Saturday, September 08, 2007
Wow, that's so weird... I've been having this huge craving to re-read A Wind in the Door for the past couple of days, and now I just found out that Madeleine L'Engle died Thursday.
Posted at 12:30:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.
I was at the post office yesterday, and I noticed the new Gerald Ford stamps in the display case, so I asked Shruti if I could buy a strip of them without having to get the whole sheet. She said, "I don't know; I haven't sold any yet." So she checked, and I couldn't, so I didn't buy any either. Poor Ford. "Vote for Ford!"
I really like visiting F. and V. I always feel really cheerful afterward!
Friday, September 07, 2007
I think I've been remiss in never talking about foldy-over sandwiches on ALB. Even though I don't know what a foldy-over sandwich is, it sure sounds like something I would post about.
Posted at 8:46:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Cheshire hounding! Newbie grapes to smell (but not see), petting the Maaaa! (she goes into this lovely trance when I do it), and a tiny black snake in the middle of the path. I poked it with a stick so it would slither out of the way and not get run over, and this lady told her little girl, "She saved it!" :-) It looked so cool when it slithered. Flowy.
Posted at 8:36:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Cat Stats: Distance - 7.32 miles; Average Speed - 10.5mph; Max Speed - 16.7mph; Time - 41'33.
All I can say is, sun-warm Suder tomatoes filled with cool cottage cheese = best breakfast ever.
Posted at 12:33:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Posted at 1:41:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.
Oh and, yes, today is Anti-Linear Brain's 6th anniversary! Happy birthday, ALB, even though you've clearly gone downhill and make way too much sense these days. (I need to work on that.)
I forgot to include Dean's fav part of the trip home in my report. That would be when we were flying away from RDU and we heard the Raleigh controller asking another pilot to confirm that he was landing at Hillbilly International. The pilot was all befuddled, e.g.: "Huh?? Uh... negative! Landing at Asheboro Regional!" and the controller was all cool and professional: "That's affirmative: HBI... Hillbilly International." We were cracking up and giving each other looks of disbelief.
Posted at 12:48:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.
Thursday, September 06, 2007
Day Four Report! (I skipped Day Three because I'm anti-linear. And Day Four is lots easier. And I stayed up late last night working on this video, so I want to post it now.)
Posted at 11:16:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
On Day Four we flew home. I was really sleepy during the first part of the flight (even though we didn't leave early in the morning or anything like that), but then we stopped for fuel and leg-stretching in Ocean City, MD (I picked it out as we were flying by, since it's Duke's fav vacation spot) and I got all stretched and ate a Snickers bar from the snack machine (!) and drank some Dr. Pepper from the soda machine and then I woke up. The little Ocean City airport was nice, and I read some paraphernalia about Ocean City that I picked up for entertainment. It looked touristy but endearing. (I have never been there.) There's a huge huge empty beach near the airport, I think because it's inaccessible. It's not connected to the City part of O.C.
Ocean City is a good name for a city. We also flew over Atlantic City as usual and I played "Atlantic City" (Band version, natch) as usual. That was the only music I played on the whole flight! (We listened to some great music on the flight to NC, though. Like "Draggin' the Line"!)
After we passed Atlantic City, I asked Dean if we were going to go Over the Top, Around the Side, or Under the Bottom. Of New York, that is. Without getting clearance from Air Traffic Control, you have to fly 7,000+ feet above the city, or, if the cloud layer is too low, then you need to go around. (For a smaller city like Hartford, you only need 4,000 feet.) Or you can go low right down the Hudson River corridor. That's a little tricky, since it's skinny and you have be at specific heights at specific spots, plus you have to self-announce to the other traffic where you are at various points along the corridor. (Like Sandy Hook approaching Verrazano, Governors Island, The Lady, Ground Zero, Holland Tunnel, Boat Basin, George Washington Bridge, Alpine Tower, the Tappan Zee Bridge, etc.)
Anyway, he asked me which one I wanted to do, so I said he was flying the plane, but if he had no pref then I'd vote for Under the Bottom because it's cool! So that's what we did. I took some videos, then switched to photos because the Hudson River Corridor is always really bumpy. It was lots less bumpy this time than when we went at night with the Pilot Guy, though. And it was tons easier to see. My seat was on the Manhattan side, so I had great views! The city looked very hazy from a distance, but as we approached it, it sharpened up and colored up a lot. [It's still pretty murky, though... it is New York, after all.] One of the points Dean announced was Ground Zero, but I didn't see it. I could see Central Park, though, and the Empire State Building, and lots of big big buildings along the river whose names I don't know. There's also so much boat stuff going on that you never even think of.
The coolest part is when you fly over the George Washington Bridge, because it seems so close. [Or, I don't know... one of the coolest parts.] I thought so last time, too. But the whole thing is just really cool and amazing, being that close to the city, flying along seeing all those huge Manhattan buildings from such a neat perspective. (On the video I made, I speeded up the flying-by footage to twice its actual speed, because it goes by soooo slow. New York is huge!) It's also totally amazing circling around the Statue of Liberty. I took a quick video, switched modes and snapped a few photos, and then put the camera down and just looked with my eyes. It's hard to get a good photo going around The Lady and I didn't want to waste the experience with my nose behind a camera. The whole thing was cool, cool, cool. Dean is great at self-announcing, too!! Dean is cool.
Here are large versions of my better photos: 1) The Lady, with Manhattan in the background, B) the city and lots of boats (you can see the Empire State Building in this one), and 3) the George Washington Bridge up close. I had way too many photos, though, so I had to video-ize them so it would be at all shareable.
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Okay, North Carolina report, Day Two. On Saturday, we took a day trip to Ocracoke Island, home of what was named the 5th best beach in the world (and the #1 best beach in the USA) in 2007. As expected, it was a nice beach, but not really our style. Just a big wide stretch of soft sand, with small waves and warm water. (I was quite impressed by how warm the water was. It was tons warmer than wintertime St. John or Hawaii!) But no shade or rocks or seaweed or cool creatures, so it was kind of boring. Supposedly it has lots of shells some times of the year, but they were mostly shell fragments right now. There was one super-cool thing about the beach, though: one section of it had actual barking sands!
Posted at 9:05:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Anyway, the funnest part was flying there, especially attempting to talk over the radio to the controller and Ocracoke traffic, because it's really, really hard to say "Ocracoke traffic"! (Try it!) The controller called it "Oca-coke" and Dean kept accidentally saying "Oca-coke" and "Ocra-croak" (a.k.a. Okracroak, which is clearly what the island should be called). One of the other pilots even announced "Oca-choke"! Okrachoke makes a lot of sense, since that's what you do when you eat okra. (Or what I do, at least.) There were also some more nice big up-close clouds on the flight there. Very very cool.
We spent most of the time on the island walking around exploring and observing the "culture," since we knew we wouldn't want to hang out on the beach. The best part, by far, was this weird variety store that had shelves and shelves of mind-boggling junk. It was hushed-giggle inducing hilarious. (The whole store made you speak in a whisper, for some reason. It was deathly quiet there.) It wasn't really tourist stuff, it was just WEIRD stuff. Cheap, too. We got some perfect items for the pinata, including "Tastes Like Chicken ('Everything Does!') Gum," a set of "hillbilly teeth" (these ended up being a HUGE hit with David and Hunter) and my new pal ARGAL. (He's named after an aviation intersection we navigated via. I grew so fond of him, I made sure to snag him when pinata-time came. In fact, as I recall, Hunter grabbed him, but I begged for and won him back.) They also had a bumper sticker (one of those oval European-style ones) with a picture of a stalk of okra next to a picture of a bottle of Coke. So great!! On the flight back to Raleigh, it was finally un-hazy enough to see the ground, and we saw lots and lots of farmers' fields and tree farms, plus a few cul-de-sacs of fine trailers.
Oh, we also flew right over Diane's lake and the Gs' house, and buzzed them. (The G said he was waving to us! We didn't see anyone, though--all we saw was David's new bright red truck in the driveway.) I tried to take a photo of their house, but I think all the ones I snapped were blocked by trees. I don't know what their new house looks like, anyway.
Here's a photo from best-beach-in-the-whole-US-including-Hawaii (what the heck???!) Okracroak beach. (It was windy.)
My ability to update is back! (ALB was mysteriously offline all day. No, I wasn't dead.) Here are some more photos of the finished pinata:
Posted at 6:35:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
1) On my floor before we left, trap door open and ready to be filled with horehound drops and other such goodies.
B) Riding behind the pilot's seat in Tango, flying to North Carolina. (Super cute.)
3) Sitting on the bed at our hotel, psyching himself up for his big day. (Also super cute.)
4) Peeking out of his bag (exactly like a cat), on the bed at our hotel. (Insanely cute.)
I also have action shots of the highpoint of his life (the aptly-named Bash), but those will have to wait.
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
Posted at 10:44:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
The Bash was great. It was really fun and went swimmingly. The whole trip to N.C. was great, in fact. But I failed to blog while I was there, so I'm 1,000 miles behind again. I did take some photos and notes.
Friday, we flew down (stopped at Millville Municipal in New Jersey for lunch and fuel on the way)... it was really hazy and cloudy, so we flew IFR, and it was spectacular. One of the best parts of the whole trip was flying in and out of the gigantic fluffy white clouds--not just being inside them (where all you see is white) but being next to them, having them tower right beside you and all around like cities in the sky. It barely seemed real. Weaving amongst them reminded both of us (independently) of scuba-ing through underwater tunnels/caverns. I took pictures but they don't express the perspective at all.
It was very cool flying into Raleigh-Durham International Airport in Tango... we'd never landed a such a big airport before. (Navigating the taxiways was the hardest part by far!!) RDU's motto is "Where Southern Hospitality is Still in Style" and it's highly true. Our rental car was waiting for us and the lineman pulled it right up to Tango, then helped us load the trunk with our luggage. (I put my frog safely on the floor behind the driver's seat, so I could keep an eye on him.) They even have little red carpets that they unroll on the ground if you have a plane with drop-down stairs! General Aviation gets its own runways and terminal, but the commercial airlines sort of spilled over into the GA area, and there were tons of huge passenger and cargo jets a little further down the taxiway from Southern Jet. We also had a great view of the tower.
We used my GPS Guy to drive to our hotel in Durham (my Guy was the super-helpful-est Guy ever on this whole trip!) and then met my sister and her husband for dinner at the Melting Pot. (When I called her the night before to suggest it, she totally lit up. :-) It was really nice, although Dean seemed to think the ideas I wrote on the suggestion form were too goofy (what's wrong with tongue as a fondue meat idea??) and wouldn't let me write my idea about having a final toothpaste fondue course with individual colored toothbrushes instead of fondue forks. What the heck! I think it's a great idea!
We really liked our hotel (I picked it out, and I did a good job). It was cute and modern and non-fussy. Relaxing and quiet. And best of all, it had a non-blowy air conditioner! Our room had "Deer Park that's good water!" which I tried and did not think was good water. (But I loved the Aquafina from the airport.) It also had a pie chart and a quiz about pies, which I did very well on even though I'm not a big pie fan. My favorite question was the first one, which was about the "surprise pies" that were popular with the wealthy English in the 17th (I think) century. The choices for what "surprise pie" contained were something like: a) vegetables, b) live creatures, c) mystery meat, d) deadly poison. I knew the answer. (Live creatures!)
Rest of trip To Be Continued in some more entries. Coming up soon... Okracroke! The party! The fate of my pinata! The Hudson River Corridor by day! (My FTP client is acting wonky tonight, so I can't upload any more photos until it starts behaving.)
