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!
2009/10/04
2009/10/02
Heavy Boating
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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2009/10/01
NYC
Update 12/02/2009: This post is part of the story about our flight across the U.S., and to start at the beginning you can click here.
A friend gave us feedback tonight about our plan to land at Linden airport (NJ I think), cross the bridge to Staten Island and take the ferry to Manhattan. She was concerned about that area from her experience several years ago, claiming that Jimmy Hoffa is buried there and fearing we might join him. Anyone have opinions or info? Looks like another option might be Teterbobo (just east of Passaic), but that’s a bigger airport and probably has hefty fees. Still, might be cheap “insurance” to land there and take a bus or whatever transit is there. Comments?
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2009/09/30
Fast Start
We discovered yesterday that the Carp Avo Fest is starting this weekend, and that the Miramar Air Show (!!!) is on during our days in San Diego. So here and on our Photos link you’ll probably see our low-flying pix of Carp crowds converging, and breathless posts with breathtaking pix of low-flying jets. What a fast start to this trip! Now if only we can get the bike sorted out in our brief remaining time…
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John & Anne Wiley 