I knew so well from the ground. If you like UCSB and have never seen it from the air in a small plane, I sure hope you find a way because as usual photos can’t convey how magnificent it is.

0884 Floater

0884 Floater

Another fun thing to look at when flying over UCSB is the surf lineup at Campus Point, so we often check that out. Friday there was what looked very much like an abandoned air mattress floating near the kelp beds not far from the surfers, and I imagined someone idly paddling around there catching some rays. I hope the environmentalists on campus or at nearby Isla Vista eventually towed it back to shore.

0886 Campus Point Surfers

0886 Campus Point Surfers

To really watch the surfers you’re much better off on one of the bluffs of course. But I also enjoy looking down into the water, and though we’re moving relatively fast even during takeoff it’s fun to glimpse someone actually catching a wave. I’ve wondered whether sometime I might spot a dolphin, seal or even shark swimming near the surfers possibly without them even knowing it was there.

I guess you already know how much we love flying around Santa Barbara, even after having flown in so many other beautiful places. We already loved this area long before we had flown over it in a small plane. Doing that increased our enjoyment of SB by orders of magnitude. So just like viewing UCSB from the air, it seems to me that flying can change how You See SB. 🙂

2010/08/15

Perspectives & Media

Filed under: Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,People,Random,Relationships,SB Region — John @ 00:57

Today I had an eDialog with an eFriend, about the eXquisite nature of reality. OK, now that I’ve perhaps annoyed you, let me clarify a bit. By eDialog I mean conversation via email, as you probably guessed. eFriend is my way of describing a wonderful multi-year relationship I (and a few times Anne) have carried on with someone whom we’ve never met. I mangled “exquisite” just to playfully over extend the theme. 🙂

It’s such an increasingly strange and wonderful world we inhabit. Sure we’ve watched “You’ve Got Mail” with friends and talked at length about virtual friendships (including with our virtual friends). We’ve also enjoyed the great precursor films “Shop Around the Corner” and “Good Old Summertime” filmed back when it was all about exchanging physical snail mail with an unknown Dear Friend. But today I’m thinking for example about the greater depth I find in eDialog than back when I had physical pen pals.

Molly enjoys TXTing, and we’re doing more of that now but it’s declined precipitously now that she’s in France for the Summer. That medium and tweeting seem to me lacking in substance and capability, though TXTing can be very useful for some logistical stuff. To digress a moment, our cellphones often don’t ring so when we’re in Costco or some other big box store it can be frustrating to connect via voicemail, when a simple “Computer aisle” TXT does it instantly.

Email though, seems to beautifully mingle the dialog with our literary minds. Each participant can read and reply at will and whenever convenient, yet there’s instant delivery so topics don’t tend to stale as with snail mail. The fact it’s email rather than voice gives us the time and tools to easily edit and clarify our expressions via the literary part of our consciousness, rather than limiting our expressions to the vocal circuits (oh how many times I’ve left a truly stupid and incomprehensible voicemail!). I also like that my large amount of email dialog has improved (my opinion, but ask Anne) my verbal dialog.

So does any of this make sense? Do you have similar or contradictory opinions or experience?

Anyway, I’d like to also share another of yesterday’s aerial perspectives on this little bit of paradise we call home.

0852 SB Beneath Our Wing

0852 SB Beneath Our Wing

I’ve trimmed the highlights with a photo editor to better show something like what we saw, so the wing strut is reduced to the almost black angle bottom-left. I don’t know if you can make out the tread clamped on there, that I climb up on to check and add fuel. Some photos like this one (before I edited it) show that tread or one of our wheels, and remind me we’re in a vehicle. I mean, often while flying I’m in some special dual state. Part of me is flying, monitoring radio and all the instruments; and maintaining a 3D mental image of the airspace including nearest landing spots, other aircraft, obstacles, etc.

The “larger” part of my consciousness while flying though is in dream time. That special state so similar to my childhood flying dreams that I’ve written elsewhere might account for “prop advance.” This spacious awareness is more present and alive than my ordinary earthbound experience. This part of flying is why I most love it. Far beyond the many other joys of flying, this part resonates with infinity within me.

Noticing a tread I’ve recently stood on, or a strut, wheel or other part of the aircraft somehow yanks me into a sudden integration of ordinary reality with this “big” part of flying. Lots of words, but hopefully some glimmer of what I’m trying to express.

Do you get any inkling of what flying can be from the words and pictures?

Speaking of perspectives, occasionally we like to fly over Oprah’s mansion or some other playground (Neverland, for example) because it’s a glimpse of an entirely different reality.

0870 Part of Oprah's SB Estate

0870 Part of Oprah's SB Estate

There’s something really fascinating about seeing beyond the hedges and walls, because you get a dim and distant impression of what a person with basically unlimited resources will create as an expression of self. That of course, gets me noticing what our little place looks like and what we would do with limitless funds. O the possibilities. I like to imagine something small and modest, with the funds going to some sort of Grameen Bank effort and other contributions to our species and planet. What would you do with a billion dollars?

2010/08/13

Traffic

Filed under: Aviation,Flying,Happiness,Inner World,Random,SB Region,Tripp — John @ 22:55

Today was our first foray out into the world since our return. For a variety of reasons, we just stayed in for nearly a week! We’ve cataloged and put away most of the stuff from Tripp, and are about to go pet her a bit and maybe take her for a ride. Meanwhile tho, I wanted to share a realization from our drive into town.

Partly due to not having been out of the house much, and our only drive being from the airport home in the dark, driving in traffic was stimulating. We realized after a moment that during our NxNW Adventure it was rare that we rode in a car, and only a few times did we drive one. The last big city we were in was Edmonton about a week ago. Careening along a narrow lane at 65mph with cars a couple of feet away merging, passing and all that… Well, it was a bit overwhelming. I mean, if any of those drivers take their hands of the wheel for five seconds there’s going to be mayhem. Even though lots of them are on cellphones and a few are txting, most keep at least one hand on the wheel and glance at the road every couple of seconds.

Contrast this with flying, where the “marked” lanes are 500-1000′ apart and even without autopilot most airplanes will happily fly along on course for perhaps 15 seconds and then gradually drift a bit. Even in “crowded” airspace like SBA it’s not unusual to have great difficulty spotting another airplane even when it’s “close” enough that you’re carefully looking. Actually coming near another plane is very rare except of course landing and taking off, and collisions even more rare (though they get lots more media attention than the daily highway carnage). While flying, when a pilot says, “Traffic” it means there’s another aircraft visible somewhere, but I often say it when noting freeway congestion below with unabashed delight. Will today’s drive help me to feel more compassion for all those souls who aren’t flying? Am I an insufferable snob, who will get my due when our meager savings are all spent and we’re forced back to ground-based transport?

Well, enough spew. Hope we can safely reach the airport, and maybe get a glance at the freeway traffic from a safe distance. 🙂

2010/08/10

Counting

Filed under: Aviation,Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,NxNW Adventure,Random,Tripp — John @ 23:36

We had some fun in the wee hours last night, tallying up some stuff from our N by NW trip. Looks like about 9,600 miles covered in about 77 hours of flying. About 40 minutes of that flying was in darkness over familiar terrain. We flew in light to negligible rain four or five times, once in moderate rain, once in light hail, and nearly all of the trip in some amount of visible smoke or haze. Today on the smoke maps I notice that nearly all of our route is no longer shown with significant smoke, and once the fog cleared this morning our mountain view is deliciously crisp (we’re talking about taking an evening “homecoming” flight to enjoy the clear air!). We had ten nights in hotels and eight camping, including our little experiment: sleeping in Tripp.

That was at Terrace, when we decided to try out the cozy bed for two idea we’d heard from an expert SBA pilot. By rearranging stuff with the rear seat back removed, you can create a nice platform from the rear baggage area up to the front seat backs. I put bungees on to keep the front seat backs tilted forward, and inflated a twin-size airmat that was slightly squeezed where it entered the rear baggage area for four inches or so where the width tapers toward the tail. Looked pretty good. It wasn’t! The airmat took up too much of the small vertical space inside the tail baggage area, so it was impossible to roll over without pointing your toes. It was also too short for my 6’1″ without keeping my knees bent, and for two people the art of synchronized turning is also required. That was a very brief and troubled sleep, and it ended with an intense claustrophobic gasp that woke us both. It took a moment to realize it had come from me, and then I devoted a minute or two to meditation on transcending the illusion of inability to breathe, and after a very brief and groggy convo we decided to exit the aircraft. While I was struggling to invent a means of escape other than slithering face-first down the landing gear, Anne in one deft “Houdini” movement was standing outside wearing an especially broad smile as she danced and stretched. We then put up the tent and slept soundly for another two hours until the tent gradually collapsed onto my face, though that event was more quickly and easily resolved by just relocating on the luxurious padded queen-size airmat until the tent encroachment was avoided. As we’ve already written, the sleep ended a few hours later when airport security informed us in perfect Canadian etiquette that we needed to move everything back another 20 feet from the taxiway. In case you’re wondering, the tent collapse was due to the pockets that hold the poles having holes in them (thus the poles slip until the tent eventually stretches out flat on the ground with poles protruding through the pockets, though we woke before that happened).

Anyway! Here’s a map with our actual GPS track, except for a couple of small voids where I was futzing with the GPS and one short stretch hand-drawn where I’d forgotten to start a new track before the current one hit max and began deleting the end. The result of that was a long caterpillar shape moving across the continent with a growing gap behind it that no longer showed where it had been. Had I not remembered to do the two or three clicks to fix it, we’d have only the last 1/4 or so of our adventure from the GPS. I’ve added the airports we stopped at, for context.

GPS Tracks With Airports

GPS Tracks With Airports

Our longest flights were about 4-5 hours, and our longest day (with two flights) was probably from Medford home with the refreshing lunch stop at Sonoma. Most days were a leisurely 2-3 hours of flying, with lots of diversions here and there to look at stuff and some fun convos about where and when to take our next stop. Several times we planned a stop and then changed plans on a whim, based on the looks of our intended destination, or when weather (including smoke) invited us to reconsider.

You’ll recall that we landed at some of the airports (and some cities) more than once so here’s the complete list of our 29 landings since leaving SBA, in sequence:
Santa Ynez, CA *Night
Tonopah, NV
Jackson Hole, WY
Red Lodge, MT
Sheridan, WY
Pierre, SD
Ellendale, ND
Fond du Lac, WI
Sault Ste. Marie, MI
Sault Ste. Marie, ON
Thunder Bay, ON
Fort Frances, ON
Winnepeg, MB
Regina, SK
Unity, SK
Edmonton, AB (Municipal)
Jasper-Hinton, AB
Burns Lake, BC
Pr. Rupert, BC
Terrace, BC
Ketchikan, AK
Smithers, BC
Pr. George, BC
Jasper-Hinton, AB
Edmonton, AB (International)
Glacier Park, MT
Medford, OR
Sonoma, CA
SBA *Night

2010/08/09

Home From N by NW

Filed under: Aviation,Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,Nature,NxNW Adventure,People,Random,Tripp — John @ 19:53

Our grand North by Northwest Adventure ended just before 9pm last night as we glided down over the familiar hills of home toward the twinkling lights of Santa Barbara. Too bad we couldn’t get a photo of that to share, but it would be very difficult to do technically and couldn’t begin to capture what we saw much less what we felt!

What I can offer though, are a few of the least smoky pix of our passage from Medford. ATC kindly cleared us for left departure over town, so I snapped Medford Air where the plane that landed as we took off was parking right where we’d just been.

0777 Medford Air Services

0777 Medford Air Services

The old four-engine tanker on public display lower-left is where we stood in the dark waiting for a taxi to our hotel Saturday night. To the right of the tail is a yellow X and just above that is the dark-colored plane parking where we’d been. There are several other interesting planes at M.Air, including a jet with the tail blown off during an experimental fuel test. The FBO owner had been climbing through 3kAGL on takeoff when the aft section of the engine and part of the tail exploded. Somehow he’d managed to turn and make a safe landing. The jet is now inside the hangar with tail section and wings removed and a replacement engine waiting nearby. Pretty amazing to look at the remains of the old engine and contemplate what that was like for the pilot!

Climbing over the ridge past Ashland we spotted Shasta, but the smoke in that direction (and for nearly the entire remainder of our flight) was so thick the pix are horrible. Close by though was this rock outcrop I call the Cowboy Hat.

0786 Pilot Rock

0786 Pilot Rock

Seems like gMaps calls it Pilot Rock but I still like Cowboy Hat better from this angle. 🙂

Turning away from I-5 toward the coast our ride got smoky and lumpy for a while. Well out into the Marble Mountain/Six Rivers area something fascinated me about this settlement on a bend in the Salmon River.

0787 Salmon River

0787 Salmon River

I like to imagine people standing on those shores hauling a Winter supply of fish ashore for smoking. Think there’s any chance that salmon still make it up this river, or is the name a sad reminder of the era before “progress” came to the CA/OR border area?

The second-least smoky area we flew that day was Shelter Cove. We’d thought about stopping there for lunch, but had left Medford later than planned and the weather was iffy. The strong wind blowing us South was smooth up here, but promised an interesting landing if we tried that. The low clouds zipping South a mile or so offshore could also rush in to prevent our continued flight as they were already doing for countless pilots we heard on the radio around Arcata.

0802 Shelter Cove

0802 Shelter Cove

Trying to imagine how a place so very exposed to the ravages of the deep Pacific could provide “shelter,” I finally spotted the nook with a small breakwater near the center-bottom of this pic (click to enlarge). Notice how the current is running North along the shoreline into the distance while the prevailing wind typically blows strongly to the South. Interesting place to operate boats and planes. We were up at probably 8-9000 feet to provide ample landing alternatives for the forest crossing, so even the relatively light haze here is pretty noticeable. A few miles away toward the South the smoke hung in an orange pall.

It was nice to see so many large vineyards welcoming us home to CA, and this one on a hillside East of Healdsburg offers some interesting shapes as rows of different grape varieties follow the contours.

0815 Hillside Shapes

0815 Hillside Shapes

After deciding not to stop at Santa Rosa as we had on a previous flight, we tried something new by nipping into the little “Skypark” at Sonoma. With the pickup loaned us by the airport manager we took a very short tour into town and parked at the picturesque main square.

0819 Sonoma City Hall

0819 Sonoma City Hall

Across the street behind me is the Basque Cafe & bakery where we not only found a very good sandwich, but a variety of exceptional cookies at $1 each. My fav is the chewy chocolate. Anne bought a loaf of their bread to share with Nancy (unless we eat it all today!).

0822 Basque Cafe

0822 Basque Cafe

That’s it on the right, and behind is an arcada with lots more shops. Now if you’ve never tasted Basque food I hope you get the chance. The best meal we ever had was at La Taverna Basque in St. Jean de Luz, France. This bakery has kindled my desire for more actively seeking out Basque eateries!

Takeoff with nearly full fuel on the short runway with strong crosswind and trees at both ends was interesting. We put considerable trust in Tripp to make it relatively effortless, and she did. It would have been impossible with Flash, even at a comparable portion of gross weight (which would have been hundreds of pounds less). Listening on frequency and announcing our position before and during takeoff but hearing no other calls, my hope was that no other aircraft were operating near the airport. Imagine our surprise then to see a WWII era P-40 doing loops half a mile from the airport at 2kAGL! Never did manage to get a response from it, and once it looked as if we were a mock target. I assured Anne that the pilot surely must notice us, and was both highly skilled and motivated to take good care of what is probably a million dollar airplane. Needless to say, I climbed at full power until well away from Sonoma.

This brings us to the last decent photo of our trip, passing the Vallejo area. Since childhood I’ve always found it intriguing to look at the rows of mothballed ships moored just out of view at the top-left of this photo.

0825 Vallejo Area

0825 Vallejo Area

The entire bay off to the right was covered with low clouds, so we climbed high and to the East. This put us somewhat in the way of airlines descending into the Bay Area, so we added some entertainment for ATC. One jet was ordered to descend below our path but did it too gently, so ATC told them to hold 500′ above us and warned us of possible wake turbulence. Though he told us where to look for each other for extra safety, neither plane could spot the other until I heard the annoyed airline pilot remark to ATC that he had an “RA” (presumably the “A” has to do with Avoidance). I tilted up our wing in time to finally spot him 500′ higher initiating an abrupt turn and climb. It was reassuring that all of us were taking the proper precautions, and that we also had benefit of the “Required Avoidance” computer in the airliner. In a few years we’ll also have the new GPS-based “next gen” system being implemented by the FAA. I hope flying can always be this safe, and still be so much fun for VFR flyers like us. Every time I hear some pour soul following strictly-defined IFR lines in the sky, I’m glad again to have chosen to use the funds required to earn that IFR license – flying freely around the continent VFR instead. It will also be nice when playful P-40s like our Sonoma companion have automatic GPS next gen info on our location and vice versa.

So today we’re resting, beginning to clean and unpack, and already casually talking about where we might go next. When fires abate and weather looks good, we’re eager to visit CO and get back up to OR & WA. Later in the Fall we hope to visit the other remaining continental U.S. state we haven’t seen: Arkansas. Further in the future is probably renting a plane in HI, and maybe somehow finding a way for Tripp to see Europe (maybe across the Aleutians?). For now, we have another trip to remember and dream about and an updated map of states & provinces we’ve landed in.

States & Provinces Flown

States & Provinces Flown

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