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Showing posts from March 14, 2010

Worst Weather in the World

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I flew up to Maine to see my sister and cousins for a few days. As part of the trip we went up Mount Washington in NH. We went up on the Cogged Railway. It's A unique old vehicle system that only uses a large cog underneath the engine hooked into a ladder type of rack on the tracks all the way to the top. The modern engine uses a 600HP John Deere driving a hydraulic pump which in turn drives several hydraulic motors turning the large cog. Mt Washington is known for the extreme cold and highest wind in the world. Yes, the world. That was not the case when we went up. The winds were 3 MPH and the temp was 62 degrees. the highest ever temp ever recorded was 72 degrees and a 3 MPH wind is generally unheard of. So, the weather was quite kind for us.
Harrison Ford: I have 8 planes, 1 woman By Ruben V. Nepales Philippine Daily Inquirer First Posted 16:53:00 03/07/2010 Filed Under: Celebrities, Cinema, Entertainment (general), planes LOS ANGELES – Actor-pilot Harrison Ford, asked in our recent interview about how many planes he has, answered with his trademark lopsided grin: “I have one woman but I have eight aeroplanes. The planes have different purposes and the skills required to fly them are different in each case. I’ve always been interested in this continual process of learning and perfecting skills.” Harrison, who can be terse at interviews, was in a good mood in this chat . When a colleague prefaced his question with, “You play a cranky scientist in ‘Extraordinary Measures’ and a cranky TV news anchorman in ‘Morning Glory,’” the actor with the gruff reputation playfully interrupted and quipped to laughter, “Yeah, what about it? Are you getting to something? What’s your point?”
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I had a great flying lesson today. The winds were highly changeable, but mostly cross the runway and a bit from the tail. My throat got dry like the old days. It all builds experience. The weather (to a bystander on the ground) seems perfect for anything. My instructor was saying how people on days like these figure flying must be perfect because of the visibility. Not so! He went on to say "They aren't feeling what we are feeling." I am very grateful of my instructor, all of them. It looks like I will be taking some pics from the air Wednesday. The last of the snow is leaving. We will most likely have a wet snow or two before summer, but the accumulation is over for this year. It appears my blog will be changing in the next two months. I have not decided exactly how yet (but after nearly 1000 posts and almost 10 years) changes in the the hosting environment can be expected. I really appreciate the occasional email that comes in from someone I have never met expressin...