Stirrings from the empty nest

Friday night lights

2012-01-28T12:00:00.002-06:00

It is an inspiring revelation, I think, that at the (nearly) 58 year-old-mark, I'm still capable of having the best Friday night ever. Or it indicates I've lost the ability to remember Friday nights past. One of those.

Friday night is Timberwolves basketball night in Flyover Country, a distinction that historically earns the participant the scorn and ridicule of non-believers. And there have been plenty of them since the local NBA squad traded Kevin Garnett to the Boston Celtics years ago.

But I'm a season ticketholder and a follower of bad teams, not necessarily my intent; it's just the way it works out. This team, however, is on the upswing.

San Antonio was in town last night; we beat them earlier this season with a little luck and surprise. But now, the art of surprise lost, the squad had to win on the strength of talent.

But I brought the team's good-luck charm anyway...

It worked.

During the game, Ali Lozoff, the marketing guru at The Current, tweeted me a message asking if we'd like to come over to First Ave (across the street) for The Current's 7th birthday party, a sold-out, two-night affair. Well, sure. You can never have enough elderly people at First Ave., right?

The game over, we walked in, got into the VIP section, saw our pals...

... and watched the concert up close...

Jim McGuinn, The Current's fine program boss, asked me to come on stage for the staff introductions, but, you know, as much recognition I get for doing four minutes of radio once a day with Mary Lucia, doing that would've taken away the spotlight -- if only just a sliver -- from the all-the-time people who do such a great job building America's best radio station. They're tremendously fun and welcoming people...

Now the part my father -- who kept track of his money -- would like.

Cost of Timberwolves tickets: $10
Cost of water and a Klondike Bar: $7
Cost to park: $5
Cost for First Ave entry: $0
Cost for drinks: $0
Total minus $5 Timberwolves food voucher for not bailing during the NBA lockout: $17

Life is good.

The job posting

2011-11-23T09:26:00.002-06:00

The more I worked with my oldest son at the company I've worked for for nearly 20 years, the more I understand why my father, against all logic, tried to get me to take over his insurance business. And the more I understand why it probably killed him when I left after less than a year to continue my pursuit of a career in radio. But I didn't just leave, I repudiated the very notion of working in the same office.

It was dumb and it was just the type of thing 20-year-olds do.

My son never did that to me in the time he worked with me and I've never enjoyed walking in the door of work more than the five or so years he was on the other side of the doors.

Watching him work reminded me of the time I went to a band concert of his in the 5th or 6th grade and began to see him as an individual of unique talents that I did not possess. He was good at what he did, he was smart, and he brought the Collins Type A personality and critical self-assessment with him, which is the tragic assault of my DNA.

We'd have coffee almost every morning and during the day sometimes he'd stop by to shoot the breeze. It was great, especially considering all those years when father-and-son related the way fathers and sons often do.

Through absolutely no fault of his own, he's been unable to continue in the job. My company, knowing a valued employee when it sees one, worked hard to give him the time and space he needed, but in the end, he couldn't do the work to his level of satisfaction. The curse of Dad's DNA.

Last week, he informed the company he wouldn't be able to return to work, and last night, the company posted his job, which of course they had to do, but which, nonetheless, hit me like a ton of bricks anyway, even though I knew what was coming.

Windows Systems Administrator #168-12
Location: Saint Paul, MN
Salary Range: $56,177-$84,265
Exempt/Non-Exempt: Exempt
Benefits: yes
Employment Type: Full Time
Description: The Windows Systems Administrator will work in the IT Infrastructure team within the Technology and Operations department of American Public Media | Minnesota Public Radio. The Windows Systems Administrator will provide technical support, upgrades, patch management, and Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) administration. The Windows System Administrator will support, upgrade, and maintain media and broadcast related Microsoft servers and applications that are critical to the support of Minnesota Public Radio such as automation and play to air. This position will support Broadcast Media/Operations/Windows servers/applications in all APMG locations. Primary reporting will be to the Manager of IT Infrastructure with secondary reporting to the Manager of Media Productions.

Position Responsibility:

• Develop, install, recommends purchase, implementation, and configuration of Microsoft technologies and infrastructure systems.
• Implementation, administration, maintenance, and disaster recovery planning for multi-site Microsoft Server environment.
• Administration and management of Microsoft Systems Center Configuration Manager (SCCM).
• Distribute application and operating system patches to Windows desktops, laptops and servers.
• Develop, manage and install application and operating system deployments, including Play to Air and Broadcast Media systems, using SCCM.
• Perform Windows systems capacity planning and performance analysis.
• Conduct complex troubleshooting and repair of Active Directory, Windows server 2000/2003/2008, DNS, user authentication and other operational systems as needed.
• Research, evaluate and recommend new technologies in order to meet business requirements and contribute to long-range planning for systems evolution.
• Research, build, administer, implement, and support all current APMG play-to-air and media production computer based systems. These systems include: ENCO, Dalet, Protools, Music Master, Final Cut, other audio/video systems and related media systems.
• Recommend alterations to existing technologies to improve quality and/or reduce costs.
• Document strategies, designs, policies, recommendations, procedures, and status using Microsoft Office, Visio, and/or Project using clear, consistent, and concise language.
• Implement disaster recovery plan for all media production systems when needed, assist with regular test procedures and user training.
• Use scripting tools/languages to automate software installations
• Work with peers to establish security, management and support standards for APMG computer environment.
• Manage Microsoft group policies.
• Complete support assignments on time and within budget.
• Work with vendors for product information and design, pricing, and support escalation.
• Provide cross training to team members who provide secondary support.
• Provide IT departmental budget input as requested.
• Provide On-Call support in a 24/7 environment.
• Assist in special projects as assigned.

Required Education and Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or equivalent experience.
• 3-5 years of experience installing and supporting computer hardware and Microsoft software in an enterprise setting.
• 3-5 years of administration experience with Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and 2008.
• 3+ years of experience managing SMS 2003 or SCCM 2007.
• Experience managing operating system deployment systems.
• Experience with enterprise implementations of Microsoft applications (e.g. SQL, AD, WSUS)

Required Skills, Knowledge and Abilities:

• Strong diagnostic skills and demonstrated ability to research problems independently using multiple resources to support computer hardware and software at the enterprise level.
• Thorough understanding of client computers in a business environment.
• Thorough understanding of security risks in the current business computing environment.
• Understanding of Microsoft Active Directory schema.
• Deep knowledge of SMS 2003 or SCCM 2007’s patching capabilities and application distribution functionality.
• Working knowledge of application installation and methodologies for automated installation.
• Scripting knowledge.
• Able to perform work independently or in a team environment.
• Ability to effectively communicate with the appropriate level of technical detail for your audience.
• Ability to establish and maintain positive working relationships in order to achieve common goals.
• Excellent listening and organizational skills.

Preferred Skills and Experience:

• Microsoft certification (such as MCSE, MCITP, MCTS, or MTA).
• Knowledge of Wake-on-LAN desired.
• Experience in a broadcasting or media environment.
• Skill with using scripting languages.

I think about my son almost every minute of every day. A lot of people can forget about their worries by diving into things at work. That doesn't work for me.

If that job sounds like it's right up your alley, you should apply for it. But you'll be filling some big shoes of one hell of a kid.

You'll notice, perhaps, that I've only made three posts on the blog this year. This has been the worst year we've ever had, and at this Thanksgiving, I struggle to be grateful that it wasn't worse.

Jose Cardenal and the bucket list

2011-10-07T07:11:00.005-05:00

Today is Jose Cardenal's birthday. He might be the person who made it possible for me to check an item off my "bucket list," but, alas, he's not.

Jose played for the Cleveland Indians for only two years -- 1968 and 1969 -- and he wasn't particularly good for them, but to a young Indians fan, he might as well have been Babe Ruth. Such is the nature of hero worship.

It was September 16, 1969 and my mother took me to the ballgame at Fenway Park when the Indians came to town. Bleacher tickets back then were only $1 and we frequently watched baseball from what was widely thought to be the best deal in baseball.

At some point, possibly before the game started, an old usher stood at the bottom of the row, leaning on the giant cement wall in centerfield and motioned for me to come down to him.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a baseball -- a real Major League Baseball official baseball, which presumably had been swatted into the bleachers during batting practice.

In the third inning, with nobody on and two out, Jose Cardenal launched a Jim Lonborg pitch into the bleachers for his 10th homerun of the year, propelling the Indians to a 5-2 win, a rare occasion for the team in 1969, a season in which they lost 90 games.

At some point in the game, my mother suggested I claim that the ball in my hands was that homerun. And so I did for some years thereafter.

But it wasn't. And I've never come close to checking "catch a ball at a baseball game" off the bucket list again.

Happy birthday, Jose!

It's not the heat, it's the memories

2011-07-01T10:17:00.001-05:00

If we are not careful and paying attention, we can let the professional weatherpeople lead us down the path of meteorological despair. "It's 90, but it feels like 106!" they warned today as summer made the apparently unwelcome visit to Minnesota even though we've been longing for it for weeks.

When I let the Blog Dog back in from her morning inspection of the south 40 this morning, she was panting like a two-stroke engine, a reminder to me to keep the windows shut and the air conditioner on. You don't want to go out in this weather because, you know, it's not the heat, it's the humidity that will get you if you're not careful.

That's a phrase that still occupies a disk sector in the hard drive in my head, "it's not the heat, it's the humidity."

It's around 1960, the memory bank reveals, and I'm at my mother's feet while she utters those words to someone. We're in the driveway of our home.

"What's humidity?" I asked.

"You can't really feel it when you're a kid," she said. "But when you get older, you'll know."

I'm older now, of course. I recognize humidity and loathe its existence and the passing of time that made its recognition possible.

The senses are a time machine. A song on the radio takes you anywhere in the past you want to go. A smell -- for me, it's Candyland in downtown St. Paul -- transports you to a boardwalk, a summer night, and a lost love.

I could avoid the outdoors no longer this morning. I had to dump the coffee grounds in the compost bin. I had no choice but to accept fate, open the back door and step into ... 1964.

This temperature. This humidity. I remember this exact combination in a place and moment that no longer exists. It's a trailer on the oceanfront of Plum Island in Newburyport, Massachusetts, which seemed like luxury then but which I realize now was a desperately cramped spot for five kids and two parents.

I am 10 years old and it's the beginning of another perfect day, me with my freedom to spend it roaming the beach looking for lost lures, watching the charter boats head for George's Bank, seeing what's up at the Coast Guard station, standing at the end of the jetty as the tide comes in pretending I'm the captain of a trawler in the storm, smelling the rope at the tackle store, or riding the bike to the variety store for the latest Archie comic book. My parents are half the age I am now. It is summer, I don't know what a dewpoint is, and these are the best days of my life.

Be careful if you go out today. You might become 10 years old again.

The RKO years

2010-11-25T12:50:00.005-06:00

It's impossible to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade each year without thinking back to two years I wish I could do over. The parade at that time went down Broadway, and I worked on the 5th floor of 1440 Broadway, at the RKO Radio Network. Thanksgiving was a good time for our families to come into the sports department and watch the balloons go by at eye level (The image above is the 1985 parade from the vantage point). I was usually working in the windowless newsroom, so I never really got to see the parade.

It was 1984 when I moved to New York. The radio news business was different then. There was a "nuclear core" of the industry. If you worked in the news business, you wanted to get to New York. It's what motivated radio newspeople in small markets all across America.

I'd worked at WHDH in Boston, which was the only dream in broadcasting I ever really had -- Boston -- but much of the newsroom was laid off in May, even though we were the #1 station in the market. My old boss, Ed Bell, helped me get a "summer relief" job at WCVB in Boston, which at the time was known as the best local TV station in America. It was an honor richly deserved.

But I never felt comfortable in TV; I couldn't understand the entire "write to the pictures" method of writing, and I never could figure out the union duties and who could do what. In radio, you controlled the story from the beginning all the way to the end. It doesn't work that way in TV.

So when RKO's managing editor, Harvey Nagler, called -- presumably at the behest of my old WHDH pal Nick Young-- I jumped at the opportunity to fly down to New York and check out a "WGA" position (Writer's Guild of America). Basically, WGAs called people and interviewed them, sliced up the tape, and sent it out to the anchors. Also involved was an editor's shift or two. No heavy lifting, really.

I was hired and we moved to New York where we were immediately depressed by the apartment market. We were moving away from families and New York then seemed far away from Massachusetts. I wish I'd known then what I know now.

I loved taking the train into the city, I loved the Empire State Building at night, I loved being around the best of the best, and I loved reading some of the finest writing I've ever seen come out of an anchor's hands, but while I thought $43,000 was a lot of money, in New York it was chump change. We couldn't really afford to do anything to enjoy New York.

On the second day of work, RKO was reported to have double-billed advertisers in its 1984 Olympics coverage. It would have to repay it and everyone knew that money had to come from somewhere. Its owner, General Tire, was already known as a corporation that wasn't qualified to own broadcast facilities in the country (this was back when the FCC gave a damn about the character of the people who ran broadcast stations). Over the summer that number grew into the millions.

Every week, another story came out about the future of the RKO Radio Networks, given the collapsing finances of General. And I liked job security (which is why my decision to get into radio wasn't that bright to begin with). The stench of death was in the air constantly and I don't deal with that well, not being that optimistic a guy for one. Being a stupid 30-year-old with a new baby at home for another.

When the layoffs start happening, Nagler called me into his office. I thought it was the end. "Are you worried about losing your job?" he said.

"Yes," I said.

"Don't be," he said.

Still, I sent resumes out. I wanted to go work at ABC News, but nothing developed. At the same time, I was working with people I admired tremendously. They were professional. They were fun. It looked easy for them. And I was out of my league.

A year later, just before 5 on a Friday night, a memo was circulated. We'd been sold to Dick Clark and the Transtar Radio Network, which distributed syndicated music specials. I, and a lot of other people, knew that they weren't interested in running a news operation (which was renamed the United Stations Radio Network). they were interested in the satellite transponders RKO owned, and the affiliate lists.

In the spring of 1986, my father-in-law asked me to come back to the Berkshires to help start an FM station in a license battle the company was involved in. For two years, I'd heard some frustrated RKO anchors say, "I'd like to go back to run a small-market radio station," and given the opportunity now, it seemed like a no-brainer (it's the hardest thing in the broadcating business, I know now, but that's another story).

After I gave my notice, ABC News called and the news director said, "I just now saw your resume and I think we need to talk." But it was too late.

As it turned out, leaving New York has worked out well, and yet I regret I wasn't smart enough, good enough, or adult enough to be better at it.

A year or so later, we had a reunion on Long Island. It was great fun to see everyone again. As we were leaving, Ross Klavan, an anchor I was saying goodbye to laughed at one point and said, "We were glad to see you go."

I laughed too, even if it was the worst thing anyone has ever said to me.

And even though he was right.

Our disappearing lives

2010-11-23T16:06:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, Netflix announced that it will begin to offer a lower-priced package for people who would rather stream movies than get a DVD in the mail. It's big news in tech circles today and judging by the number of blogs I've read today, people are switching their plans without giving it a thought.

I, however, did.

Netflix's announcement has spawned another panic attack that my family's analog -- and now, digital -- history is disappearing in a hurry and I probably shouldn't put off saving it any longer. But save it... to what?
Over the weekend, I crawled into the space under the stairs to get the Christmas tree and decorations (the earliest I've ever done that so I'm not completely losing the non-procrastinator war) and stumbled across this:

It's a Super 8 mm movie projector, still apparently in good shape after 20+ years of no use. Inside was this treasure:

A take-up reel (this was once an "every day expression"), a rusty shoe horn (beats me, but I think I've used the projector more recently than the shoe horn) and the only roll of film I ever shot of my oldest son, on his first days home from the hospital more than 25 years ago.

What would you do now? That's exactly what I did.

Unless I get around to finding some place that will convert Super 8mm film to digital, that history is gone. Forever. When I was growing up, my parents had a huge drawer of these films, documenting the lives of me and my four brothers and sisters. As far as I know, that's all gone now, too.

My house is full of disappearing history. In closets and cabinets all over the house, there are VHS cassettes -- unindexed -- occupying space. I didn't shoot a lot of video of the kids -- I didn't want to be that guy -- but what little I shot is around here somewhere.

And if I ever find it, this is the last remaining VHS player in the house: the old TV.

Another one died a month or so ago and has left us permanently. When this one goes, all that VHS history probably goes too, unless I get around to transferring it to another media -- perhaps DVD. Underneath the TV is a DVD player we bought when VHS started to disappear.

This week, an old desktop PC which has most of my digital images started dying. Of all the important data that's on it, my first action was to save the pictures -- our history. I burned them all onto a DVD.
And that will work fine, until DVD players disappear too. That will probably happen in my house, because last month we bought this:

It's a home-entertainment system that connects to the Internet and allows us to stream video. No DVDs necessary. This is why Netflix did what it did yesterday. And this is why all the other media in the house is nearly obsolete.

I'm not recommending we go back to the old days. But as technology moves along at an ever-increasing pace, it makes it difficult for us to preserve our visual histories. Maybe today you'll upload your images to Picassa, or a blog, or Flickr, or Facebook, or leave them on your phone, not thinking that there's no guarantee Picassa, your blog, or Flickr, or Facebook, or your phone technology will be there 30 years from now, any more than there was a guarantee that my movie projector would work today. Maybe that doesn't matter to you now, but it'll matter in 30 years. Trust me on this.

Now here's the odd part: Of all the technology that exists and has existed to preserve our histories, this is still the one that seems to work the best over time in my house: a shoebox.

Beat that Netflix.

It was 25 years ago today

2010-10-18T08:03:00.003-05:00

Today is my oldest son, Sean's, 25th birthday and just as I did on #21 and #23, I'm about to embarrass him again. Because I have an audience, Sean and Patrick get to have many of their secrets aired in public.

See this?

We had a lot of rocks in Sheffield, where we lived from the time Sean was six months old to the time he was 6. One day, he decided he would collect them, paint them, and sell them.

As with so many of the exploits of my children, I talked about this on the radio one day and when I went to get lunch at the local pizza joint, the owner said he wanted a couple of these well-painted rocks to "sell." So I delivered two of them, and gave Sean $1 each. If you're a parent, you know what this means: It means you're about to get a whole new crop of painted rocks, and a heightened expectation of riches.

I kept this one. I keep a lot of things from my kids' youth. I've got old hats they wore at baseball, old games, T-shirts and God knows what else. There isn't enough money in the world to pry this rock from my hands.

Like other parents, I look at all of these things and try to remember the kids that fit them. But I mostly can't. When Sean and his brother, Patrick, were very young, I remember holding them like footballs and thinking, "I've got to remember what this feeling is like." But while I remember doing it, I can't quite remember the moment. Few people can.

Our brains are not wired to be able to remember a snapshot like this. Our memories might be preserved but the feelings are not. As each one comes along, our brain rewrites the previous one until after 25 years, you have a composite feeling made of little pieces of 25 years. It's a good feeling -- a great feeling. But it's not the feeling of a singular moment.

On his 25th birthday, I want to believe that my oldest son had the best childhood a kid could have, that his memories of being the son of Bob and Carolie Collins are as joyful as his mother's and mine are, and that at 25, he realizes the great things that are still to come, and that they will be better than anything you can imagine.

Just like he is.

Video: A good case of the blues

2010-10-17T08:27:00.002-05:00

During much of last night's Buddy Guy concert at the State Theater in Minneapolis, I kept thinking how I could get my kids to one of his shows. At 74, he remains one of the greatest bluesmen ever. Every time he comes to town, I'll be at the venue. He's backed up by a sensational group of musicians, especially guitarist Ric Hall (in the Orioles jersey). What must it be like to play with some of the greatest jazz artists ever? Check out Ric Hall's Web site.

Here's a better look at the two of them:

What were you doing when you were 8?

How I inspired Ira Glass and kept my job for another week

2010-10-06T18:12:00.001-05:00

Welcome. You've just been sucked into clicking on a link because of a pretty misleading headline that included a big name. I feel dirty about that and now maybe you do, too. I apologize, but it's a dog-eat-dog world out here in blogville.

The trip down memory lane I took this week has got me thinking more about my long road of working in radio. My guess is my radio career peaked some years ago and each day I become "that guy" that most young radio people encountered on their way to a long radio career: the guy with the long radio career that peaked years earlier.

Whatever. I can hold on like most other men in their mid- to late 50s in this recession that's claimed a disproportionate number of them, which is to say: holding on tight and hoping to survive to work another day. Besides, I'm used to it. It's the way I started every day in broadcasting since 1975. Scared.

Some years ago -- 1996 -- I was in San Diego covering the Republican National Convention. Earlier in the day, I was in Balboa Park where a "Faith and Freedom Rally" was held. It's no big deal now, but back then it was one of the first public displays that the religious right had gained control of the Republican Party. The moderates were left out.

I was voicing a piece I wrote, noting that the event was a metaphor for the party as a whole. After I finished sending it back to my organization, a man standing nearby, who overheard it said, "that's the best piece I've heard all week."

I was flattered, of course, but I had no idea who it was and it wasn't until years later that I was told it was Ira Glass, host of the Public Radio's "This American Life," who is widely considered a god among public radio employees.

I'm remembering this because a week or so ago, a flurry of "tweets" appeared in my account. It was from colleagues of my company who were in Denver for the Public Radio Program Directors convention. They were surprised when the speaker at the "benediction" gave me something of a shout out. The speaker was Ira Glass.

(You people reading this on Facebook don't get the Flash player, so you'll have to click here.)

That sure surprised my colleagues. It surprised me, too. Frankly, there's something wrong with journalism when a 56-year-old man who's been doing it for 35 years is its "new face." It's more than amusing, I think, that a group of colleagues went to Denver only to find out this "new face" was the old face in a cubicle in the city they just left.

The reality, however, is that I'm not "the new journalism," I'm the old journalism I described in my previous post: just having a conversation with the audience rather than a sermon. The "antique aesthetics" of journalism, as Ira Glass says, threatens to kill off broadcast journalism now. It's already killed off most of it in commercial media.

But, beyond that, there's a more disturbing reality: The "face of the new journalism" may well be the guy in a cubicle, working too long, and too hard, because he starts each day with the fear that this is the day he gets laid off.

The original posting that Ira Glass referred to can be found here.

It was 23 years ago today

2010-10-04T22:13:00.005-05:00

It was a Sunday and I wasn't supposed to work. I was the program manager of WSBS in Great Barrington, still in the infant stages of trying to upgrade the role the station had in the community. I hadn't yet learned -- or proven -- that I make a lousy manager. I can do. I don't know how to make others do.

The leaves were just turning in the Berkshires, and the snow was just starting to fall. Snow on October 4th?

Like most small-market radio stations, we had a skeleton staff on duty on a Sunday morning. And by skeleton, I mean 1 person who wasn't a newsperson. So I went to work.

The snow got heavier, and soon, two other people, who lived just up the street, made it in to work to help out.

Then the branches started snapping, and the power went out all over the Berkshires, except at a small 1,000 watt daytime station. By now, I was on the air, using a model we'd used at WHDH in Boston years earlier. Open the phones and talk to people.

I recall one person who had a baby on a respirator,only the power was out. She called the radio station. Everyone was getting on the air. She told her story, a few minutes later, we had someone with a 4x4 and a generator on the phone, too.

At one point, Gene Shalit, then the NBC Today Show film reviewer, called from his home in Stockbridge. He had no other point, really, than anyone else who was calling. They were without power, trees were falling, and he wanted someone to talk to .

We continued into the night. When the sun went down, I kept the power up even though we were supposed to sign off at sunset. Nobody else was on the air. Eventually, I compromised and flipped on a smaller transmitter -- 3.9 watts, which -- because everyone was without power except for us -- boomed throughout the Berkshires.

It was radio the way it was meant to be, and the way it can never be again. It was the best day I ever spent in the radio business. It's why I still fume when the occasional public radio snob mockingly says "commercial radio."

My family -- Carolie and two-year old Sean (Carolie had yet to give birth to Patrick) -- were somewhere, but I didn't know where. Carolie is the daughter of a radio guy; she knew I had a job to do and she'd figure out how to survive. They huddled with some neighbors who had a wood stove.

It was 10 or 11 O'clock at night and the Berkshires were scared. And then, a power company truck came by the state highway out front, then another, and another, and another. They kept coming. The rest of Massachusetts had sent us some help. So I told southern Berkshire County that help was here.

As midnight approached, people were still calling. When they weren't, I pulled out the Old Farmer's Almanac and began reading stories. Finally, around 1 a.m., the Berkshires were asleep, and I signed the station off the air.

The next morning, I showed up at work, and there were flowers in the lobby from people, and I think people dropped baked goods by. They were still calling to say "thank you" to a small group of people who didn't let them down.

A newspaper in Pittsfield ran this commentary a few days later (written by Clarence Fanto):

Radio tends to be taken for granted by most listeners; they use it for hours every day but video usually occupies the spotlight.

Over the last few days, however, appreciation for public service provided by radio during an emergency has reached new heights in Berkshire County. For many residents on the day of the Great October Blizzard, the area's radio stations provided a lifeline for some, and the only link to the outside world for others isolated and marooned by the devastating storm.

With power out, phone service disrupted, TV sets disabled, those with the foresight to keep their portable radios powered with fresh batteries were able to gain reassurance from the knowledge that thousands of others share dtheir plight and, in many cases, were even worse off.

The surprise storm hit the region at a time (Sunday morning) when most radio stations are minimally staffed and are offering pre-taped syndicated, religious or ethnic programming.

Although most of Pittsfield's stations eventually rose to the occasion, Berkshire Broadcating Co. (WSBS in Great Barrington and WMNB in North Adams) deserves special recognition for quickly recognizing the severity of the storm and suspending normal programming in favor of continuous storm coverage.

As heard in an isolated South County cabin, WSBS provided what amounted to an emergency command post, taking calls from listeners who needed special help, interviewing utility officials, police, and others involved in the crisis, and providing invaluable updates on highway conditions, road closings, power failures and phone problems.

Although the Barrington station focused, and rightly so, on South County, it also offered information on North County via reports from its sister station WMNB and on the Pittsfield-Dalton area from its news director, Tom Jay, who happened to be in Dalton that morning.

The WSBS on-air team -- program director Bob Collins, Dick Lindsay, Tony Betros, Liz Chaffee, Nick Diller -- combined authoritative news gathering with just the right amount of folksiness and sorely needed comic relief. There were several phone calls from stranded New Yorkers who insisted they just had to reach the Taconic State Parkway Sunday afternoon. Collins and company gently coaxed them into the realization that any kind of highway travel would be folly.

Those who complain about Berkshire radio -- too many commercial, "conservative" music programming, an overly homespun approach -- must now realize that without the outstanding service provided by the county's station's since Sunday, more lives might have been lost, panic could have developed, and the sense of isolation experienced by many storm victims would have been genuinely overwhelming.

Stephen Fay, a reporter for the Berkshire Eagle, wrote this story:

Great Barrington -- Bob Collins was as blown away as anybody by the big snow, Oct. 4, which is a little odd since he had known it was coming and had planned for it six months ago.

Last May, in his capacity as program manager for radio station WSBS, he compiled a policy handbook, what he calls a "storm package," that established programming formats designed to serve listeners tuning in during any of four levels of meteorological disturbances ranging from rain-swollen rivers to, as he put it, "total paralysis."

Total paralysis is as good a description as any for the impact of the Oct. 4 blizzard. And through it all, from early morning to late at night, Collins' storm package (and voice) provided listeners in South and Central Berkshire County with information, weather updates, help, tips and, as the grateful Great Barrington Civil Defense director put it, comfort.

As a result of the station's fast and facile assumption of the role of storm-information center, it has become a candidate for canonization among the many listeners who lacked power, lights, phone, transportation and heat. It's not just that he station was broadcasting -- it was broadcasting valuable information in the form of itnerviews with utilities' spokesmen, current weather reports, cancellations, and sources of help and shelter.

"It may sound like nobility," Collins said, "but it was part of a plan."

Collins, 33, said he is no fan of what he calls "stream-of-consciousness radio." he likes to plan ahead and organize the station's day. When he first came on board last April, the station's music policy was DJ's choice.

"Lawrence Welk would be followed by Whitney Hosuton and then some old song by Walter Brennan," he recalled.

He worked at rationalizing the music menu, allocating so much time for oldies, so much time for contemporary. He weeded out some strange records ("the Ballad of the Green Berets" was an early casualty) and threw away all the elevator music.

Beyond that, he said, he has tried to make the station a part of the life of the community. Fundraisers for sick children, such as Jared's Jamboree and HUSTLE, the SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) auction, and the effort to raise money to bring a Spanish boy to the Berkshires received the station's cooperation in the form of live broadcasts and plenty of on-air promotions and public service announcements.

The news coverage got a little broader and more ambitious under Collins' direction. he's not exactly taking bows for that advance, because Collins, who gets his feelings hurt when criticized, has gotten his feelings hurt a lot by angry selectmen, irritated listeners and aggravated advertisers.

Interestingly, he's not all that comfortable with praise. The praise from many quarters that's been coming in since last Sunday ought to be shared with his colleagues, he said, and really should go to the electric company and telephone crews who worked without rest to restore service.

"We were just sitting in a warm room passing on information," he said.

His journey to that warm room at WSBS has been long and bumpy. Born in Fitchburg, the youngest of five children of an insurance agent father and housewife mother, he developed an interest in radio early on. He used to record records on a reel-to-reel tape recorder and then play the DFJ -- announcing the hits and providing patter between platters.

He earned a bachelor of science degree in mass communications from Boston's Emerson College and landing his first radio job right after graduation in 1972, selling advertising for a little station in Marlboro. He didn't like ad sales and wasn't any good at it, either. He lasted a week. He got a DJ job at a station in Southbridge -- a 90-mile round trip commute from Fitchburg -- working six days a week for $110 a week. Then he got a better offer from the Fitchburg station, WFGL, and had his baptism under snow during the big blizzard of 1978 when he was one of the only staff members to make it to the station. He learned the value of making the station accessible to listeners, he said, as he took calls and did what he could do to let people know what was going on.

That year, he took a newsman's job at WBEC in Pittsfield, covering City Council meetings and other events. It was a good period, he said, for he liked working with Bob Cudmore, George Bulgarelli and others associated with the station at that time.

But WBEC changed hands and job security became a questiion, he said, so he bailed out and landed at WUPE, another rewarding interval darkened only by the time he forgot to throw a switch while making a personal phone call, drowning out a Zayre's commercial with language that was somewhat unfortunate.

Opportunity, in the form of WHDH in Boston, knocked in 1981, and there he worked until WCVB-TV in Boston hired him to write TV news copy. He said he didn't mind the anonymity of the news writer -- "I've always been content to be Joe Nobody" -- but the caste system of the anchorman and on-air "news personalities" turned him off. He went on to New York City to work for RKO Broadcasting until his father-in-law, Donald Thurston, owner of Berkshire Broadcasting, called in August of 1985 and asked if he would like to bring his wife, Carolie, and 2-year-old son, Sean, back to the Berkshires. Thurston wanted Colling to try the new position of program manager at WSBS.

He took over last spring and, judging from the response to his "storm package," he's been doing OK. But there have been many tough moments -- an on-air retraction over a mix-up in the coverage of the covered-bridge hassle in Sheffield and complaints from listeners who say there's too much rock-and-roll, too many changes.

He takes the criticism the way he takes his responsibilities: to heart. Does he ever think about giving up and getting out?

"Yeah, all the time."

I sent the article to my mother. Her reaction? "You called me a housewife," she fumed.

The flying couple

2010-09-27T07:50:00.001-05:00

It feels like years since I've made a decent landing in an airplane. I'm in a slump. I can't tell you for sure when it began, and now I can't tell you when it's going to end.

This is one of the problem with being a renter: It's too expensive to get out and keep one's skills sharp. Yesterday, Carolie and I flew along the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers to check out flooding that hit last week after some areas got 10 or more inches of rain in 24 hours.

Carolie usually doesn't fly with me, so it was nice to have her along. It was a little bumpy down low and she probably drove up the stock of Benadryl a fair amount, but she's a trooper:

And before the flight, I perform the traditional toast to the airplane.

Actually, I'm checking the fuel sample I just took out of the wing tank.

Then we flew...

The actual flying skills were fine -- better than fine, actually. I held altitude at 1,000 feet AGL in steep turns over Pine Island. While filming.

What else went right? Situational awareness. We flew well, we spotted the traffic (including birds) we needed to find, we did a great job of communicating through some busy airspace around Mankato, keeping everyone alert for us, and helping them navigate around us. We got a great view of tow plane, cutting its tie to a Civil Air Patrol glider over Mankato, and then diving for the ground.

There's just this landing thing to overcome.

We headed over to Red Wing for a bathroom break and a check of the Vikings score. Red Wing is a huge runway (5,000 feet), along the Mississippi, below bluffs on the Wisconsin side. And, sure, it gets a little squirrely, but it shouldn't have been as poor a landing as it was, especially given an incredibly stabilized four mile final.

But it was a bad landing, partially because the size of the runway makes you think you're lower than you really are, and partly because I'm not focusing on the far end of the runway, I'm looking ahead of the nose. I know this is the problem, I'm just not getting out enough to practice it.

So as we bounced down the runway, I firewalled the throttle and executed a go-around, which couldn't have thrilled Carolie, who rarely flies with me and didn't know what I was doing.

The second landing was a little better, but I still dropped it the last 10 feet or so.

And back at Flying Cloud -- a more familiar runway -- I had a better landing, but still not great.

As the RV-7A project nears its conclusion, I always think immediately after landings, "What would have happened if you were flying an RV?" I don't like the answer.

(If you're reading this via Facebook, you'll have to go to the "original posting" to see the video and Flash slideshow)

A day at Target Field

2010-09-22T22:37:00.002-05:00

The last time I can remember all four of us being together at a ballgame was 1994, the first year Jacobs' Field in Cleveland opened and we were on our way back to New England. As luck would have it, the Twins were in town. As skill would have it, the Indians toyed with them. Those were good days.

Carolie says we went to a Mother's Day at the old Metrodome, but I can't remember it. When it comes to indoor baseball, the mind blocks out trauma.

Jon McTaggart, the chief operating officer of Minnesota Public Radio, gave us his four seats to the Indians-Twins game at the new Target Field today. Before I tell you about our day, let me tell you a bit about Jon, who've I've known since the first week I started at MPR when he was running the station in Collegeville. He also ran the new media department and was the one who approached me about being MPR's first online news editor.

Some years later, after seeing an e-mail that announced I'd be gone for a few days because Patrick and I were going to Cincinnati to watch some baseball, he literally ran down the street to the parking garage where I was exiting, to give me $20 for a hot dog and beer. "You do good work," he said, "and I want you to have a good time."

I've told this story many times since that day, mostly to people who seem to think that some book, some class, some seminar will show them how to get their troops to run through a brick wall for them. Nonsense. All you have to do is give a rip enough to run down a street for them. Trust me. It works.

So we went to the game.

Of course, we had great seats, right in front of the Indians' broadcast booth. Patrick and I have spent many years listening to Tom Hamilton, the long-time play-by-play man for the Tribe. We heard his voice coming out of the booth, and we knew exactly who it was.

"Hey, Tom!" Patrick shouted between innings. And up popped Tom Hamilton:

"Hey, where are you guys from?" he said, after seeing me in my Indians hat and Patrick in his Grady Sizemore jersey (the origins of which can be found here).

"We're from here," Pat said, telling him that we've been listening to him online for years. We didn't bother to tell him we were originally from Massachusetts, that my parents both have Ohio ties, but we otherwise have no reasonable explanation for why we're both huge Cleveland Indians fans.

Patrick got his autograph.

I'd love it if the Twins fans could have a play-by-play guy like Hamilton. Baseball is a great sport and it's worth a guy who can get truly excited about a game, even though it's the last week of the season, your team is 27 games out of first, and is about to turn in back-to-back 97-loss seasons for the first time in its awful history. And by "excited," I mean really interested and excited, not that phony nonsense.

Here, hear for yourself. Here's the only run the Indians scored in the game. It was in the first inning. No sense making it out to be more than it was. And then he got right back to his story:

Great stuff. By the way, Twins fans, Hamilton said, "It's hard to believe Ron Gardenhire has never been manager of the year, which goes to show you how much those awards mean."

Meanwhile, in the second inning, Indians manager Manny Acta decided to blow the game up to mean more than it did, by bunting. Second inning. A bunt. It didn't work. His runner on second got thrown out at third.

Manny Acta is a horrible manager. You know who should manage the Indians? Jon McTaggart.

We love baseball at the Collins house. We always will. More than that, of course, we love being all together when we can. And I love watching my two young men laugh and chat with each other at the game, reminding me again that I was right when I told them during the fights they had as kids, that they'd be each other's best friends later in life. It's later in life.

Target Field is a lovely ball park. A lot of people think it's the best park in baseball and I guess I can't disagree with that. Still, it feels a bit like the Twins tried too hard to have the best park in baseball. There are the usual luxury suites and the restaurants and all, and there are plenty of opportunities to go inside and therein lies the oddity. After complaining about having to go indoors to watch baseball for a few decades, the new facility provides plenty of opportunity to go inside.

But I may be getting an improper perspective. Both games I've been to this year -- both Indians games -- were free tickets. One was the Champion's Club behind the plate and the other was the Legend's Club. I'm probably viewing the park from the high end. I'm not complaining, though, because it's an unbelievably comfortable facility. And I love going to ballgames. And though they've broken my heart for more than 45 years, and I'll never experience the thrill of their winning a championship, I still love the Tribe.

I love acknowledging a local guy who joined the Navy and went to war in 1942 and became one of Minnesota's most decorated soldiers. (by the way, Minnesotans don't show up on time for noon starts)

Is there anything better than a seventh-inning stretch with 40,000 people singing, Take Me Out to the Ballgame? No. No, there's not.

By the way, I know it's Minnesota and everything, but do these look like people who just clinched the Central Division and are on their way to a possible world championship?

You better get your game faces on soon, Minnesota.

The kids

2010-09-22T08:52:00.001-05:00

Having kids is like playing fantasy sports, except it's real.

Yesterday, I got big points. Son #1 got a promotion, a new pay grade, and an acknowledgment of his good work at his place of employment, which also happens to be my place of employment. He's well on his way. Good for him.

Son #2 got himself on television to talk about being the newest member of the White Bear Lake Fire Department. Scroll to 14:00.

Lake Area Beat-September 2010 from Lake Area Beat on Vimeo.

I'm in first place!

The empty nest project

2010-09-21T16:39:00.002-05:00

By now, thousands of people within the sound of my blog are probably suffering a bad case of empty nest syndrome. The last of the brood has gone off to college. Maybe someday they'll come back home to live, but it'll never be quite the same. I think about this as I watch the geese -- they were just little critters a few months ago -- get ready to leave the Twin Cities.

Dona Schwartz knows the feeling. She's working on a photographic portrait project about empty nesters. "I am interested in this moment in time because I think it's a significant transitional period in people's lives," she says. "I photograph parents in the vacated bedrooms their kids have left behind. Sometimes the bedrooms have been left as is, and sometimes parents repossess the space--both scenarios say a lot about the nature of the transition to life without children at home and the different ways parents approach it."

Schwartz has raised six children and stepchildren; the last is almost ready to fly. Leading up to this point, she thought she'd enjoy the coming solitude. Now, she's not so sure.

"One day I was overwhelmed by the teenage energy and drama (and angst) and I thought, 'I'm tired of the transitions in teenagers' lives! Adults go through transitions too and someone should pay attention to adults' lives!' she says. 'An empty nest! That's a transition I can relate to!' It was a eureka moment and the project came into being. The project is called On the Nest and it has two parts. I have been photographing people who are expecting their first child in the space they have prepared for the child's arrival, so part one is the transition to parenthood. Part two is empty nesters photographed in the vacated bedrooms of their children -- parents who are now transitioning to life without day-to-day responsibility for the care of children -- adults who are again on the threshold of a new identity and way of living."

If you'd like to be part of the project, contact her at dona@umn.edu.

A little bit country

2010-09-20T09:42:00.001-05:00

Carolie and I went on a short road trip to Zumbrota, Minnesota on Saturday. It's farm country. The first annual Minnesota Testicle Festival was being held at the Goodhue County Fairgrounds. We didn't stay for the rodeo, or the fashion show, or the concerts. We only stayed long enough to ask, "what the hell?"

Afterwards, we took the back roads up to Red Wing and had a nice lunch at the old St. James Hotel.

Better than Oshkosh

2010-09-04T09:51:00.000-05:00

Hate to say it but hanging around the MPR booth for a week at State Fair time has replaced Oshkosh as the highlight of my summer.

The old man and the remote

2010-08-27T08:45:00.000-05:00

Last winter, I started the long process of turning the old family room into the new family room. It's a finished basement which, for the most part, was the kids' play area.

The carpet, an emerald green, was here when we bought the place in 1993. And over time there came to be dried-up glue on it (from when I tried to repair a couch that the kids used to jump from), various dumped-soda stains, and God knows what from the dogs that have lived here over the years.

I've always liked the room. It's one of the cozier spaces in the house, but had become unused.

It also had this "pink" wall that wasn't supposed to be a pink wall, but the paint we chose -- I think it was supposed to be "peach" -- came out pink.

I repainted it last January to a two-color tan (since it's in the basement, we went with a "warm" color), and Carolie has done a great job since.

We still have more work to do; we need curtains on the windows and we'd still like to add a gas fireplace. But it should also be a nice, private space for people who visit and stay in the guest room, which is nearby. Yes, that's a hint. Take it.

Carolie has added a great new couch, which arrived Saturday, and last week she bought a home theater system, which was installed Wednesday.

Since then, I've looked at two giant remotes that are more complicated than any plane's instrument panel I've ever flown. I can't figure out how to connect the TV to the Internet, which is supposed to allow us to view things online.

So we've turned the room into a great new space. And it's turned me into that guy -- the old man with the VCR flashing midnight, who keeps calling his children to come figure this out.

Video: Over Chicago

2010-08-08T07:23:00.002-05:00

I drive back East fairly often, although I haven't done it this year. It's about a 23 hour drive over two days, and in addition to remember to factor in the time change, you have to factor in the 2 1/2 hours it takes to get through about 20 miles of Chicago.

Which is why this video shot by an RVer on his way to Oshkosh this year is high motivation to get my RV finished.

Suck on it, I-90!

Oshkosh Diary: Doesn't anyone want to fly anymore?

2010-07-31T08:20:00.002-05:00

At the tail end of a segment on our being a nation of dreamers on MPR's Midmorning yesterday, I did a short interview with host Kerri Miller on the week at Oshkosh. It starts at 45:48.

Kerri asked whether kids are still interested in flying and so I relayed an anecdote from a friend who flies Young Eagle flights at Oshkosh (Young Eagles takes kids for their first airplane ride to try to get them interested in flying). He called me Thursday because he had a seat available and wanted to know if I'd like it. I couldn't because I had an interview scheduled but how is it with so many kids around Oshkosh this week, no enough wanted to go flying? And what does that say about the future of general aviation?

My interview was with Ray LaHood, the U.S. secretary of transportation. He was giving me the usual rote answers that were uninspiring, if not borderline patronizing.

"Did you ever want to learn how to fly?" I finally asked.

"Me?" he said. "Oh no!" He then relayed all of the aspects of general aviation that are stereotypes of why we shouldn't fly -- he was too old, too risky etc. All of them, of course, are wrong. But it's hard to have confidence in a transportation vision and a secretary who says "the administration is 100% behind general aviation" who has never harbored the dream to take flight and look down.

Kerri also asked about the DC3s at Oshkosh. A lot of them didn't show up, I told her, because of the conditions of the field. But look at this beauty that was at Aeroshell Square. This is why I bought a little aluminum polish at Oshkosh (I spent a total of about $20 on airplane stuff this week, a record low for me, even for me).

Click on the image for a larger and more beautiful view. There are reasons not to go with polished aluminum on my RV airplane -- paint hides mistakes, they say -- but when you look at a plane like this, it's hard not to think about the option.

Oshkosh Diary: Ardy and Ed's

2010-07-28T23:18:00.002-05:00

It's not really Oshkosh until we've stopped at Ardy and Ed's drive-in for lunch, which was today's mission. That's Darwin Barrie and me. Glenn Brasch took the photo. I don't know why son, Michael, isn't in this.

Ardy and Ed's sits on the approach end of runway 27 at Oshkosh. As we waited for our food, sitting outside, we saw a B-17 approaching from a distance and it went directly over us.

There is, probably, no place else in the world where people today waited for their root beer floats while a B-17 passed directly over head.

Tonight we had the annual RV gathering. It was great to see Mario Nolte from Germany, and Linda and Terry Frazier from Nevada, and Bob Kelly and his wife from Indiana, and Ben Schneider did a great job putting it on. Also attending was Brad Oliver (who took some unbelievable night shots which I'll get a link to soon), and Chad Jensen and his dad, Jeff. And Bill Wightman of Terminal Tool fame. And Jeff Pointe, Darwin, Glenn, Michael, Don Hall, Rich Emery, and it's always great to see Larry Frey, who's coming up to Minneapolis after Oshkosh for some transition training with my pal, Tom Berge.

Tomorrow, I have an interview with Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, and then it's probably time to come home.

Oshkosh Diary: A wedding in the North 40

2010-07-28T09:42:00.002-05:00

I've seen some cool things in the years I've been coming to Oshkosh, but I haven't seen anything as outstanding as tonight's wedding in the North 40 of Michael Regen and Karen Benitez.

Oshkosh Diary: Meeting the neighbors

2010-07-27T09:27:00.000-05:00

So far, this has been an "uncomfortable" Oshkosh, not in the sense that there's a lot of mud and all, but that it feels like it does when someone has moved the furniture around. While the AirVenture grounds feature the usual "been there, done that" vibe (I'm seeing very little I'd describe as remarkable for the homebuilder), out here in Camp Scholler, things are chaotic.

The grounds have dried out fine, but if you come here for years at a time, you usually end up in the same spot. It's comfortable. You know where to find people and people know where to find you. Not this year.

Fortunately, I've been able to connect with buddy Glenn Brasch and his son, Michael, and RV pal Darwin Barrie, who I'm pretty sure is now convinced I'm building a ghetto RV-7A. He's probably right, which is one reason I've decided never to fly it over here.But lots of other people I usually visit with are scattered to the wind.

In the meantime, Camp Scholler always offers an opportunity to meet the neighbors. This morning, for example, I met Alex and Benny, who are from "west of St. Cloud." Benny is a homemade wine afficianado so I've been invited to stop over this evening for a glass of his 2008 vintage. We'll see.

HEY BUDDY, WANT TO BUY AN RV?

I'm not sure what the significance of this is, but I passed a display in one of the exhibit halls of beautifully carved airplanes of every model. The only one that's been cut to rock-bottom, is the RV line. The RV-8 models were also on sale.

RVs EVERYWHERE

There was a time when if you ran into someone wearing a Van's shirt or some other signal that they've built an RV airplane, you could instantly strike up a conversation. There weren't that many of them. Now, because of their popularity, they're everywhere. And the RV community -- singular -- has got pretty fractured. The RV-10 is for the monied, family crowd (not that there's anything wrong with that), the RV-12 seems to be for the older gen (getting there), and the RV-9s and RV-7s and RV-8s in between are for a very diverse crowd.

In other words, there really isn't an RV community anymore. It's no longer unusual to run into someone else building their own RV airplane and when you do, it isn't any more (or less) special than if you run into any of the other hundreds of thousands of people who live here for a week. What the community has in common -- building RV airplanes -- isn't really that significant as it once was. Sure, it's great to put faces to names of people you run across online; no doubt about that. And it's always great to see old friends, but there's 6,000 flying RVs now and probably another 20,000 under construction somewhere. As any city that grows past a certain point knows, larger communities split into smaller ones, and it becomes more and more difficult to maintain the larger group.

WHERE DID I PUT THAT?

I'm using my son's old bike during Oshkosh. Fortunately, it's a mountain bike so it's good in mud. But here's a tip: Keep a detailed note of where you parked your bike at Oshkosh.

Oshkosh: Top signs you haven't left your real world

2010-07-26T08:54:00.001-05:00

You not only bring a lawnmower, you use it to mow the grass around your campsite.

Oshkosh Diary - Back to normal?

2010-07-25T18:57:00.001-05:00

Anybody who has ever brought their little kids to Oshkosh recognizes this picture. It's Oshkosh in the campground. Kids doing what kids to; parents doing what parents do. Sure, the adults -- some of them -- are kvetching about the conditions here, but they're actually getting back to normal.

The main roads around the campground are now in pretty good shape, and the side roads -- through the fields actually -- no longer present a squishy "I'm crossing the Delaware" sound. True, they're still a mud bog, but all those pictures you've been seeing are starting to create a somewhat exaggerated pictures. Yes, there are still long lines of campers that can't get in. Yes, there are still rich people's toys who are camping on the roads. But there was a goodly amount of dust being generated around the campground today.

You watch, in a few days, some people will be complaining about that.

I have no idea -- and don't care that much -- what the situation is with people flying in. Jeff Point, who handles parking for RV airplanes, has been doing a great job of keeping people up to date on that on Van's Air Force.

My good friend, Warren, was supposed to fly over here from Minneapolis today. But the information about who can land here and who can't has been wildly inconsistent. He says he listened to the controllers at Fisk telling people nobody was landing. So he landed in Necedah and called me. I told him "you don't want to be here." Not with an airplane, and not sitting on the ground somewhere with the sun going down.

So he's opted to fly back and spend the evening with better company and a bottle of wine. Good choice.

THE WIFI SITUATION

The EAA has wisely -- in my opinion -- given up on the idea of providing roaming wiFi around the campground. Instead, it's built small shacks all around AirVenture where people can connect. This is a good thing. Yes, it's a bit of a pain in the neck -- in a 2010 way of thinking -- to ride a bike to a hotspot. But I admit to being discomforted by seeing so many people last year sitting in their tent in the evening, playing on the computer. The place to be is outside meeting people.

EAA RADIO

The radio broadcasts began this evening and continue through AirVenture. My guess is more people listen around the world than at Oshkosh. It seems like a great group of people, all of whom could be my son or daughter. Many are students at St. Cloud State.

I've done a few interviews, as previous posts have shown, and for the most part I'm opting to dump them onto the kids, so they can write and produce the material. That's what they're hear for. I don't need my name plastered on a piece, although I do intend to do one or two.

The young journalists are part of a class at St. Cloud State University. It's nice to see that people are still interested in the art and the sooner they can get into the business, and the sooner the people predicted its demise can get out of it, the better off the world will be. I'm just glad they're letting me play along with them for a few days.

As I type this, they're one minute away from beginning the broadcast of tonight's program at Theater of the Woods. Throughout AirVenture -- and beyond -- you can listen here.

NO CAMERAS

Canon, the camera company, has lent out huge cameras to just plain folk in recent years. It was a great promotion, and the cameras the size of Montana are the only way just plain folk will ever take great pictures. A sign on their building door today, however, said something like "due to worldwide demand, we're not handing out cameras this year." This, of course, is the type of gibberish that earns a public relations student a good grade.

Brazil to Oshkosh

2010-07-25T18:41:00.002-05:00

Three RV-10s are sitting at show center at this year's Oshkosh. Their pilots have earned the honor. They flew from Brazil to attend their first AirVenture. It took eight stops and six days, according to Victor Yancovitz, right, a former airline pilot.

None of the airplanes was made by the pilots. In Brazil, companies are allowed to make kit aircraft, and then sell them to customers, Yancovitz says. "Brazil is very strict about homebuilding. In the United States, you can make your aircraft, and go fly. There (Brazil), it's very restrictive. You must be approved by an engineer."

Antonio Nallin's RV-10, which was made in Sao Paulo, features extended fuel tanks. Three 150-liter tanks

Extended range tanks installed increased the size. Three 150-liter tanks (about 39 gallons) give the RV-10s a range of about 6 hours and 30 minutes.

Nallin says he likes to upgrade airplanes but doesn't like the idea of flying a light-sport category plane. He previously owned an RV-9 which is considered an ultralight in Brazil. He was the first Brazilian pilot to cruise over the Andes Mountains in an ultra-light five years ago. "It was a great adventure," said Nallin.

"He's a crazy man," counters Yancovitz.

Yancovitz says he's excited about the RV-12 and other light airplanes. "I've flown for 45 years," he said. "Boeings, DC8 , Airbus, everything. I love flying. When I retired I stopped flying commercial in 2001. I have to keep my medical every six months. With the ultralight, it's every two years. All of my licenses have expired -- commercial, ATP, private, they've all expired. Now we have a license to fly ultralights. For me, the smaller aircraft is enough."

Love and the airplane builder

2010-07-25T18:40:00.002-05:00

All love starts in France. Or aboard the Ford TriMotor.

Just ask RV-7 builder and RV-4 owner Michael Regen of Maryland, who proposed to Karen Benitez a year ago on a flight aboard the Ford TriMotor at AirVenture 2009 in Oshkosh. "As we took off and I was able to get out of my seat, and propose to Karen."

She said yes. "I was actually looking out the window when all of this was going on, because I was somewhat irritated with him before we got on the Ford Trimotor and it almost didn't happen. I was staring out the window, grumbling to myself. I turned around, and there he was."

The two actually met as kids, thanks to their parents. "Our parents were stationed together in France before we were born, and they always kept in touch," Karen says. "We always saw pictures and what everyone is doing. I come from a family of three girls and he comes from a family of three boys."

"We always used to fight over who got to sit next to Karen when we were kids," says Michael.

The two will be married in the North 40 on Tuesday under a tent put up by the Bonanza airplane group.

"It's vacation time. It's relaxed, and you can't be around a greater group of (mostly) guys," according to Karen, who had the idea of getting married at Oshkosh. She figured most of the couple's friends are in the area, although when we talked on Sunday, Michael was trying to find a workaround to a canceled Delta Airlines flight that was to bring two of his children to Oshkosh. They'll fly to Appleton instead.

"We've been sweating for the last few days because there was a chance the Bonanza people weren't going to be able to fly in," Michael said. "Fortunately, things worked out."

Regen built an RV-7 a few years ago but has sold it in favor of an RV-4. "They both have their little nuances, but I couldn't pick which one I like better. The 7A was a great airplane."

But he says his soon-to-be bride tops any plane. "Karen's wearing half an RV-7 on her finger," he said.

Sloshkosh

2010-07-25T10:32:00.002-05:00

I awoke fairly early this morning, looked out the tent and saw this...

The line from yesterday afternoon was gone; I don't know where it went, I've seen no indication anyone was allowed into the campground at AirVenture. But it was replaced by another line that stretches about a mile down the road. It's not moving and it doesn't appear it's going to move anything soon.

After breakfast, I went out and talked to some of the people. Unfortunately I've left everyone's names on a notepad back in the card, but I'll update the post later. I also am having difficulty getting the audio off a Compact Flash card, so I can't provide that right now, either. Really, what good am I?

I do know that this is Nate, he's from Worthington, Mass., and he flies for Continental. He and a couple of friends from the Berkshires (who didn't want to be identified but we exchanged some Berkshire County connections) drove all night from Massachusetts, and pulled into line at 5:30 this morning.

Nate was in pretty good spirits; he's been coming here since the '80s and didn't seem to mind waiting in line much. His colleagues are on their first trip to Oshkosh.

This gentleman is from my neck of the woods -- Oakdale, Minnesota. He's ex-Army where he flew helicopters and he's looking forward to evaluating some of the kit helicopters. He says EAA could've done a better job of posting signs that say "go home." As he understands it, EAA is going to organize a caravan to the parking lot at at the University of Wisconsin Duluth, where they'll drop their trailers. What happens after that, I don't know, and this isn't official so don't quote me.

This group is from St. Louis, the president and vice president of EAA Chapter 32 in St. Louis (on the right). David Doherty and his son, William Doherty. David proudly points out he was born on the day the EAA was formed in the basement of Paul Poberezny's Wisconsin home.

The people on the left are all from Australia. David and Rae (again, I'll get the particulars on the names later), are here for his 60th birthday. They've been traveling in the states for seven weeks and are now taking in Oshkosh and all its, at least for now, inaction.

I asked David -- Aussie David -- for his favorite flying experience and he reports that it came just a few weeks ago when he flew over the desert in Australia and found everything to be green, which apparently rarely happens. Everything's green in Wisconsin, too. I told him if he got tired of making camp on a frontage road, the biggest ball of twine in the world is but a few hours away. He seemed appropriately unimpressed.

Last night, I had dinner with Darwin Barrie, and Glenn and Michael Brasch, and the pal I know only as "Tom the Camp Locator Shack Guy," and Jeff Point, who is the master parker of RV aircraft. Jeff says the "phrase that pays" this week is, "I've never seen anything like this before," and describes the situation as a "Biblical flood." He says at this point, organizers are just "making it up as we go." There's no long-term plan, because people are just trying to figure out what to do in the short term.

They can't even park cars for people coming in today (although AirVenture officially opens tomorrow) because the fields they use for the parking lot are too wet.

EAA officials have fanned out around Camp Scholler, telling people they can't drive their cars once they set up camp; they have to walk the half mile or so to a shower or the store or wherever. The cars are simply carving up the field.

That wouldn't be such a bad thing if the camp shuttle buses were running, but I haven't seen them yet and if they are running, they're going to have a difficult time because of all the big land yachts parked along the road.

And the owners of those rigs aren't sacrificing much. Even though people need to use the road, those that have living rooms that extend out the side, are deploying them, carving up more of the road. Thanks for taking one for the team, rich folks. Stay classy.

I did hear this morning from my favorite vendors -- Jerry Hansen and the gang from Trio Avionics, who were driving in to set up their shop. Hopefully, we'll be able to get together for dinner as we always try to do.

My friend, Warren Starkebaum, is due to fly over from Crystal Airport (Minneapolis) today. I left him a message saying "you don't want to be here."

Normally on Sunday, one can pass the time pulling up a chair by the runway and watching the mass arrivals. But there are no mass arrivals because there's simply no place to park them. There will be soon, Jeff hopes, but there are going to be large sections that simply won't hold the weight of airplanes this week.

The big fly-in of DC-3s has been canceled. They take up too much parking space on the ramp, space that has to be reserved for smaller planes.

(Click on the images to see larger ones and to see what's cut off from the smaller ones posted here.)

Oshkosh Diary - July 24, 2010

2010-07-24T19:11:00.003-05:00

It's a lovely evening in Camp Scholler at AirVenture 2010 in Oshkosh... as long as you're looking up. Glance anywhere else, and you're looking at a looming disaster, at least for a few days until things dry out.
They've had over 10 inches of rain here since the beginning of the month and it shows. The little creek where I usually camp is running like the Mississippi.

Out on the frontage road, at least a mile long line of RVs (the kind on wheels) are stalled. They're not letting them in and some EAA people are going RV to RV handing out water. Inside Camp Scholler, only tenters are setting up. The RVs and other big units are mostly parking on the roadways and setting up there. It's a nightmare.

I looked at the EAA Radio compound where I was going to set up and decided that -- at least for tonight -- I'd head for high ground. I'm out on Second Street, which is a healthy stone's throw from the highway. But it's not standing water and my standards for comfort got lowered considerably. Tomorrow, perhaps, I'll move in with my broadcasting friends.

As for airplanes, I've seen very few fly in. Michael Regen is here. I'll be doing a story on him and his soon-to-be bride. He's parked his RV on the tarmac near the FBO until they start parking planes on grass.

His wedding on Tuesday will be in the North 40. Here's what the North 40 looks like right now.

And here's what it looks like in the campground:

The spot I'm at is working out fine for now. I'm half-deaf so maybe the truckers blowing their horns in the middle of the night won't bother me as much. But I come over here mostly to socialize and there isn't much of that out here. People don't walk by on their way to somewhere else. Out here, you've got a golf cart or a car to get where you need to go.

Glenn Brasch, his son Michael, and Darwin Barrie were setting up their site across from where they used to be near the camp locator shack. I almost got the car stuck when I stopped to say "hello." I now have a generous coating of mud on it.

There's no working wiFi yet. This year, EAA has built small buildings around the area as wiFi hotspots, which I presume means you won't be able to sit in your tent and watch Hulu this year. Good. But it doesn't appear to be turned on yet.

So I'm down at Starbuck's where a barrista who used to live on St. Paul's East Side asked me if I'm in town for the air show. "Do I scream 'air show'?" I asked.
"No," she said, "it was your TCF Bank card. But, you know, you fly people are pretty well dressed. Usually we get beer guts and sandals in here. I was wearing muddy sneakers and a T-shirt. I chose not to show here my beer gut.

I suppose I could've pursued it and ended up at the point I dread ("you pilots are all rich."), but I'm tired and I still have to work up the energy get over to WalMart and navigate around the -- apparently -- Starbucks customers.

Drop a note if you have questions or comments and we'll be conversing here during the week.

On to Oshkosh

2010-07-23T20:55:00.002-05:00

(I'll be posting Oshkosh dispatches this week both here and my other blog -- Letters From Flyover Country)

Got in from a quick trip through Boston this afternoon and immediately headed for the hangar and packed the car for the trip to Oshkosh. There was quite a bit of activity with amphibs -- more so than usual, since Wipaire is on the field -- but driving out I saw this beauty.

I'm not one of the people who can identify every airplane out there on sight, I just know that that's a mighty fine job of polishing aluminum.

Anyway, I'm not sure what to expect at Oshkosh this year. It's been raining -- hard. They got about 7 inches of rain yesterday, I understand.

I hate mud.

Jennifer's eulogy

2010-07-22T22:22:00.002-05:00

The hardest part about writing a eulogy isn't the words -- although they're frequently no picnic -- it's getting it right. You don't give a eulogy for yourself, but the person you're eulogizing is the one others know too, and you don't want to end with someone wondering if you're talking about the same person they knew. And you want people who didn't know a person, to have a clear idea what they missed.

The best part about being able to write an obituary and a eulogy -- as I did this week for my niece, Jennifer -- is that it's something I can do. We often say to people, "I wish there was something I can do." It's very satisfying being able to do something.

A few people at Minnesota Public Radio covered for me on very short notice this week when my brother asked me to handle the task on Monday. I needed all of Tuesday to think about all the possible ways of putting it together, and most of Wednesday to start writing.

I spent a fair amount of time this week talking to my twin brother, Bill, trying to be sure that Jennifer came through properly in the final words. I hope she did. She was a heck of a kid. He's a heck of a father and brother. And I never want to give another one of these again.

One of the last times I saw Jennifer was at the Cape. She asked me about writing. I think she was just getting interested in poetry. And she said "I know what I want to say, but I have a hard time getting started with the words."

I was tempted to give her the advice a colleague gave to me once, which was "all good writing begins and ends with a great cigar," but, you know, that really didn't seem to fit the occasion. So I gave the answer I've given to others who have asked me a similar question over the years.

"Don't worry about the words in your head. Think about what you have in your heart, and the words... will take care of themselves later."

This is a time, of course, when words fail. Thirty-one year old women aren't supposed to die. Our heart says life should be more fair even though our head knows that it's quite often not. Things are the way they are.

So we look instead to what's in the heart and we hope that the words take care of themselves... later.

Jennifer was born with spina bifida, and there was no getting around it. It deprived her of what many of us would consider a normal life; it certainly deprived her of a long life. It was hard, of course, on her. It was hard on her parents. It was hard on her brothers. It was hard on everybody who loved her, and it was hard on everybody who love the people who loved her.

In many ways, though, her affliction is what sewed the threads that bind many of us to the point where we're here today. It is a part of whom many of us are -- and what many of you still will turn out to be.

Her affliction might have prevented her from doing some things, but it did not keep her from being a better friend than most people have. It didn't keep her from laughing or needing to see you laugh too. It didn't keep her from being honest in her thought.

In an e-mail during the time she was in the hospital most recently, my brother relayed the story of an intensive care unit nurse who said she was having a hard time sleeping thinking about Jennifer. On the one hand, that was no doubt terrifying because ICU nurses see things fairly regularly that most of us don't, and if they're staying up at night worrying, what are the rest of us to do? At the same time, it was indicative not only of the compassion she had, but also of Jennifer's ability to sew a thread into the heart of those who knew her... even for a few days.

Jennifer's life was short, but here's the thing: As smart as we like to think we are, we really don't understand the concept of time very well. When we're very young, 31 seems old. When we're 56, 31 seems young. Same age...both young,and old. How can it be both?

When they were young, my brother took Jennifer and my other niece, Sara, to DisneyWorld. Thirteen times, they rode through the "It's a Small World" ride. Thirteen times, Bill reported to me, it was as wondrous for Jen as the first.

For Jennifer, time was passing so quickly -- so wondrously -- that it took 13 times to make a moment. I guarantee for everyone else on that ride, by number six or seven -- or maybe sooner -- time had never moved so slowly.

My brother told me that Jennifer did not have the same sense of time passing that the rest of us do. That's a luxury she had that we do not because it allowed her to live her life in her happiest moments.

She loved Christmas; she loved Christmas lights. She loved driving with her mom, and her brother, Will, to look at them.

But she was afraid of Santa Claus. She instructed her parents to leave a window open and leave him a note. "Just throw the presents through the window," she said. "Don't come in the house." The Easter Bunny was equally suspect.

Jennifer loved planning to give gifts. She sent me a note on Facebook last fall. "What's your favorite color and what do you like most?" she asked, a question she often asked people. "Blue, and airplanes," I said.

She was kind of bossy because her next message said that she had selected me to be in charge of getting the list from everybody in the family. She wanted to make a quilt, I guess, with the squares with everyone's favorite color and some design or illustration about their favorite thing.

So I did, because if nothing else, Jennifer is a Collins woman and you don't want to get on their bad side. But when I reported everyone's results back, there were too many people with a favorite color of blue. "Go back and get their second-favorite color," she said and I did before she decided she'd wait on the quilt project until people could get it together and diversify their favorite colors.

She loved to crochet and one of her proudest achievements was the blanket she made for her brother, Erik, when he was born. And there are pillows and blankets in many of your homes, each with your favorite color.

She loved games as anyone on Facebook with a bucketload of Farmville messages from her will attest. She loved puzzlebooks on the beach, playing Yahtzee,and cribbage. She loved playing the games with Dan, and Will and Erik, and all her cousins. She loved winning.

She did a lot things, thanks to the people who were around her. She caught a fish the size of Connecticut once, she bounced around Provincetown in a dune buggy. She'd build a sand castle as long as you did all the dirty stuff, like touching wet sand. Or carve pumpkins as long as you got the gross junk out of it. Then she'd tell you you could've been quicker about it.

She'd float in a pool and then in the water of the Cape Cod Bay with her grandparents.

She loved dogs, especially Zelda, Domino and Nute. Dogs know certain things. Dogs know the goodness of people's souls, and Jen understood theirs. Zelda, Domino, and Nute put themselves between Jennifer and whatever could hurt her.

For someone who was so good at listening, she sure loved to talk. She loved the family gatherings at Thanksgiving and Christmas, mostly because she could spend the time with the other kids. You've never heard such noise as when the Collins and Stickney kids got together.

But she was a listener, too. You can tell a lot about people by the way they listen. When you talked. Jennifer smiled.

So it was only natural that she volunteered as a companion at a nursing home, she volunteered at the Gardner VNA. She was taking online courses with the notion that someday she might be a psychologist. Not only would she have been a good one. She WAS a good one.

Jennifer was what so many people are not.

Jennifer was authentic.

My sister, Cheryl, wrote the other day that she wishes she'd spent a little more time visiting with her; that she -- perhaps like you, is feeling a little guilty about that. Sometimes Jen would call four times on the same subject, she says, and sometimes you just let the phone ring through on the fifth time.

"The fact that she called us at all was testament that we were important to her, even if she didn’t say so," my sister wrote. "It is not important whether you answered the phone that 5th time. So remember you all did make a difference in her life," she said.

Jennifer was our granddaughter. Our daughter. Our sister. Our niece. Our cousin. Our friend. Our companion. She was my god-daughter.

You are pieces of all the people you encounter in your life. In each of us there are threads that the life of Jennifer Collins stitched, some of which have yet to reveal themselves to you. But they will. You are somehow different because of those threads. You raised her, you protected her, you played with her, you argued with her, you laughed with her, you sacrificed things in your life for her, you lay awake at night worrying about her, and because of all of that, you are different -- you are better -- than you would be if you had not.

Those threads she sewed, you are now sewing too.

Jennifer didn't make that quilt of everyone's favorite colors. But she's not done yet. Because neither are you. Even now, at this moment, you are creating new chapters, because Jennifer has brought you all here today.

When the words fail, just think about what you have in your heart. The ache you feel, the happiness you feel, the satisfaction you feel, the guilt you feel, the anger you feel, is the voice of Jennifer Helen Collins saying, "I will be a thread in you. Always. And my favorite color is purple."

On behalf of her family, thank you for being a celebration of her life everyday for the rest of yours.

Jennifer H. Collins, 1978-2010

2010-07-20T20:37:00.002-05:00

Jennifer Helen Collins, 31, of Gardner, formerly of Princeton and Fitchburg, died on Sunday July 18, 2010 at UMass Memorial Healthcare in Worcester. Jennifer was born on December 1, 1978 with spina bifida, which left her unable to walk and required her to undergo many surgeries.

She was a poet, a rider of horses, a lover of dogs, a victor at games, a social networker, and a crocheter. She loved music and singing and searching for a tune to carry. While there might be things she could not do by herself, she was rarely by herself. Jen had a way of getting forever into people's hearts, merely by loving them as family or friends.

For someone who was afraid of Santa Claus (She had her parents leave instructions for him at Christmas to just throw the presents through an open window and move along), she loved to give gifts. She'd often ask people about their favorite color, with an idea in mind for a present later.

Jennifer was authentic. She loved to talk to people so she could spend time listening to them. When she graduated from middle school, she was voted "best listener," a prerequisite to being a best friend, of which she had many. She volunteered as a companion at Oakdale nursing home, she attended Camp Agassiz Easter Seals Camp, first as a camper, then as a counselor in training. She volunteered at the Visiting Nurses Association in Gardner, and was activities assistant at Crystal House in Gardner. At the time of her death, she was taking classes online in the hope that she could one day be a psychologist, almost as if she didn't realize she already was.

Jen lived in her happiest moments, whether it was the thirteenth consecutive trip through "It's a Small World" at Disney World, a drive to see Christmas lights, Provincetown at night, word puzzles on the beach at the Cape, swimming with her grandparents, playing games with her brothers and cousins, writing poetry, or nights out with her mother, MaryLou.

Jennifer graduated from Wachusett Regional High School in 1997.She was preceded in death by her grandparents, Alcide and Lorraine Cormier, Walter and Shirley Irvine, and Fredrick Collins Jr.She is survived by her mothers MaryLou I. Cormier and Felice Collins; her father, William B. Collins; brothers William, Daniel and Erik Collins; her grandmother Ruth Eileen Collins; several cherished aunts, uncles and cousins; her dear friend Jack Kangas, and her housemates and friends Jessica McCarthy, Nancy Bache and Suzie Corsiglia.

Jennifer's parents would like to thank the doctors and nurses of the third floor ICU at UMass Memorial Healthcare in Worcester, and the staff of the Gardner Women's Residence for their skill and compassion.

A memorial service for Jennifer will be held at 4:30 P.M. on Thursday, July 22nd, in the Miles-Sterling Funeral Home, 100 Worcester Road (Rte. 12), Sterling.A reception to share in the celebration of the life of Jennifer H. Collins will be held immediately following at Chockset Inn in Sterling, Ma.

In lieu of flowers, donations in Jennifer's memory can be made to Camp Agassiz Easter Seals Camp, c/o Easter Seals, 484 Main Street 6th Floor, Worcester, MA. 01608.

Trip to Mayo

2010-06-29T13:13:00.006-05:00

If you live in Minnesota and are old -- or getting there -- eventually you end up at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Today was our day. Carolie is here hoping someone will finally reveal the cause of her maladies. Nobody else has been able to figure out the mystery.

The Mayo is knee-deep in money. It was difficult for Carolie to get an appointment at this "world renowned" institution as she has never been a tinhorn dictator of a Middle East nation. So our fingers are crossed.

That said, a gentlemen just rolled his wheelchair by me and his ringtone was "Convoy," the trucker anthem of the 1970s. Inconsistent with the rest of the atmosphere here.

As usual, we could not resist the opportunity to play tourist, so I grabbed this photo of Carolie in front of the famous piano:

Perhaps you recognize it from this famous Internet video:

This couple has been married 63 years. The people who are around Mayo Clinic are, as one might expect, old. And the couples are trying for a little more time together. It is alternately heartbreaking and inspiring.

Twin Cities by air

2010-06-01T08:19:00.003-05:00

An RV-pilot/builder friend, Pete Howell, took this great picture of the Twin Cities on Saturday. It gives you a good idea of the layout of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Click on the image for the best view.

Lumbering along

2010-05-30T11:43:00.007-05:00

The down side of living in Minnesota is once it gets warm, you can almost hear the clock ticking while you listen to the birds singing. This year has been unusually warm in flyover country, so I got an early start to thinking that I needed to get my outdoors projects done; winter's coming.

It was only yesterday, for example, that I pulled the famous "bench" out of the hangar and brought it back to its rightful summertime home on the front lawn. It felt like I'd waited until summer was half over to do it -- it was May 29, for crying out loud.

But this attitude can work for you, too. For example, this was the great then-six-year deck rebuilding project last summer.

And here it is this afternoon:

Last year:

Today:

I had actually gotten the railings up on the top tier before last winter came, but it was the discover of the amazing jumping talents of Luci the Blog Dog which got me motivated to finish the deck (I still have to do the top cap and I'm thinking of building in some "window boxes").

A few weeks ago, Carolie left for work and found Luci by the garage door, but we couldn't figure out how she got out from the fenced-in back yard. Carolie watched closely for a few days and then she revealed her trick. When she wanted to chase rabbits in the front yard, she went up to the deck and then jumped off ... and over a four-foot-high chain link fence located a good 4 or five feet from her departure point.

She'll need a Plan B, now.

Coming home

2010-03-22T21:20:00.005-05:00

Today was to be the longest-run of the long ride home and, funny, it was. From Alamosa, Colorado to Lincoln, Nebraska took about 12 hours. We learned back in Santa Fe that a stagecoach ride from Missouri to Santa Fe took two months. Imagine what this little trek would've taken.

We also learned that back when Spain controlled what is now New Mexico, the King sent word to his forces that someone had taken up residence in the Nebraska territory and sent an expedition up to find out who. From what I can tell from the ride across America's feedlot, it's someone who didn't know any better and trust me, king of Spain, you didn't want Nebraska anyway.

Say, let's have a contest between states.

You go first, Colorado, with your gorgeous Spanish Peaks:

Your turn, Nebraska. Give us all you've got!

We miss you already, Desert Southwest. You've given me new motivation to get the airplane finished and flying.

Update - 3/25 Total miles driven on the trip: 4,312.4

Taking a pass through Colorado

2010-03-21T19:13:00.014-05:00

From time to time on this trip, I've found myself thinking, "how would I fly here when the RV-7A is done?" The trip back home began today in Williams, Arizona this morning and we've circled the wagons and are making camp in Alamosa, Colorado for the night. About an hour or so ago, I found myself thinking "find another route for the RV-7A" when we got to the Wolf Creek Pass between here and Durango.

By the way, that's another part of the trip that's been intriguing. There's wide-open sky everywhere, and I've seen one small plane in it on the entire trip.

Anyway, we wound our way up through the pass about 10,000 feet over 8 miles, and then back down again over 8 miles. This winds us through the San Juan Mountains, where the Rio Grande River comes out into the open for the first time on its journey.

As with the rest of the trip, it has been remarkable to see the difference in geography and geology over a relatively short distance.

Over our 500 miles today, we started by driving across the desert of the Navajo and Hopi lands.

We passed several high schools on the reservations and were shocked -- to the say the least -- that several of them had nicknames -- including Redskins -- that we would consider racially insensitive.

A little farther along we'd pass some mesa, with snow-covered mountains off in the distance...

I never did put the odometer on these to see exactly how far away they were but 100 miles is not out of the question. And eventually, we'd get to them, go over them, and go down to the desert floor again on the other side.

Unfortunately, the Four Corners Monument was closed for construction. That's where Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado meet. We had no choice but to push on for lunch at an out-of-the-way lunch spot in Cortez, Colorado which featured old video of America concerts from the '70s. I don't really understand Colorado.

A few miles ago we passed a grain elevator with Bush/Cheney '14 painted on one side and McCain/Palin on the other. Mostly, though, the very diverse politics of the southwest has been hidden. For example, I've seen almost no bumper stickers on the entire 3,000 mile trip, at least not since I left Minnesota.

What does this mean? I think the southwest is quicker to "let it go" than Minnesota is.

Hanging at the Grand Canyon

2010-03-20T21:52:00.008-05:00

The Trophy Wife and I spent the day at the Grand Canyon today, a reminder to all homeowners to make sure the downspout properly drains away from the house, lest you have some serious landscaping problems in 140 million years.

No camera can do the Grand Canyon justice, so we'll just go with the usual shots. Humor me.

Tomorrow morning we'll do something we haven't done in about 9 days -- turn the car toward the northeast.

From Tucson to the Grand Canyon

2010-03-19T20:58:00.017-05:00

Today we said "goodbye" to Tucson, the southernmost stop on our exploration, but not before taking a scenic drive along the foothills.

Then we again raced across the desert, back to Phoenix, and up into the high country.

We stopped in Rock Springs, which was famous as a stagecoach and watering stop. The place we stopped at claimed Waylon Jennings and Marty Robbins were known to write songs in the saloon.

The food was excellent, though we recommend if you plan to go, plan on stopping before you're actually hungry so that by the time the food comes, you'll be starving.

A few miles north, we left the interstate and got on the scenic road up to Sedona. We stopped for the view, not knowing that it gets better. (No, I've never actually been to Nantucket)

A lot better (click to enlarge any of these images)...

This is just outside Sedona. They should call this stretch the "Oh My Highway" because around every turn there awaits another spectacle that forces you to exclaim, "Oh, my!"

I suppose people who live here get used to it, which is unfortunate.

You can see the cactus of the desert has given way to some tree growth and, of course, the rock is red.

Sedona itself is a way-too-precious-for-its-own-good town that apparently fell victim to too many community orgasms at the sight of a Lexus with California plates, but shortly past it, the rock turns white, the red disappears, and the snow appears as we approach 7,000 feet.

The water is rushing fast from the winter melt in the canyon. The desert has given way to pine forest.

I couldn't tell whether the sound I heard in the canyon below was the wind, or the rushing water. I finally settled on it being the water. And, of course, it was quite windy and the jackets came out.

I took enough pictures here to make one of those panorama-type things but the program I used to make it - ClevrStitcher - has become DumbAsAGoddamPostStitcher in the last few days.

We've now made it to Williams, Arizona. The wind is howling, the temperature is 43, and tomorrow we'll head for the Grand Canyon.

Dinner in Tucson

2010-03-18T21:12:00.004-05:00

These are some of my favorite people in the world, so today we drove down to Tucson to have dinner with them. This is the Brasch family -- that's Carol and Michael. You can't see Glenn, because he's taking the picture.

Glenn and Michael come up to Oshkosh every summer for AirVenture, and I probably would stop going over if they -- and Darwin Barrie (who we had dinner with the other night in Phoenix) -- didn't.

Glenn and Darwin are real pilots. They fly medivac helicopters for a living after completing their law enforcement careers. That's "real pilots" as in instrument-rated helicopter pilots. (I also linked to a story Glenn wrote about his Young Eagle flights here)

We had a great dinner at a fine choice of a restaurant. I'm ready for Oshkosh!

Is Arizona in Minnesota's future? Probably.

2010-03-18T16:33:00.008-05:00

(Tucson) -- Arizona, as we've come to discover in the last three or four days, is a gorgeous state with an ugly disposition. I've documented the former, the latter is a story you've heard before -- the effects of a $2 billion state budget deficit.

Like Minnesota, the Republican conservatives are screaming about no new taxes. Maybe they're right; maybe the state is wasting taxpayer money. It's naive to think states don't. And, no doubt, there are people gaming the system. But it also requires one to define waste by health care for poor children, which is being cut. Or a GED program for teens, which is no more. Voters are being asked to rescind an 80-cent-a-pack tax on cigarettes which was dedicated, I believe, to early childhood development programs. Like Minnesota, the money was dedicated so ideologues couldn't get their hands on the money. If the voters disapprove of the tax they already approved, the tax will stay but the money will be swept into the state's General Fund. You think that money is going to be spent on early childhood education? This is how lawmakers define waste.

There's also an income tax cut being kicked around while this is going on, with most of the money being saved by the very wealthy. Earlier this week, we visited a pal who lives on a private, gated airpark. There were million dollar homes with attached hangars containing Citation jets and helicopters (in the same hangar). Drive around Phoenix and you see plenty of Cadillac SUVs.

No doubt there are people of means struggling with a lousy economy; recessions are like that. I don't pretend to know much about Arizona, having spent only a few days here. But you can live anywhere in America now and feel the same twisted vibe. Moral bankruptcy usually follows the financial kind. We solve our education problem by guaranteeing a more uneducated population. We solve the health care problem by creating more sick people. We address poverty by assuring it grows. No doubt a lot of people are gaming the system. But that doesn't make the approach logical.

On one of the airplane lists I follow on the Internet, a current thread was started by someone looking for a place with lower taxes than California. And people in various parts of the country are writing with suggestions while acknowledging their tax situation is out of control.

Again, maybe it is. Or maybe they've just all gotten their kids through the taxpayer-paid public school system, maybe even had them educated at a public university, are living off their public pensions, or their private pension from their job with a private company that got fat off government contracts, with their education paid for by the GI bill.

In any case, they've got theirs and got where they are without the help of the guvmint. It's the job of others to make it on their own.

Oh, and they don't want to live just anywhere where the taxes are low. They want a 'quality of life' to go with it.

This is the way it in this country right now. We'll ask our children to die in a desert in Iraq or Afghanistan so the people can have a better life there, but in this desert, you'll need to pee behind a cactus if you have to and hope your kid doesn't (a) get sick or (b) need to compete in an international economy with an education.

We've seen an incredible cross-section of American geography in the last week and there's more to go. But everywhere we visit, we also see and hear the refrain of the American. "I've got mine." At a time when people are invoking the Minutemen and other images of our glorious battlefields past, I just can't square dead people on Omaha Beach with the country that's fast becoming one hell of a son of a bitch.

A walk in the desert

2010-03-17T18:14:00.009-05:00

Our Minnesota Landscape Arboretum membership entitled us to free entry to Phoenix's Desert Botanical Garden, which was our destination today. It was 83 degrees in the Valley of the Sun -- gorgeous weather.

This critter -- Texas Mountain Laurel -- smells like grape candy and as you walk through the trails, when the breeze is just right, you get a whiff of grape.

At the entrance, this is a glass sculpture. I haven't played with the color settings on this at all. Look at the color of that sky!

But there was plenty of the real thing.

I took this one to give me some ideas for the backyard, you know... what with climate change and all.

The only frantic moment was after we took the picture at the top of the post, Carolie realized a little later that she'd forgotten her backpack/purse. We raced back to the spot, but it was gone. Fortunately, someone had found it and turned it in and the two were reunited. Big points again for you, Desert Southwest.

Happy hour by the pool while waiting for a load of laundry to finish.

Click the image below to go to the album and then click "slideshow."

A walk in the desert

A day at the ballgame

2010-03-16T19:11:00.015-05:00

We went over to the ballpark at Goodyear -- about 2 miles from where we're staying -- for the Indians-Giants Cactus League game today. The Indians share a spring training complex with the Cincinnati Reds. I ordered tickets ahead of time but I didn't need to. However, it did put me in the 2nd row behind thirdbase. (As always, click the image for the full-sized version)

Got a chance to see Bob Feller:

Travis Hafner whacked a double to open up the game in the mid-innings. With Jake Westbrook turning in four solid innings and Hafner smacking the ball around a fair amount, there's hope in Cleveland.

Left field's home run porch is a lawn where you can spread out. If we go to a game tomorrow evening (a day-night doubleheader with the Brewers in the day and Reds at night, I believe), maybe we'll lean up against a palm tree and watch the game.

Off the first and third base lines, there's a bunch of grass where people can play catch during the game.

You know how at the old Metrodome the kids could run the bases after the game? In Arizona, it's a different demographic.

Outside the ballpark, this is the signature sculpture. I'm not sure what it's supposed to be. Is it a baseball to look like a feather?

The view from the not-cheap seats:

Final score: Indians 7 Giants 1.

We're coming for you, Twins!

I told Carolie this is my spring training to get ready for Oshkosh. I have to build up to being able to sit out in the piercing sunshine for seven or eight hours at a time. I'm not there yet. Speaking of Oshkosh, we're off to Chandler this evening to take Darwin Barrie -- RV builder/flyer and Oshkosh bud -- out to dinner.

Salt River Canyon - Arizona

2010-03-16T10:59:00.010-05:00

I tried to create a panorama using ClevrStitcher but that program can be a dog sometime so I had no choice but to do it by hand and uploaded it here. It's better than nothing.

Reaching Phoenix

2010-03-16T01:05:00.015-05:00

Breathtaking does not do justice to the diversity of the scenery that we encountered on today's Santa Fe (New Mexico) to Goodyear (Arizona) leg of our let's-get-out-of-Minnesota-and-go-watch-some-spring-training trip. As with all the images, if you don't click on it to get the bigger version, you're really missing out. "It's like riding through a postcard," Carolie said. She's right. Over every hill, there awaits quite a spectacle.

We started out in Santa Fe with the remnants of yesterday's snowstorm...

An hour later we were in Albuquerque.Somewhere atop this mountain, there is a tram and a restaurant where we were originally going to have lunch. But we decided to wait a few hours to get started today in order to let the roads clear and there were clouds anyway.

So we turned west in Albuquerque and headed toward Gallup, New Mexico.

It was a wide-open expanse. We stopped in at a Post Office to mail some postcards on one of the reservations and got back on the road for Gallup, where we hopped on route 66 for a bit. Gallup, to be clear, sucks. But the gateway to Arizona more than makes up for it.

I would have thought this the highlight of the day. Standing in the middle of the road, with nobody around, looking across the desert floor near Springerville, Arizona.

We'd gotten off the interstate and decided to take the scenic route, at the recommendation of my Tucson friend, Glenn Brasch. This wasn't even labeled the scenic route on the atlas. I wish I didn't have constant ringing in my ears (left over from the onset of Meniere's Disease), because otherwise I'd have been able to experience absolute quiet. Not even the wind.

Those mountains are 40 miles away -- the White Mountains of Arizona. I had no idea there was such a thing.

So an hour or so later, we were in the Apache National Forest with massive snow drifts on one side, dozens of miles of forest (and one huge ski area). This could've been southern New Hampshire. This shot was taken as we navigated on the down side.

Elevation here was over 7,000 feet.

An hour after that, we were in the Salt River Canyon. I'd hoped to stitch together another panorama shot, but the Internet connection is really terrible here at the motel, so I may have to wait until later.

Here's a sample:

The river is, obviously, way below.

"Let's see the Grand Canyon beat this," I said to Carolie as we got back in the car. The wind was howling through the canyon and it was quite cold.

We lost the sunlight shortly thereafter and we had another three hours of driving. We probably could've spent three fewer hours on the road, but we would've missed this.

It was weird seeing a sign for Los Angeles on the highway, but we've reached out westernmost destination on the trip (actually, the Grand Canyon might be a little farther West).

We'll stop here for three days. Tomorrow, or I guess it's today, we'll sit behind the dugout at the ballpark here in Goodyear and watch the Cleveland Indians take on the San Francisco Giants.

The Indians have the best record in spring training so far. Driving 1,900 miles to watch an Indians game was probably the only way these days to see the squad while they're still in first place in some league, even if it doesn't matter.

Santa Fe in white

2010-03-15T08:45:00.005-05:00

It's stopped snowing in Santa Fe, the sun has come out, the sky is a brilliant blue and we're going to get a heck of a visual show, I'm guessing, when we head over those mountains on the way to Albuquerque and then Phoenix in a few hours. (That's the view outside our suite's window. Click the image for the full view)

The temperature is to hit the 40s here today so the roads should improve fairly quickly.

Exploring Santa Fe

2010-03-14T18:42:00.020-05:00

We understand it was 55 degrees and sunny in the Twin Cities today. In Santa Fe, a blizzard of some sort appears to have moved in. No matter, we were on a museum mission today, trying to visit as many of the museums in the city as we could in a short period of time. But we ran out of time before we ran out of museums.

The weather held off long enough for me to get a panoramic shot from the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture. (For those of you reading this from the Facebook page, please go to the actual Stirrings From the Empty Nest blog to view it. I'm not sure this exports into Facebook properly.)

Panorama of Santa Fe from Museum Hill on CleVR.com

But we started the day in the Plaza area of downtown Santa Fe, where the Santa Fe trail ends. I had read earlier in the day a piece in the New York Times a few weeks ago about Santa Fe which mentioned the New Mexico History Museum and described it as "magnificent." They weren't kidding.

On the drive down, we heard a piece from National Public Radio on the conservative Texas School Board's decision to rewrite textbooks to emphasize things like the Reagan Administration, the Moral Majority and the NRA. Look, I'm not going to get into a big political discussion on this but whatever boogeymen people have been warning us about in the last year is nothing compared to the threat to this country posed by ignorant morons.

Why does it matter? Because the Texas textbook business is so big that it becomes the de facto school board curriculum for the rest of the nation. So our children will again learn that underpinnings of the United States are the Europeans who settled here and that Manifest Destiny was something to be proud of, that the U.S. military didn't hang Native Americans in New Mexico because they weren't Catholic, that the Mexican culture that many believe is stealing the jobs of the U.S. worker is a more historical culture to this country than the one some people think is superior.

It says a lot about New Mexico that it isn't as afraid of history -- knowledge, you might say -- as these Texans and the people who support them. The history in the museum is told honestly and, from what I can tell, completely.

It's a shame the people who are positioning themselves to be put back in charge of America aren't the museum-going types. It's not left vs. right, it's not conservative vs. liberal. It's whether we want our children to be informed or whether we want them to be ignorant. How can there possibly be two sides to that?

I couldn't take any pictures inside but here's a few of the day. Here's the Plaza:

When New Mexico tried to become a state, it was rejected many times. It was considered too Mexican and too Catholic. Religion does play a big part in life here. This is the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi downtown, which -- we learned -- was funded by the many Jewish merchants in Santa Fe at the time it was built.

Love one another constantly, it says.

Over the entrance, the Jewish word Yahweh is inscribed, the word for God in the Jewish bible.

Outside is the statue of the first Native American saint.

After a fine lunch, we stopped by the Loretto Chapel -- admission $3 -- to see the miraculous stairs which do not have any outside support. We browsed the gift shop but avoided buying the glow-in-the-dark rosary beads.

Then we headed for Museum Hill (see panorama above).

I took this picture of a sculpture on the way in. Note the snow coming over the mountain.

And on the way out...

Tomorrow morning -- if we can get over the pass to Albuquerque -- we head for Phoenix. Perhaps by then I can brag to my Minnesota friends about the weather.

The Santa Fe Trail

2010-03-13T21:48:00.017-06:00

We started the day a little late in North Platte, Nebraska after breakfast and a stop to visit the local celebrity.

... and we arrived in Santa Fe, New Mexico around 8:30 (Central Time). I like flying in an airplane as much as the next person but there's something you miss when you get on a plane in an airport that looks like every other airport, and get off in another airport that looks like every other airport.

I'm a small-town guy who still thinks it's pretty cool to go places you've heard about and watched the transition of the geography along the way.

Here's what I mean.

You can be driving along Nebraska -- which at this time of year smells of manure, but that's OK, I grew up around cows. Cameras don't do it justice. It's just a big hunk of sky from one end to the other, with the occasional tree.

You cross into Colorado and the geography instantly changes to high desert.

And you drive for a few hours and you start to see mountains a hundred miles away...

Then, around Denver, they get really big. We drove south to Colorado Springs and stopped for a shot with Pike's Peak (we think) in the background.

Just behind us is the U.S. Air Force Academy. When I was a kid, that's where I wanted to go. But they needed people with perfect vision flying jets back then. Now, they'll let anyone fly those things. (g)

Then the geography flattens a little bit, and from a long way away, you see the Spanish Peaks. There was snow on the ground here and it was interesting that there was no snow across Nebraska and northern Colorado, and more snow the farther south we went.

Farther south, near the New Mexico border, we stopped to read about a massacre of miners and their families, at the hands of the U.S. government, at the behest of the coal mining companies. It outraged the public and that led to the beginning of labor laws, the laws that people nowadays consider unnecessary intrusion of government in private business.

We climbed up through a pass, into New Mexico and from the shadows of the mountains we saw the most amazing sight (again, not properly captured by little cameras): Below us, bathed in sunlight, was the desert of northern New Mexico.

You get across by putting the speedometer on about 80, and waiting about two hours.

Eventually, some small hills start popping up, and as the sun set, we headed into the mountains again, about an hour from Santa Fe.

1,265 miles so far -- about the same distance as Woodbury to The Berkshires. Tomorrow, we play tourist in Santa Fe.

A few years from now, we'll probably make this trip again -- in an RV airplane currently under construction. It'll be different, but it won't be better.

(I urge you to click each image to see the larger version)

Nature in Nebraska

2010-03-12T21:39:00.007-06:00

We've put up for the night in North Platte, Nebraska, at an out-of-the-way motel, run by an old-timer with a drawl and a beard, and rooms that Carolie says reminds her of the '50s. In other words: It's perfect.

Driving through Iowa and Nebraska has been exactly that. Nebraska rewarded one of our interests -- bird watching -- on the drive near Grand Junction with a massive migration of sandhill cranes, which we learned occurs each year between February and April. Thousands of cranes darkened the sky and were landing -- presumably for the night -- in fields along the North Platte River.

After entering Nebraska we stopped on the other side of Omaha for a look at the Great Platte Valley, which -- the marker says -- was the route of the fur traders and others, including the Mormons, on their move westward. Only the good people of Nebraska can explain why they plopped a public works building in the middle of the vista.

Highway historical markers are another one of my weak points. I stop to read them. In Glidden, Iowa, for example, there was a sign for the Merle Hay Historical Marker. So we stopped. It was a cemetary and this is only marker we could find.

So who was Merle Hay?

Wikipedia has the answer:

Merle David Hay (1896 – November 3, 1917) was the first Iowa serviceman and perhaps the first American serviceman to die in World War I, along with Corporal James Bethel Gresham of Evansville, Indiana and Thomas Enright of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

All three men were a part of Company F, 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division (aka "The Big Red One") and in the trenches near Bathelémont-lès-Bauzemont in Lorraine (east of Nancy, France).

On the night of November 2-3, Germans trench raided their trench where all three were killed (possibly with Hay & Gresham initially and Enright when he resisted capture).

The outnumbered Americans were caught by surprise as they emerged from their wood and earth shelters to engage the enemy in hand-to-hand combat amid darkness and confusion. After 15 minutes the Germans withdrew and the barrage ended. Reinforcements reached the beleaguered Americans soon after to discover five wounded, twelve captured, and three killed.

Private Hoyt Decker saw Merle Hay battling two German soldiers with a bayonet in the dim, twinkling light of flares during the battle. Private Merle Hay was found face down in the mud after the attack with a .45 caliber pistol in his hand. The cause of death was a single 9 millimeter bullet wound beneath his right eye. His throat was also deeply cut. The watch his mother had given him had stopped at 2:40 a.m.

Hay, Gresham, and Enright were buried on the spot with a monument built which was later destroyed by Germans in 1940. Hay was then re-interred in July 1921 in West Lawn Cemetery in his home town of Glidden, Iowa. The West Lawn Cemetery was later renamed the Merle Hay Memorial Cemetery. An 8-foot monument commissioned by the Iowa Legislature marks his gravesite.

Shortly after Hay's death, the highway running from the west edge of Des Moines to Camp Dodge was renamed Merle Hay Road. A memorial boulder was placed along Merle Hay Road in 1923 and remains up today amidst the commercial development along the road.[1] Merle Hay Mall in Des Moines was also named for Hay; the local Kiwanis club placed a memorial plaque near the entrance to the mall's Sears store in 1979.

The first American military casualty in World War II was also an Iowa native. Andrew, Iowa, native Robert M. Losey, a military attache, was killed on April 21, 1940 during a German bombardment of Dombås, Norway. Captain Losey had been attempting to complete the evacuation of the American diplomatic legation from Norway to Sweden in the wake of the German invasion.

We didn't see Mr. Hay's grave, but came across a recent one. These things sure tell a story....trailer, pictures, beer, and Iowa Hawkeyes. (Click for larger image)

We stopped in Kearney, Nebraska for dinner. Once you get past the strip of chain restaurants and over the bridge over the railroad tracks (the Union Pacific freight trains come speeding through town without slowing down), there's a charming downtown with about 4-6 square blocks of actual retail.

As we drove across Nebraska, Carolie had a good thought, "Couldn't they have given the Indians some of these states?

Denver by lunchtime tomorrow, and Santa Fe by night

The Spring Trianing Getaway: Iowa

2010-03-12T10:32:00.001-06:00

Is this heaven? No, it's a rest stop in Iowa, about 130 miles north of Des Moines. My sister, Cheryl would like this rest stop as it's in a giant "barn," and the kindly woman who runs the snack bar wears a holstein apron.

And it has free wireless Internet access. Minnesota? We've got dumpy cinder block rest areas that aren't shaped like anything.

Carolie is presently getting a tour of Iowa from a greeter.

Advantage Iowa.

More as it happens.

The media panel

2010-03-11T12:17:00.001-06:00

Twin Cities Public Television has now posted last week's media panel on YouTube, so it's possible to embed it in blogs like, you know, this one.

TV is my life

2010-03-05T22:39:00.001-06:00

I haven't been on TPT's Almanac in about 13 years, but tonight I was asked to sub for a regular media panel member and dispense my wisdom, as we try to figure out why the world doesn't operate exactly the way I'd like.

Here's the video.

Don Kent, RIP

2010-03-02T11:03:00.002-06:00

Don Kent, the man who practically invented weather on TV, has died. Another one of those icons from my childhood. We boomers all grew up with Don Kent.

Of the many whiz-bang gadgets of my youth -- who can ever forget the push-button telephones at the Boston Museum of Science -- was a window display at the old Worcester North Institution for Savings in Moran Square in Fitchburg. It featured Don Kent weather instruments.

The end of winter by air

2010-02-28T14:50:00.003-06:00

I love flying in the winter, probably more than any other season. In another month, the combination of dark and light ground in Minnesota will make for uneven thermals and turbulence, a few weeks after that the geese will be on the move, and after that, hot and humid weather will diminish aircraft performance -- not that I'm complaining, mind you.

Today the temperatures got well into the '30s with a gorgeous blue sky and little wind. In February in Minnesota, that brings people out like Key West at sunset.

I'm trying to fit in a flight review next week, so I went out in this perfect weather and ran through a few flight maneuvers -- stalls and steep turns mostly -- and a couple of landings out in Glencoe and did some sight-seeing on the way back to Flying Cloud Airport southwest of the Twin Cities.

On Lake Waconia, I found this ice-house neighborhood...

You can click the image to see bigger versions. This is the day Minnesota requires ice houses to be removed from lakes in the southern two-thirds of the state. You can see trucks pulling a few off.

And from this shot, you can see that there were probably more ice houses here before. Some of the "streets" remind me of suburban corn fields that have been subdivided for housing developments.

Of course, it's also manure-spreading season. A few weeks ago, a farmer down in Albert Lea made news because he spread the manure in the shape of a heart for a valentine for his wife. Do you suppose this guy got an earful?

Of course, as this picture attests, there's still plenty of winter left in Flyover Country. That diagonal black line in the middle of the picture is the Glencoe runway.

Here's a typical farm on the prairie. A windbreak around the house. It's needed. There's nothing between here and the Rockies to stop the wind. You'll want to click the image to see the bigger version.

As I approach this lake, if you look way off on the horizon -- straight ahead -- you can barely see the buildings of Minneapolis.

It's good to be a dog

2010-02-14T08:55:00.001-06:00

Is there anything better than sprawling out on the carpet, soaking up the February sun?

Kid be gone

2010-01-30T12:49:00.000-06:00

Today I began the process of wiping out the last vestige of evidence that kids used to live here. It's time to renovate and repaint the family room in the finished downstairs.

For the last year, Patrick's large couch sectional was stored there and it made a good place to fold laundry and occasionally sit. But he's moved into a new place and came to get it while I was in New Orleans last weekend.

In years past, the room (it's an L shaped room) also housed a set of airplane wings and a canopy. But those are now out at the hangar.

So, it's as good a time as any to repaint the room, pull up all the carpeting, put down new carpeting, add a fireplace of some sort and an HD TV, as well as buy some new furniture.

Today I tossed out a lot of old stuff and packed up kids VCRs and various games which will likely never be used again, as well as saved Sean's 4th grade poetry and other assorted art work from Patrick and Sean.

Live from New Orleans

2010-01-25T08:26:00.010-06:00

I haven't updated the blog lately because life is either work, which means you can find it on MPR's News Cut. Or life is building an airplane, which means you can find it on the Letters From Flyover Country blog.

But this weekend I've been in New Orleans for, ummmm, work. The boss said on Wednesday, "How'd you like to go to New Orleans to cover the Vikings game?" I actually didn't want to. I like the Vikings fine but I intensely dislike the cliches surrounding football games.

But it was New Orleans and I wanted to take a look at post-Katrina. And, I found out when I got here, it gave me the opportunity to explore this connection this city has with its football team, which is unlike any other.

I also got a chance to spend some time in the Lower 9th Ward and, as usual in this "go do what you do" assignment I got, met some really nice people.

I sat in the press box at the Louisiana Superdome and enjoyed the game, despite having to miss watching overtime and the last four minutes of regulation because I had to get set up down in the media facility for the post-game news conferences.

I'd have loved to have Sean or Patrick with me for an event like this (and, of course, Carolie), but this is a work assignment. Still, I made sure I followed the advice Terry Bradshaw gives when he recounts a critical Superbowl play during his career. "I said to myself, 'Stop, and realize where you are,'" he said, just before he gave the ball to Franco Harris to win the Super Bowl.

I think back often to working those early days in Southbridge, and Fitchburg, and Pittsfield and if you'd told me then I'd be in New Orleans to meet nice people and cover an NFC Championship game, I'd have rained on your parade.

Retirement still seems like a good deal to me; I'm on the downside of the career and all. But I've still got the greatest job in America.

But when you're on assignment -- especially when you're on assignment alone -- you work all the time. I put in a 15 hour day on Saturday and 20 hours yesterday, and that's OK; I love working and feeding material to the blog and back to MPR. But when I looked at the Web traffic stats this morning (I'd told the boss there's no online audience at MPR on weekends and he said that's OK), all of my stuff got beaten out by some webcam of a bear giving birth to a cub.

And that's what keeps one's head on straight in this business. You can always be replaced by a pregnant bear.

Here's my radio piece from this morning:

A Setzer anniversary

2009-11-22T23:13:00.002-06:00

Carolie and I had our anniversary night out tonight. I bought tickets last month for tonight's Brian Setzer (and his orchestra) concert down at Mystic Lake Casino in Shakopee. I had never been there before; it's quite an operation.

And Setzer was Setzer. This was the encore before they ended with Jump, Jive, and Wail!

A

The deck

2009-11-09T07:17:00.005-06:00

A few years ago -- 2004, if I recall -- Carolie and the boys headed East for a celebration of some sort with her folks in the Berkshires and I figured it was a good time to replace some rotted stair posts on the backyard deck.

When I removed the stairs, however, I found some rot in the deck plankings. So I started replacing the deck plankings. I noticed the railings weren't very good because, well, there weren't any posts holding the railings up; only the ballisters nailed to the joists.

It was clear that the entire deck -- minus the footings and joists -- would have to be replaced. A little here. A little there.

I had a lot of goals for the "good weather" this year. One of them was to get the deck (mostly) finished, five years later.

Earlier this summer, I replaced the upper part of the deck.

This weekend -- thanks to great weather -- I added the railings and posts to the stairs. This actually required about five separate cuts per post, that made each post look like part of puzzle for Mensa members. But it got done:

The structural rebuild is now complete. I still have to finish adding ballisters (I'll be making a design in one panel) and adding the railing cap. I also have to add lattice. And I'm thinking about adding some railing boxes for flowers and such.

Have I ever told you I flunked shop in school?

Fall flying

2009-11-01T15:40:00.002-06:00

Famed RV-6A builder/pilot Alex Peterson (you may have seen his aerobatic video here) is like Batman. I -- and I guess this makes me "the commissioner" -- put out the Bat Signal a week ago on Van's Air Force. I needed a motivation flight. Alex saw the signal and stopped by South St. Paul today.

I've been stuck on the project lately and when I went to putter around today, I just ended up sorting nuts and bolts and screws and such; not something that's going to get a plane built. But that's the way building an RV can be; sometimes you need a nudge.

So Alex dropped in and took me for a spin. Here's the takeoff out of South St. Paul. Note the glider in the grass we pass on the way out.

Alex let me fly a little bit and I was consciously trying not to exert any backpressure on the turns, but I increased altitude so I must have. It was weird to look over at the airspeed indicator and see 160. I'm used to plodding along at 90 in a Warrior.

We flew up the St. Croix River, looked for Doug Weiler's house in Hudson (Doug heads the Twin Cities RV builders' group) and then headed back -- a half hour of good flying in which -- for the record -- neither Alex nor I opened our laptops during the flight.

After he dropped me off, he advised, "just start on anything and plow forward," and he and his friend, Benny (who was visiting from Israel) headed north back to Anoka.

And I plowed into some firewall forward stuff.

Mission accomplished.

Here it is, your moment of Berkshire zen

2009-10-14T09:51:00.000-05:00

Panorama of October in the Berkshire Hills on CleVR.com

For Don Thurston

2009-10-12T09:42:00.004-05:00

REMARKS AT THE MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR DON THURSTON
Sunday October 11, 2009
Delivered by Bob Collins

I am deeply honored to be asked by the family to speak to you this afternoon about Don Thurston. I've been known to put a couple of words together from time to time, but there's nothing in my experience that has given me the ability to put Don's life -- as I've known it -- into words.

In 1976, I got a letter which said:

"Dear Bob: Thank you for your interest in WMNB. Unfortunately, we have no present positions. We will keep your resume on file. Sincerely, Don Thurston."

I wish I'd saved that letter. But I had so many of them.

Three or four years later, I met his daughter when we worked down at WBEC in Pittsfield, and I didn't care for her that much, and she didn't much care for me. So, naturally, we were married about three years later and I became Don Thurston's favorite son-in-law.

Years later, when I went to work for him, I asked him where he kept that resume and he acknowledged that he didn't.

Life is funny. And life is to be marveled, even when it ends.

A guy grows up in Gloucester of modest means, goes to school to be an electrical engineer, goes to Vermont to work in radio; even does a morning show from a barn -- with a dog -- then strikes out on his own and works his way up to owning a radio station in North Adams, and he put an FM station on the air -- WMNB, which he used to stood for "We May Never Broadcast." And from his home base, he became one of the most influential people in his field in America.

Radio was the medium that united America's communities, and it selected Don Thurston as its leader. He knew mayors, and governors, and presidents, and people who wanted to be president and they knew him by his first name. He could spend a day listening to Yo Yo Ma down at Tanglewood, and another in Nashville swapping tales with Dolly Parton.

But up on the hill here, at the highest point beyond the hairpin turn, there's a red light on top of a tower that flashes: on…and…off. All night. Every night. We refer to it as "Papa's Light." They were going to shut it off a few years ago because it's not required anymore. But pilots over at the airport -- bless their hearts -- asked that it be kept on because when you're flying around in the dark over horrible terrain, it's the beacon that says, "This is where home is. Right over here." So, Don and Cory kept it on.

Like Papa's Light, Don reminded us through his actions and words, that no matter where you are, no matter the route of your life, no matter the terrain you encounter, this is where home is. Right over here.

Lesser men have left the Berkshires and never looked back.

Others have seen success as something you find somewhere else.

Where others saw danger, he saw potential, which is the number one reason why Don saw so much success himself. He saw in us things that we didn't even see in us. Nobody loved our success more than Don. He was loyal to the people who worked for him at those radio stations and they were loyal to him, and to these communities, and that did not happen by accident.

Don Thurston was living proof of what can be accomplished with a bucket-load of optimism and a woman named Oralie.

If you were a contemporary of Don's -- and especially if you were an in-law -- your God-given survival instinct compelled you to a life with a singular purpose: Not to disappoint Don Thurston, a man with that voice that would make you sit up straight.

I say that not to imply that there was a price to be paid from Don for disappointing him; there was a price to be paid from you and your mirror. That's what a role model does. He provides the big shoes. The rest is up to us.

He made us want to be better.

Don was brilliant. He made us want to be brilliant, too.

He was a man of more integrity than any person I've ever met. And he made us want to act with more integrity, too.

Don felt an abiding sense of service to his community, whether it was his church, his city, his county, his college, or his country, and he made us want to serve our communities, too.

Whoever you are and whatever life you've lived, when Don Thurston talked to you, your life was the most interesting in the world -- not because it was some technique of a guy who knew how to close a deal, but because Don found the same wonder in our lives as we found in his. If at times we thought we didn't measure up to our role model, the cure was merely to spend a few minutes with him.

Nobody deserved a happy and healthy retirement more than Don Thurston. But I'm not going to lie to you; he didn't get it. The last few years were a struggle. The last few months were the very definition of "unfair."

They required us then -- and require us now -- to make a withdrawal from a bank account into which Don made a regular deposit of wisdom.

There is a well-embellished parable that says that one day Solomon decided to humble Benaiah, his most trusted minister. He said to him, "Benaiah, there is a certain ring that I want you to bring to me. It has special powers. If a happy man looks at it, he becomes sad, and if a sad man looks at it, he becomes happy."

Benaiah searched for the ring, and finally passed a merchant in Jerusalem, and said, "Have you by any chance heard of a special ring that makes the happy wearer forget his joy, and the broken-hearted wearer forget his sorrows?"

The elderly man took a plain gold ring from his display and engraved something on it.

Benaiah took the ring back to Solomon, who read the inscription that made his smile disappear. The jeweler had written three Hebrew letters on the gold band -- Gimel, Zayin, and Yud -- which begin the words "Gam zeh ya'avor." This, too, shall pass.

These words were Don's mantra, and as we reflect on our sorrow today, they can make a sad person happy. For we know that Don was right. This grief will pass.

For now, however, I share it with Oralie. And Allen. And Carolie. And Cory. And Marie.

The largest part of Don Thurston's loving heart was reserved exclusively for his grandchildren.

If you didn't know Don Thurston, then meet Sarah, in whom Don's optimism, smile, and wisdom lives.

If you didn't know Don Thurston, then meet Tom, in whom Don's dignity, love of family, sense of responsibility, and curiosity lives.

If you didn't know Don Thurston, then meet Sean, in whom Don's brilliance, and standard of fairness and justice lives. If your grandfather ever rooted for the Yankees (and I'm not saying he did), then it was only because you did.

If you didn't know Don Thurston, then meet Ross, in whom Don's love of music, resilience, and ability to accomplish great things without forgetting his roots lives.

If you didn't know Don Thurston, then meet Patrick, in whom Don's ease around people of all stripes, high expectations, joy, and determination to serve others lives.

If you did know Don Thurston, then today we share a common sense that we have been the luckiest people in the world.

In this hour… at this moment… this family… this community… this world … has never needed the likes of Don Thurston more.

He has given us the example of a life well-lived, in service to us.

Let us vow not to disappoint him.

To a good man at a bad time

2009-09-26T08:24:00.006-05:00

My father in law, Don Thurston, is dying and now that I've written it, it looks worse in print than in my head. Carolie has gone back East to be with him and her family.

If there was ever a guy who deserved a healthy -- and long -- retirement, it was Don Thurston. But it was not meant to be. Instead he got Parkinson's. Mysterious ways? Yeah, I've got your mysterious ways right here.

The boys and I are back in flyover country, waiting for a call that has no choice but to come. In the meantime, the only thing I could do early this morning was the only thing I know to do.

The original (slightly bigger) version can be found here. You can also look at it in full screen, although the movement and loading degrades when viewed in full screen.

Update 10/6/09 - Don died this morning.

An afternoon at the Arboretum

2009-09-07T20:36:00.005-05:00

We went to the University of Minnesota Landscape Arboretum (we're members) last spring and I got some ideas for the gardens. Lots of purple and lots of petunias this year. How did it work out? Not so good. Lots of slugs. Not much grew except for the perennial garden.

So today -- Labor Day -- we went for our late summer/fall visit. The Arboretum had a better year, I guess. For the slideshow below, I recommend the full screen version. Just click the icon with the four arrows on the bottom right. Hit play and the rest will display automatically.

Art of the interview

2009-08-24T10:55:00.001-05:00

I got some nice coverage of a tour of college campuses from the magazine of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System. It's on page 14 here.

Dog days of summer

2009-08-18T14:54:00.002-05:00

If I could pick one place to be today, I guess this would be it. On my brother's porch overlooking Cape Cod Bay. I probably wouldn't be reading. Or sleeping.

Oshkosh Diary: Back home and counting

2009-08-01T09:37:00.001-05:00

I left Oshkosh yesterday morning and have returned home. Unfortunately, I didn't get to say goodbye to the half dozen or so people who are pretty much the reason I go in the first place.

So if you're reading this -- and you know who you are -- they should make a video about you all. Planes are nice. Airshows are nice. Fancy gadgets are nice. But they're not what makes Oshkosh Oshkosh.

Oshkosh Diary - The Inhofes

2009-07-31T08:23:00.001-05:00

You can't throw a rear spar down the street in the campground at Oshkosh and not hit an RV builder and/or pilot.

I met Jim Davis, right, this morning as I was breaking down the campsite for the return to St. Paul. Jim is an RV-8 pilot (I think he also built an RV-6). He's from Tulsa. A few minutes later a group of his friends stopped by to visit with him. That's U.S. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Oklahoma, who may be one of the biggest supporters of general aviation in Washington. We may see a lot of RV builders here in the campground, but we don't see a lot of U.S. senators showing up for a cup of coffee.

His son, Jim (shown below) was kind enough to take our picture, and tell me about his RV-8 and flying into Oshkosh. He's been coming here for 23 years, I believe he said.

It's time to pack up and head for home. Fifty-one weeks to go.

Piece of Grass 2009

2009-07-30T00:32:00.001-05:00

We had about 100 people -- I'd guess -- at the scaled-down annual get-together of RV builders at Oshkosh. For all of the glitz and glamour of the show, it's people sitting around shooting the breeze that keeps people coming back to a spot in Wisconsin every year. Or at least I like to think so.

It's very late as I upload this and I haven't had a chance to put captions to all pictures. But if you see yourself here, write down the number and e-mail me and I'll add you.

Internet service is very spotty, so I'll do the best I can to get it updated.

I stole this next picture from Doug Reeves:

See his pictures here.

Oshkosh Diary - Wednesday July 29, 2009

2009-07-29T11:48:00.000-05:00

It was a real thrill to see a skywriter write "Welcome, RV airplane builders" today. Unfortunately, the school levy up here failed recently and he spelled it wrong.

One of the interesting things about Oshkosh -- at least for aviation types-- is every morning you step out of your tent and into your screensaver. Most of the EAA monthly screensavers through the year are images shot during this week. This morning, I'm sitting at the campsite watching the powered parachutes flying overhead; every now and again a bird will join the procession.

I've generally been unable -- and probably will continue to be unable -- to provide significant updates here because the wiFi at AirVenture simply isn't very good. Last evening I parked under the gizmo that provides it and I still couldn't get online. It's free, so we really have no right to complain, and in the big scheme of things it's a small complaint. But the EAA probably should stop advertising "free WiFi" to entice people to camp until it reaches a certain level of performance.

Even at the press office, the system is so overloaded, many of us can't file our stories and accounts. OK, EAA. You've worn me down. I'll gladly pay for wiFi that works rather than free wiFi that doesn't. You know what would be great? If Ford or Honda or any of those big conglomerates that EAA is now synonymous with would get into the broadband business.

Yesterday was a combination of work and play. I documented -- slightly -- my lunch with Lane Wallace. I then interviewed Joe Balzer for about a half hour. He's one of the Northwest Airlines crew members of a 727 flight from Fargo to Minneapolis in 1990 who flew drunk. He did prison time and now he's written a book. I have the interview on tape and at some point I'll bang out a story for the day job and post it here as well.

Then it was off to dinner downtown with my friends from Trio Avionics -- Jerry Hansen, Chuck Busch, Sid Tolchin, and Paul Ross. This is always the highlight of my stay at Oshkosh and one of the highlights of the year. They're fine people and I enjoy their company, partly because they're among the few that enjoy mine. I've decided, by the way, to take the TruTrak single-axis autopilot out of the RV-7A project and replace it with the Trio Pro Pilot autopilot. It's robus, can do more things, perhaps, than an around-the-patch flyer like me need it to do, but it comes from a good company with good people and because it does, I have no qualms about flying with it.

By the way, they said business -- which is mostly indicated by the number of people who stop to talk -- has been very good and this is the emerging theme of AirVenture this year. It may confound the economists but business is booming here. The airport was closed to any more incoming arrivals on Monday because there's just no place to put them. The campground is packed solid and people here apparently have money to spend.

Now one can argue -- as I have -- that aviation is for people with money anyway, but even comparing apples to apples (previous years of AirVenture), this is a significant uptick in the economic reality here. Jerry attributed it to a couple of things including the fact that there are a lot of airplane builders like me who have reached the point in the project where there's simply too much invested in it -- time, money and emotion -- to quit, no matter what the economic reality is.

Back at the campground last night, a steady trickle stopped by for "happy hour." A group from Massachusetts caused -- then cured -- a case of homesickness (you can do that to me with a Boston accent). A nice couple from The Netherlands also stopped by. They're building an RV-7A, and learned to fly at the same time. And the "RV compound residents" like Paul Trotter, and Chris Stone and John Porter were there. So we had about a dozen people and that was great fun.

And this evening will try to increase that with the RV Family Reunion Piece of Grass 2009. I've bought watermelon (I always do at these things and nobody ever wants any) and a cheap grill from WalMart and we're encouraging RVers to simply stop by and sit a spell. No big BBQ. No door prizes. People come simply because they want to sit around and make up lies about our homebuilding prowess.

So today I'll mostly hang around the campground, buy some firewood (it feels like the '40s here at night), and get things ready.

Then this evening, I'll take a bunch of pictures and make my own screensavers.

Oshkosh Diary: The Airbus A380

2009-07-28T16:43:00.002-05:00

It's probably worth pointing out that the presumed pilot is Terry Lutz, a former Northwest Airlines pilot and proud builder and owner of an RV-8.

Oshkosh Diary - Tuesday July 28, 2009

2009-07-28T07:08:00.003-05:00

I started out today taking some pictures of RVs to share, then I got sidetracked. I'll go back and add some later on...

LUNCH WITH LANE

I got sidetracked because I had lunch with Lane Wallace in the Flying building, an air conditioned, catered lovely meeting spot full of the who's who of aviation. But I was most interested in a conversation with Lane, whose writing I've admired for many years.

But she's more -- much more -- than her Flying Magazine columns, or her column on The Atlantic's Web site. Her Web site -- No Maps, No Guide, No Limits -- is a great site full of interesting material on passions and risks and life.

Why do we do the things we do? Why do we persist through the "dark nights?" What is the difference between succeeding with our dreams or giving up? That was the substance of our conversation and, no, I don't have a picture of us together because that's lame.

Still, even in the "must pass through the bouncers" environment of the Flying building, several people came up to us -- well, her -- during lunch to tell her how much her writing means to them. That's saying something.

MONDAY POSTSCRIPT

It was a happy happy hour on Monday afternoon even though the storms rolled through right on schedule and wiped out the air show, which -- from what I can tell anecdotally -- a lot of the veteran Oshkosh attendees don't watch anyway.

The Doobie Brothers were set to perform in AeroShell square and while we figured the show would be canceled, they went on, from what we're told. It's better, however, to sit under the canopy in a patch of a field a half mile away, though, and discuss the finer points of bucking bars.

And so we did. Bill Settle from North Carolina wandered over and we had a delightful happy hour with Paul Trotter and John Porter and Chris Stone and then went out for dinner.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Sitting around over the morning coffee, the comparative quiet of an Oshkosh morning was broken by a couple of P-51s taking off and flying over the campground. The QOTD goes to John Porter:

"The orthodontists are awake."

VIDEOS I NEVER THOUGHT I'D SEE

New flush toilets a hit at Camp Scholler.

Of course, the truly great campers by now have already calculated what time the Porta Potty cleaning brigade cleans a particular Porta Potty and adjusted their schedule accordingly. Another art form lost.

WALLET UPDATE

The wallet was found. In Chris Stone's van. Stand down.

THE CROWD

At least in the campground, this is one of the bigger crowds I've seen in recent years. I talked to Jerry Hansen at Trio Avionics yesterday afternoon and he said it was a steady stream of people to talk to. Now the key, of course, is whether that translates into business.

I'm generally not a big fan of ripping out systems already installed in an RV-7A that hasn't flown yet, but the Trio Pro Pilot looks to be a superior autopilot.

Will head out to buy a lottery ticket later on.

PIECE OF GRASS UPDATE

The weather looks like it's savings its best for Wednesday. However, wiFi is way too spotty for posting pictures right away so the live "chat" is canceled.

FORMATION FROM THE AIR

I wouldn't know a good formation from a bad formation. I thought the 37 ship formation of RV airplanes that arrived Sunday was excellent. But these are particular fliers with a skill far beyond me. There apparently was some dissatisfaction with a ragged tail. Couldn't tell it by me.

Here's some pictures of what it looked like at altitude.

The day is young. More as it happens.

LIVE TOWER FEED

If you want to hear the Oshkosh Tower, go here.

Oshkosh Diary - Monday July 27, 2009

2009-07-27T11:49:00.004-05:00

I'm realizing after three days here that I really don't have that much to do this year. Most of what I need to buy for the RV I've already bought and that which I haven't bought I can't afford. That takes a great deal of pressure off.

Frankly, though, for working stiffs like me, it's difficult to walk the AirVenture grounds and not get the feeling that everyone else did something right and somewhere along the line, I got derailed. Money is exchanging hands like crazy. There's giant RVs (the kind on wheels) worth millions and enough toys to handle Christmas around the world this year.

For an old New Englander with a Protestant work ethic, sometimes the self-indulgence can be overwhelming.

THE LOST WALLET

My camping neighbor and RV friend, John Porter, lost his wallet somewhere last night. We went over to the Fly-In movie theater and he figures it fell out somewhere over there, he figures. A trip to the lost-and-found yielded no success. I can't imagine a bigger pain in the neck for someone visiting AirVenture.

I'd like to think that some EAAer found the wallet and turned it in but the longer we go without a happy ending, the less likely there's going to be one.

FLYING DRUNK

The one forum I'm going to take in today is with the gentleman I'm interviewing tomorrow for the day job (and this blog). Joe Balzer was on the flight crew of a Northwest Airlines flight from Fargo to Minneapolis in 1990 with 91 passengers aboard. All three of the pilots were drunk. He's been sober for 19 years and I'll be telling his story here and elsewhere this week.

EAA AND THE MEDIA

Dick Knapinski does a fabulous job with the EAA media department and it's easy for a journalist here on media credentials (this year it's for this blog via RV Builder's Hotline) to feel guilty for not working harder to dig up stories. The LED Aero folks are catering a luncheon here in the press tent in a few minutes. I don't accept free food (other than some water) so I'm vacating to make the rounds on the grounds and see what average folks I can run into.

But the EAA deserves great credit for its effort to get people to tell the story of aviation. It's important to note that the organization does not pressure media in any way to bend the message of any of the "working media."

PAPA GOLF'S PAPA

Dave Gamble of Columbus, Ohio writes one of the better aviation blogs out there. With a gift for the printed word and an airplane that actually goes places, Dave has made PapaGolf Chronicles one of the daily must-reads.

His daughter is up here working the Girls With Wings booth all week and they're staying at a hotel in West Bend, an hour or so away. It caught my attention a week or so ago when he "tweeted" that flying his RV-6 here would be too much of a pain in the neck. But there's probably more to be said for a nice hotel than a small tent on the hard ground of Wisconsin.

If you've got an IFR-capable RV-9 that you'd like to unload for next to nothing, contact Dave.

MORE PIX

Here's dozens of more pictures from Doug Reeves at Van's Air Force.
(More as it happens)

RVers of Oshkosh: Vern Darley and Tommy Turner

2009-07-26T09:25:00.001-05:00

Vern and Tommy, from Peachtree, Georgia, arrived yesterday, navigating a front that has extended from Iowa across the middle of the country. Some of the RVers were stranded on the southern side of the front, and should make it in today, Vern said.

Vern's airplane isn't a kit. He made it from parts, including a canopy which had a gallon of epoxy poured on top of it. "You can do great things with sanding plexiglass, Tommy said. And they did. The airplane is beautiful.

Vern said he heard that an RV flipped yesterday while coming in, although I haven't heard anything about that (I wouldn't; I haven't been done on the flight line until today).

Crosswinds are a real problem so far this year, some of the RVers report.

There's a big empty hole in the space where RVers are usually parked. I assume that's for a 36-ship formation that's arriving around 1:30.

Oshkosh Diary - Sunday July 26, 2009

2009-07-26T07:48:00.002-05:00

We amateur economists -- and these days, what economists aren't amateurs? -- have been figuring we'd use AirVenture as one of the barometers of house the economy is affecting people. After all, aviation isn't an essential and finding one's way to the middle of Wisconsin is an optional way to spend a week.

As evidenced -- sort of -- by the picture above, the early indication is more people will be at AirVenture this year than last year. Usually the field around where I set up camp each year doesn't fill up at my neck of the field until Sunday afternoon. But by Saturday afternoon this year,the tide of humanity has reached me.

Now this, of course, is all anecdotal. It could very well be that the people with pop-ups and tents this year, used to be the people with the big "land yachts" down closer to the show in previous years.

We'll see.

This morning I'm going to meet up with the guys from Trio Avionics to help set up their booth. It's going to be cool this week, especially for the people from the southwest who've been living with 100+ temperatures. Dry heat, schmy heat; that's no way to live.

Welcome back to Wisconsin, fellas!

BROWSING

I strolled along the homebuilt camping area for RVers a little bit ago (9:27 a.m.). I'll upload some pictures later but I loved the plugs I found above.

And here is the obligatory and cliche self portrait. I am not above cliche.

RUDDER TRIM

Here's an interesting modification. A rudder trim tab.

This is the RV-6 of Roger Hansen of Henderson, NV. This may be a common thing on a 6; I don't know. But it's cool.

Of course you can always find the builders strolling the RV corral. They're the ones taking pictures VERY close up.

I've been looking at fiberglass work of the elevator tips as I go from RV to RV. As you may know, that's what I've been doing. For the first time in 10 years of coming to Oshkosh, today was the first time I've ever said to myself "I like my work better" when I looked at some planes. It's not that the ones I looked at were poor; far from it. I just like the amount of work and payoff I got in the last two weeks working on my plane.

WIND

This one incident today involves a Pietenpol.

Completely second-hand info follows: A couple of Pietenpol Air Campers were landing and one caught a gust of wind and went vertical, settling back on the tail. I understand the pilot is OK. I suppose if you're going to break your airplane, Oshkosh is a good place to do it. There are more than few folks around who know what to do.

THE FORMATION

The 36-ship formation of RV airplanes flew over with a roar at 1:01 p.m. As usually, very impressive.

TODAY'S RANDOM IMAGES

Updated 8:01 p.m. - I've added a few more pictures. Apologies if this stuff isn't all that great. I'm taking things a lot slower -- so far -- this year.

Oshkosh Diary - Saturday July 25, 2009

2009-07-25T09:39:00.003-05:00

Around 7 this morning, Rich Emery stopped by to help me get the canopy up before the wind came up. We got it up and the wind followed shortly thereafter. Such is the life of camping in the field.

Now we just wait to see who shows up to claim some of the camping sites I've staked out, and who will be neighbors around the "compound." You never know at Oshkosh but in 9 years of attending, I've never been disappointed.

I'll update each of these entries throughout the day.

We were spoiled by last year's Oshkosh weather. Especially out here in the field, you're vulnerable to high winds, pestilence and, of course, downpours. We've had one so far today but the wind is the difficult child. Paul Trotter (above) has joined the compound. He's joined the broken-tent-rod club.

Chris Stone, who's not too far away from flying one of these newfangled airplanes that he built himself, has also joined the compound. And John Porter should be in tomorrow. Looks like we're going to have an extra camping spot, or two.

Darwin Barrie, Glenn Brasch and Glenn's son, Michael, arrived from Chicago. They brought Glenn's trailer, got in an accident in Kansas where a woman side-swiped the trailer, they dropped the trailer off here and then Glenn and Michael went to visit Mom/Grandma in Chicago. They picked Darwin up at O'Hare today and made their way here. Good folks. I'm looking forward to many happy hours together.

Roger Evenson, also from Arizona, and his wife have also arrived. Very nice people who are helping the Hazebusters people sell sunglasses. Roger built the Web site.

Now he has to rebuild his right elevator which suffered when it hit the ground when Roger stepped on on his RV the other day.

Darwin reports by way of Jeff Point that a steady stream of RV airplanes have been arriving. I'm not sure how much time I'll spend down there this year. I may try to take in more forums.

Tomorrow morning, I hope to help Sid, Jerry, and Chuck set up the Trio Avionics booth in the hangar. I always look forward to their company at Oshkosh.

On to Oshkosh!

2009-07-24T08:01:00.002-05:00

I'm heading over to Oshkosh this afternoon. I'll post some items when I get there.

And, yes, I will be doing Ask the Dummy in the Campground again this year. So if you have a question about Oshkosh, send it to me at bcollinsrv7a@comcast.net.

I wanted to leave St. Paul by noon and I'm on track. Here's the shot of the car all packed. You're not going to believe how much I crammed in. I'll put up another shot when I get to Oshkosh and unpack.

Update 7:15 p.m. - This much:

As I was putting up the tent in the wind, I said to myself, "Please don't let this be the year one of these poles breaks. Then the wind came up and one of the four poles snapped. Some gents from Iowa helped me fabricate a fix but it involved using one of the pipes for the big canopy. So the tent is up but I can't put the canopy up yet because the pole is being used to hold up the tent. In a bit, I'm off to Fleet Farm in search of a pipe. Then grocery shopping. Then dinner.

As is custom, Rich Emery of Missouri was the first to stop by and say hello. He's two builder numbers below me and thinks if he put his wallet to it, he could be flying at the end of the year. I'll try to get things done quickly here so I can join him for happy hour.

If you're going to Oshkosh, be sure to stop by the campsite and say "hello" so I can duly report to Planet RV that you're there.

On Wednesday, of course, we've got Piece of Grass 2009. I'll be providing some live updates, picture and, maybe, video during the evening. So if you can't make it, join us virtually.

Letters From Flyover Country at Oshkosh 2009

The life of bees

2009-07-14T14:17:00.006-05:00

Bees are disappearing from the planet and nobody seems to know why. But I worry about it. How will things be pollinated without bees? I've planted plenty of bee balm (although this is a pincushion flower above) around the estate to do my part. And when I go out to get the paper (another endangered species) just before 6 a.m., I walk out to the perennial garden in the front yard to see if there are any bees. I'm quite certain if anyone was up at that hour, they'd think Old Man Collins is off his rocker.

Two years ago, I had lots of bees. Last year, not very many. This year: Just a few more than last year.

I'll keep my eye on them and wonder whether bees are at all worried about this -- or anything else for that matter. Do they feel the pressure to make their deliveries on schedule? Is it good to be a bee? Is there something to be said for ignorance of the matters of the world?

I'll see you tomorrow morning, bee.

A bridge too far

2009-07-13T15:20:00.016-05:00

I don't know why but when life is too hard to figure out, I've always headed for the shore, whether it's the camp in Vermont, or Plum Island, or Hampton Beach or -- as befits my land-locked locale -- the Mississippi River. (Click on the image to see full sizes)

Reports from back East have not been good. Carolie's dad is not doing well and there's a fair amount of sighing going on at my house. And I walk to the river.

The ~~Wakota~~ Wabasha Bridge is the best bridge in a city of bridges, especially if you're walking.

It doesn't look like much, perhaps, but the designers of this bridge knew what they were doing. The stairs that take you from the bridge deck down to Raspberry Island, leave you out over the river.

Never been scared of heights? Try these stairs.

Raspberry Island is a lovely little spot below the city, along the river, which is low right now and is only this high because of high rainfall out in the western part of the state. The water made its way to the Minnesota River and eventually to here.

I can sit in the sun and ponder chucking it all and living on a boat on the river:

Or whether the guy in this little house atop the railroad bridge has the best job in the world ...

... or the worst.

I can consider the merits of swimming in this river, which I still consider America's sewer...

Or I can just sit and try to prove the existence of a loving God with his plan to make a good man -- and a good man's daughter -- suffer.

I always find myself heading for water to make a question like that make sense. Two-thirds of the planet is covered with water.

I don't think that's going to be enough.

The great deck rebuilding project

2009-07-06T09:12:00.003-05:00

My mother has said she feels as though summer is over on July 4th (this year might be the exception since she lives in New England and they haven't had anything resembling summer weather yet), and being genetically linked and all, I could hear the tick, tick, tick of another summer slipping away without completing one of my long-standing projects. I'll bet it's been six year since I started rebuilding the deck.

Of course, when I started I didn't intend to rebuild the deck. I was replacing some rotted stairs at the bottom of the deck, but that led me to notice the railings were wobbly, which led me to noticing some planks were rotted which led me to just rebuild the darn thing (except for the joists which were fine).

So this holiday weekend, I finished the bottom deck and then removed the top, added a new footing and beam and just before work Monday morning, I screwed down the last plank and cut the overhang.

Now I need to make stringers for the stairs (they'll be much wider than the old ones) connecting the upper and lower deck, then add posts and railings.

Where did summer go?

The Senate race ends

2009-06-30T20:46:00.001-05:00

My family and friends from out of town can stop asking me if we have a senator yet.

Here was my on-air analysis of the end of the Minnesota Senate race.

Outed

2009-06-25T14:38:00.002-05:00

The talented people at work have designed a new Web site, upon which my daily offerings appear.

As with any new endeavor, there's a few kinks to be worked out.

Spiderwort in the morning

2009-06-23T07:56:00.003-05:00

This is the most interesting thing in the garden these days. I bought the Spiderwort plant and put it in a container on the deck. The flowers only unfurl in the morning, along the lines of a Morning Glory.

I like the fact a bumblebee was at the Spiderwort this morning. Click the images for the full effect.

The afternoon walk

2009-06-18T16:29:00.005-05:00

One great thing about working in St. Paul, is the Mississippi River is just a short walk away from the downtown headquarters of Minnesota Public Radio.

My new favorite activity at midafternoon is to walk over to Rasberry Island and sit on the benches and watch the world go by.

Garden therapy

2009-06-06T09:15:00.016-05:00

I have always said -- only to myself -- that the more I'm enjoying work, the worse my gardens are. This year, my gardening is going very well, despite a drought that doesn't seem to want to quit anytime soon. We're getting a few showers in the Twin Cities today, but only enough to ruin some people's plans, not enough to do any good.

Here it is June 6, and some of the perennials that should be out in mid-May are just unfolding. It's been that kind of year.

Here's the spring tour.

I had hoped to expand the perennial bed in the front yard, but money being tight and the economy being what it is, a kid in college, a deck project to finish, and an airplane engine loan to pay, it doesn't seem like the right time.

It's going to be a big year for the delphinium.

The Japanese lilac is the last to bloom. Unfortunately, it's season is just about done.

I've got a lot more flowers on these cool-colored iris that my mother sent me a few years ago.

And the peony are just starting to bloom. This was my grandmother's bush. She would've been 113 on Thursday.

OK, hummingbirds, where are you?

These peonies -- one white and one pink -- aren't quite ready to show themselves.

You can't see it very well, but Carolie bought me two hydrangea bushes for my birthday. I'm branching out, as it were, from gardens on the edges of things and starting to try to develop one in the middle of the backyard. It seems silly to have a big patch of grass back there now that the kids are gone. Better to have a nice "nature walk."

The original garden, back by edge of the estate, isn't much to look at anymore. Trees have grown so much that it's shady most of the time. Still, I planted some beans and radishes and corn, all of which sprouted. The rabbits have pretty much eaten everything except the radishes, however.

And there's not much to the yellow iris garden around the apple tree. I spent an hour or so last week weeding this. There's also some bee balm in there... somewhere.

Now that part of the deck has been rebuilt, I'm trying a little container gardening this year.

I even threw some extra radishes, beans, and corn in this one. I realize it's too much for one container, but what the heck. By the way, my corn is now -- technically -- knee high.

We'll check in a few months and see how they all did.

When you say 'Cleveland', you say 'pathetic'

2009-06-04T16:37:00.005-05:00

The Cleveland Indians have a habit of coming to Minnesota when it's Patrick's birthday. Yesterday was that day and Patrick and Sean enjoyed -- presumably -- a 10-1 Indian win. Today was my day to take Patrick and, of course, the Indians lost 11-3.

I got to buy Patrick a beer for the first time, hoping he will not realize -- any time soon, anyway -- that the best way to enjoy the Indians anymore... is fully inebriated.

It was a gorgeous day for baseball, except in Minnesota where we take our baseball (at least until next season) indoors. Afterwards, a stop for the entertainment on the plaza.

And then home for the traditional presentation of the toolbox.

Happy birthday to me

2009-05-31T22:31:00.006-05:00

It's birthday #55. I headed outside shortly after sun-up to thin out the radishes and the next thing I know, I was hand trimming (with shears) the lawn, weeding the iris garden, cleaning the laundry room, weeding the gardens around the deck, planting two new hydrangea bushes that Carolie bought me, and washing windows. I like accomplishing things on the list. Oh, and eventually I thinned out the radishes.

It was a great birthday. Sean and Patrick both stopped by. They're unbelievably funny ~~kids~~ men.

I got all I wanted for presents when we went over to the park and hit the ball around. I like catching a ball in the outfield once every 20 years or so.

Patrick turns 21 on Wednesday. I had one beer left (Hey, Tim Pawlenty! How about getting government out of our lives and letting me buy beer in Minnesota on Sundays?). I gave it to Patrick.

Somehow we got into a discussion about testosterone. Carolie had some test with fingers to determine who's got more. She does. She says the less testosterone you have, the most anxiety and worry you have. So that explains that.

Sean arrived, we grabbed some Famous Dave's BBQ and had a great lunch. Why yes, that is the famous 'bench' that I just sanded and refinished.

This photo I took by hanging the camera on a twig by its wrist strap...

Biking

2009-05-14T08:01:00.001-05:00

Yet another video of me doing something I used to do when I was younger. I'm sensing a theme here.

Naturalizing with daffodils

2009-04-29T08:03:00.006-05:00

I'm back in Minnesota but wanted to share a tip from my gardening mother. She has ~~dandelions~~ daffodils and narcissus sprouting up in remote locations. It looks quite nice.

Here's how she does it: She cuts the ~~dandelions~~ daffodils for bouquets, and then when they wilt and die, she just tosses 'em in spots where she wants them to sprout later. Simple, eh?

"How long will it take before they come up?" I asked.

"I don't know," she said.

The field trip

2009-04-26T12:15:00.002-05:00

Where I grew up, my grandmother -- and then my mother -- owned several acres of field abutting a forest owned by, well, we don't really know. The paper companies owned a lot of land around here so maybe they owned it. Nobody seems to know for sure who owns it now, although there are a few survey stakes and ribbons about. But it was a great place to play when I was a kid. We had a couple of horses and cows.

So I went back into the field today to evaluate some of the damage from the December ice storm. My oldest brother planted small evergreens about 40 years ago as part of a 4-H project. The ice storm did them in (photo above).

The field has changed a lot. It's overgrown in many places. Back at the far end, I looked for the rock and tree where our two horses used to stand in the shade on a hot day. It was the only shade in the field.

It took me awhile, but I found it.

But some things never change. The river that runs along the edge of the property -- where we'd go swimming on hot days -- is as beautiful in the spring as I remember, although the fiddleheads and the ladyslippers haven't fully sprouted yet.

Here. Experience it for yourself.

Thank you, global warming

2009-04-25T22:09:00.003-05:00

Near 80 degrees in April. A good time to sit outside in New England without fear of a mosquito attack. Here's my sister, Cheryl; my brother-in-law, Willie; and my mother.

Maine: The way life really is

2009-04-25T17:45:00.002-05:00

My sister, Cheryl, just showed me this picture she took up in Maine:

Return to Fitchburg - Part two

2009-04-24T15:19:00.014-05:00

For people who don't know New England milltowns of the 1900s, they have -- or had -- three faces. The bottom rung was the first- or second-generation immigrant who worked the mills, the middle rung was the small business owners and factory bosses, and also the farmers, and the top rung was the mill owner and city entrepreneur.

It's easy, I think, to look at New England's cities and see only one face these days, but that would be wrong. I happen to like the industrial age, so I'm still taken with the architecture and history of the mills. This one used to be a toy manufacturer.

This was a cardboard box plant...

If you had a key on a chain, it probably came through Fitchburg. One of my college summer jobs was working at Independent Lock (Ilco), helping them move stuff out of the plant, on its way to its new home in North Carolina. When John Edwards was running for president and bemoaned the loss of jobs in North Carolina to Mexico, I didn't care much. Whatever Mexico did to North Carolina, North Carolina did to Massachusetts first.

But if you turn your focus from the industrial city, you can drive for 3 minutes out of town, and be in the "country" part of the city, and be reminded about New England's common rural beauty, marred though it presently is from last December's massive ice storm.

Dairy farming was big here, much of it by Finnish immigrants, much of it by a few centuries of colonists. But all of it was on land in which you still can't stick a shovel in the ground without hitting a rock, a fact which led to thousands of miles of stone walls.

The fields are woods now, which makes Fitchburg a great place for people with money looking for their homes on a hill in the woods. You can have a backyard with a view of Mt. Wachusett, the second-largest mountain in Massachusetts. From the top, you can see Boston, just 50 miles away.

If I were in a plane now, and we got up another couple of thousand feet, you'd see the ocean thataway...

On my drive around, I also took note of this:

This is known as "the rock" on Rollstone Hill. For generations, it was tradition for the senior class at Fitchburg High School (that long brick building with the white spire at the center top of the picture at the top of the page was my high school; it's closed now) to paint it with FHS and then the class year underneath -- in my case 1972.

It was a source of great pride and it was a pain in the neck to paint it because that rockface is a sheer drop and it's slick from decades of paint. There were holes for stakes at the bottom along which we'd tie a rope. On the lone time I went up to help paint in my senior year, that rope saved one classmate. He started skidding down the face and grabbed the rope shortly before he would've fallen off.

As loyal Red Raiders, we would defend "the rock" at all costs against the heathens from Leominster High School, who -- around the time of the annual Thanksgiving football game between the two schools -- would try to deface it with gallons of blue paint.

Now, however, it is just another giant hunk of graffiti. When did that change? I'll tell you when. 1972. In that year, not only did we have to defend it against Leominster High School, but also against the Fitchburg High School Class of 1973, who often painted over the "72" and made it a "73." The pricks.

So today, I notice there were a couple of kids up on "the rock."

I'll bet they have no idea of the history upon which they stood.

Return to Fitchburg

2009-04-23T20:41:00.012-05:00

After 1,390.5 miles of driving over two days, I arrived in the ancestral homeland -- Massachusetts -- on Tuesday night.

And how do I know I was back in Fitchburg? I could buy a cup of Dunkin' Donuts coffee.

... and a copy of the Boston Globe. It might be going broke, but it's still a hell of a paper. Today's editorial page was miles better than the Minneapolis Star Tribune. It actually took a stand on important issues.

Every stop in Fitchburg has a good memory. The Dunkin' is on the site of the old MaryAnn Donuts, where the family would stop for a treat after Friday night swim at the Y. It's right across the street from Crocker Field, where we used to watch the Fitchburg High School Red Raiders football team, from the spot just in front of the WEIM location in the pressbox, the better to have our obscenities broadcast to the world.

Every view is like that. This one. My old elementary school -- the brick building -- and the paper mills that made the city hum back in the day when this country not only had a manufacturing base, but a thriving one. I could tell you, I think, what every building in this city used to be. That yellow one use to be Godroy Wholesalers.

It's a city chiseled into the granite hills, and a welcome antidote to two days of driving across the flatland of the nation's midsection.

Fitchburg has its problems. I could barely see as I drove in last night -- being rainy and all -- because the city has turned off most of its street lights to save money.

It got hit -- bad -- by an ice storm this winter. Residents have cleaned up the debris and put it out by the road where they've been told the city will pick it up. But nobody has picked it up and it's almost May.

I haven't had a chance to look at the damage around my mother's house yet. Yes, this is the roof I fell off of last year (from the peak).

Most of my work today was spent indoors, rewiring a nursery light system for my mother's flowers and vegetable seedlings in the basement. I got to see the route from Ashburnham St., to Home Depot several times, however. And she's good to go and should be in good shape to get a head start on growing other crops if Massachusetts ever legalizes marijuana.

The workout

2009-04-20T15:59:00.006-05:00

I'm driving back to Massachusetts from Minnesota starting tomorrow but my currency for renting at Thunderbird Aviation runs out at the end of the month. So today was my last chance to get in the air.

Unfortunately, the atmosphere was extremely unstable, as befits flyover country in the spring. There was rain showers, lows clouds (1400 above ground level --AGL, I'd guess) and wind. Lots of wind. About 19 miles per hour gusting to 30.

In my younger flying days, I'd probably have canceled, but these days I want to be sure I'm up for challenging weather. This isn't a stupid decision, mind you. I remain a conservative pilot. But I also know that flying cross country -- as I hope to do in my RV-7A someday -- means being ready for short bursts of crappy weather, while I head for the safe harbor at a nearby airport.

So I launched from Flying Cloud in a Piper Warrior. They apparently didn't think anyone would be flying today because they were all in the hangar. On climb-out, I realized why. It was a rollercoaster of turbulent air and wind sheer.

With wind out of the northwest at 330, I headed for Airlake in Farmington, around the Minneapolis-St. Paul Class B airspace, with a thought to heading up to Fleming Field, with its runway oriented 340 for some mild crosswind practice on a relatively short field.

Approaching Airlake, I flew a midfield crosswind to check the windsock -- which I couldn't find -- saw a Sundowner in the runup area and considered turning a left downwind to try a more severe crosswind. But a KingAir announcing he was on the ILS approach (note to IFR pilots: This tells the VFR pilot NOTHING. Would it kill you to say how far you are from the airport?), so I decided to continue heading south, gain some altitude and then head northeast to South St. Paul.

As I headed in that direction, however, I saw a raincloud ahead and knew there was no going around it. I'd have to turn. Before I knew it, however, I was in the cloud with no reference outside. I knew what had to be done -- a 180 degree turn while I flew by instruments (no, I'm not instrument rated, but I'm well trained for these sorts of unintentional flights into instrument meteorological conditions). The attitude indicator indicated a right turn of about 30 degrees and when I emerged from the cloud, I was a little steeper than I would've liked. But I was in control, not panicked, and ready for a long straight-in to runway 30 at Airlake.

The problem with the Warrior is their rudders aren't big enough for serious crosswind, and it took all I had to stay lined up with the runway, with all of its lights blazing. The landing wasn't bad at all for someone who hasn't flown since January, so I returned to try another one around the pattern. This time the more stabilized approach yielded a better result. And the gusty conditions abated about a 1/2 mile short of the runway. My airspeed said about 70 knots, the GPS said my groundspeed was around 50. It took me forever to get to the threshold of the runway.

On the second-climb-out, I noticed a bird heading toward my window about 5 seconds before it quickly veered off to my left. He missed me -- or did I miss him -- by about 15 feet. Now I remember why I don't like flying in Minnesota in the spring -- unstable air and lots of birds.

The third takeoff was my mistake. I should've been making sure I was ready for takeoff while I waited for a State Police helicopter to depart. If I had, I would've noticed I hadn't set two notches of flaps for takeoff. And when I bounced off the runway and assumed my normal attitude, the stall horn went off. Again, I knew what to do: push the nose down and then figure out the problem., which made itself apparent pretty quickly.

The subsequent landing had a decent approach, but I bounced back into the air on landing. In gusty winds, getting the airspeed just right is a tricky proposition. Although it wasn't a good landing -- heck, it wasn't any landing at all -- I was proud of what I did next. I firewalled the throttle and retracted a notch of flaps , the tires touched the ground briefly and I was back in the air for a go-around. The decision-making was sound, the execution was good. We pilots tell ourselves we're not supposed to try to save a bounced landing, but we do and there are plenty of accident reports to prove it.

After an uneventful landing, I tried heading up to South St. Paul again. I had to snake between some rainstorms and heavy clouds, and I was right up against the Class B as I made my way to the Mississippi and then a long final for runway 34. I stayed high because there are neighborhoods all around KSGS, and the landing was relatively uneventful. With the headwind I had, flying the glideslope would be a disaster if the engine quit.

I considered stopping in at my hangar to mess with the RV-7A project a bit, but I didn't want to waste a lot of money taxiing around airports, so I headed back and took off for the trip back to Flying Cloud.

The tower said winds were 350 (NNW) for runway 36, but I think it was farther off the nose than that because I again needed quite a bit of rudder. If I hadn't carried extra speed to account for the gusty conditions, I wouldn't have floated quite so far down the runway, perhaps, but since Thunderbird is located off the departure end anyway.

And it's not like there was much traffic around any of theairports I visited today. It's Monday, and some pilots just don't like a good workout that leaves you tired.

Rain, clouds, winds, gusts, birds, stall horns, airspace: $196.

The things we don't know

2009-04-12T09:39:00.001-05:00

I'm as cynical as they come, and this is a good test to determine if you are, too.

Tales from the flood

2009-03-29T09:42:00.002-05:00

Where's Bob? He's in Moorhead, Minnesota, eye-to-eye with the Red River. Meet my new friends.