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Showing posts from July 3, 2016

Elliott Brack

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I went to Elliot Brack's funeral yesterday. He was a friend. And he was quite a character. He was one of the first people I met outside of work when I moved to Georgia. He was sort of a variation of the main character of Tom Wolfe's "A Man In Full". I used to say that Elliott and I had a 50-50 relationship. He told me what to do and I did it. His 50% was telling me. My 50% was doing it. He was a fixture at my church and involved me in all sorts of things. Including organization of our "Civic Breakfast" where we invited leaders from the community for information and opinions of the community. It goes on and on. There were 260 people attending his funeral. He will be missed. https://www.crowellbrothers.com/obituaries/Elliott-Earl-Brack?obId=48440319
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We are back from Alaska. We drove 1181 miles in Alaska. We went on a glacier cruise, rented a plane for a PIC (Pilot In Command) glacier flight from Anchorage (PAMR) and took my first bush pilot/float plane instruction in Moose Pass. We stayed at Chena Hot Springs and bathed in the hot mineral bath. The place gave me a lot to daydream about. This was the most north I have been on the planet (so far) at 65.03 degrees North. http://www.chenahotsprings.com My expectations were set very high for the bush pilot training. I was not disappointed. My instructor was a military pilot with well over 300 carrier landings. Very good exposure to precision flying and becoming part of the wind. Landing on a glass smooth lake is impossible by visual reference. After the point of last visual reference on a glass smooth lake --it is all feel and VSI. You can trust the water is flat and level, after all. You can't see the "runway" at all. The refection is just too strong. You can only feel ...
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We have been on the road for a while. I had a business trip that took me through Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota and North Dakota.