John & Anne Wiley

2015/08/06

Nursery, Bean, Tidepools

Filed under: Aviation,Coasting Adventure,Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,MeriTimes Adventure,Nature,People,Random — John @ 00:08

Though beautiful, this nursery next to the beach was somewhat surprising. I guess some flowers do especially well in this particular climate because the blooms are radiant.

4927 Surprise Nursery

4927 Surprise Nursery

The little cove at Bean Hollow offers many delights for motorists who need merely pull over into the parking area to check it out.

4923 Bean Hollow

4923 Bean Hollow

It doesn’t look like motorists will get a glimpse of the nursery, but there are trails along the rocks for strolling surf sounds.

4921 Shore Paths

4921 Shore Paths

The tidepools in this area are many and varied, and this mansion just above the waves sits next to a haven for tidepool watchers at Pescadero Point.

4920 Tidepool Mansion

4920 Tidepool Mansion

Looking to the South, you can see we aren’t very far from Pigeon Point. That’s the lighthouse at the top center of this pic. Does this give you some sense of how rich in diverse scenic beauty (often hidden from other perspectives) a two minute slow flight can be?

4918 Pescadero to Pigeon

4918 Pescadero to Pigeon

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2011/12/02

Wrong Coast

Filed under: Aviation,Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,MeriTimes Adventure,Nature,People,Random,Relationships — John @ 08:08

After some years in SB my friend and fellow pilot Zubair moved to the wrong coast, settling near Boston. I tried to talk him out of it, but I have to admit he’s happier there. Tonite looking thru pix from our MeriTimes Adventure I found this view of his cozy home in the woods there, nestled among the magnificent Fall colors. I think that’s his beautiful wife Momina standing outside the front door (click the pic to see the larger version).

9862 Right Stuff

9862 Right Stuff

Clearly his choice of coast was right after all. Still wrong for me, but perfect for him right now. He has at least yielded to my relentless bugging him about getting back in the air after a hiatus of several years, as you’ll see on his blog (click his name above). Sadly though, he doesn’t have a great plane like Tripp with windows that open and wings up out of the way for viewing the planetary pleasures. But even if in the “wrong” plane for crisp pix like this, at least he’s flying, right? See what I mean about relentlessly bugging him? 😉

2011/07/01

Scenes of a Planet

Filed under: Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,MeriTimes Adventure,Random — John @ 05:15

Back on 4/29 when we flew from MD to CT for a visit with Molly, I snapped this Philadelphia scene I’m enjoying anew.

8563 Philly Rerun

8563 Philly Rerun

That was a hazy day, like many we’ve seen when flying that region, but still plenty of interesting sights like these two islands in the river. One looked like it might have once been a fort. I like how the dappled light on the water makes shapes that dance with the island outlines.

8567 Peeking Sun

8567 Peeking Sun

One of the things I like about reviewing aerial pix is googling stuff to figure out what it is. Example: In the Canarsie neighborhood of Brooklyn I was curious about the shape of South Shore High School, that in the mid-70s was the second biggest in the U.S. The wiki article I linked above seems to fit with the disheveled look of the building, since it’s apparently been closed due to low performance.

8578 SS High Brought Low

8578 SS High Brought Low

I asked Anne to snap this view of Floyd Bennett Field, NYC’s first airport (now closed aside from a police helicopter base) from her side. What did it look like when Lindbergh was there?

0299 Floyd Bennett Field

0299 Floyd Bennett Field

Just after that she snapped this jet taking off from one of the other two airports. Like many big cities, NYC airports now cater to airlines and a few small jets. The likes of Tripp are banished to the suburbs now that smaller airports are closed.

0303 Takeoff

0303 Takeoff

A few minutes later she snapped this as we lined up to land in New Haven. Flying in a small plane is so delightful, it’s amazing more people don’t do it. Maybe they think it’s like airline flying, where you don’t really see where you’re going. Just cram into an aluminum tube and suddenly find yourself somewhere else without the joy of really looking at our beautiful planet, overflowing with scenes like this.

0307 Near Earth

0307 Near Earth

2011/06/28

Memories

Filed under: Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,MeriTimes Adventure,Nature,Random — John @ 17:20

Our sweet niece the history teacher is visiting, and last night she asked about the highlights of our MeriTimes Adventure. It was a little surprising how many moments came to mind. Maybe like trying to describe an especially good meal or artwork: we tend to savor the whole rather than think about the parts.

Returning to where I left off reviewing our photo collection from the trip as she catches up on sleep this morning, memories rushed back from that Pittsburgh to MD flight. Like the discovery that Gettysburg is a town. You’d think ending in “burg” would have been a clue, but somehow photos from the Civil War gave me the impression of a solitary house amid miles of open fields. It would make sense that tourism would have created a town since then, but the beautiful Gettysburg College was used by both sides during the war.

8165 Gettysburg College

8165 Gettysburg College

Our takeoff that day offered only hazy views of Pittsburgh and weather en route was forecast to be unsettled, so we had decided not to fly over the city for a photo better than this one.

8159 Pittsburgh Memories

8159 Pittsburgh Memories

At this distance all our memories of the fun we’d had there with Molly’s relatives, seemed to blend into one warm feeling in the soft air. Along the way we wove a circuitous path among clouds and small storms, with hazy air making it seem we were more part of the sky than of the green fields and small towns below.

0212 Cloud Dance

0212 Cloud Dance

Approaching the Martin State Airport we were directed by ATC to circle over this small dam while some military jets landed ahead of us. It was fun to imagine the story of the dam and then watch the formation landing in the hazy distance.

8176 MD Dam

8176 MD Dam

Reducing power to descend, the song of Tripp’s engine changed to a warm hum. Anne took this snap of the airport, and the mingling of air with water softened by misty distance evokes memories of being there as our story mingled with the generations of U.S. history and ancestral times beyond.

0215 Invitation to Memories

0215 Invitation to Memories

2011/06/25

Urban Airspaces

Filed under: Flying,Happiness,Has Photos,Inner World,MeriTimes Adventure,Random — John @ 02:05

Our flight from Springfield, IL to Pittsburgh, PA took us over a series of cities after our relatively non-urban areas in the West. Soon after takeoff we passed near the Illinois State Fair, and it was easy to imagine all the activity there during the fair.

7244 Illinois Fairgrounds

7244 Illinois Fairgrounds

The large sprawl of Indianapolis surprised us for some reason. I’d never thought about it beyond the car race, so it was interesting to see the nearby city center. For example, like many big cities it’s grown up next to a big river.

7256 Indianapolis

7256 Indianapolis

The airport of course caught our attention too. Seems to be both a major airline terminal and an even bigger line of FedEx terminals.

0159 Indianapolis Airport

0159 Indianapolis Airport

Taking off from Dayton we got a distant glimpse of downtown, and were again surprised that it’s bigger than we’d imagined. So many places to return and spend more time…

7264 Dayton

7264 Dayton

Columbus was also larger than imagined with downtown nestled right in a bend of the river.

7267 Columbus

7267 Columbus

Weather was so fuzzy by the time we reached Pittsburgh that we didn’t take any pix. It’s just that the airport we chose was at the edge of town and on our last flight there we flew right over the city in glorious weather (have a look). Looking back at these pix from our MeriTimes Adventure flying from Santa Barbara to Newfoundland, it’s almost overwhelming at times to see little dim slices of the moving panorama we traversed in sweet Tripp.

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