Daily Archives: June 23, 2019

Helicopter Landing at Hood River

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A video from the FlyingMAir YouTube channel.

In this video, I’m on my way from Wenatchee, WA to Hood River, OR to deliver my helicopter to my mechanic for its annual inspection. Weather prevented me from flying the direct route, which would take me between Mt. Adams and Mt. St. Helens to cross the Cascades. At this point in the flight, I’ve been dodging clouds and low weather for about a half hour and I just can’t seem to go in the direction I want to go. Hood River is nearby and I have to pee, so I make a detour and land there.

What’s really cool about this video is the clouds. Helicopter pilots seldom fly above the clouds but nearly all of this video has clouds below me. You’ll also see a rainbow over my head for a good portion of this clip and great views of Mt. Hood out ahead of me.

I hope you enjoy the flight. Keep the comments coming and please tell your friends about my channel. The more people who tune in, the more often I’ll drop these. Thanks for stopping by!

How I Spent My Autumn Vacation, Part 2: The Farewell Tour

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I visit my old stomping grounds in northeastern New Jersey and southeastern New York State.

(Continued from Part 1: The Plan and Getting There)

When I got up the next morning, my brother was gone. I’m a light sleeper after midnight but I hadn’t heard him leave. Neither had Penny, which is saying a lot.

Coffee and Pastry

Bluetooth Pairing
I introduced my brother’s car to my phone so I could listen to my own music and enjoy hands-free phone communication while driving.

I washed up, got dressed, and headed out with Penny in search of coffee. My brother doesn’t drink coffee and his bachelor apartment is lacking in a few of the things I consider necessary, including a way to make coffee. I used Google Maps to track down a coffee shop in nearby Westfield and we headed out in the Maserati to find it.

There was a lot of police activity in Westfield at 7:30 AM and I couldn’t get to the place I was trying to find. I soon realized that there was some sort of street fair that day and the streets were blocked off for that. I parked in a lot, walked right past a Starbucks, and headed off with Penny to find the local coffee shop. I found something better: an Italian pastry shop.

Understand that when you’re born and raised in the New York City metro area — especially by a family with some Italian heritage — Italian pastries are a part of your life. I have a favorite — pasticiotti — which is a sort flakey, covered pie crust filled with custard. It’s extremely hard to find — in fact, the only place I’ve ever found them is in a real Italian pastry shop. Needless to say, there are no Italian bakeries in Wenatchee — hell, there are few real bakeries at all in Wenatchee — and I haven’t found one in Seattle yet, either. So I was pretty starved for Italian pastries and felt thrilled to stumble upon this one.

So at 8 AM, I sat at one of just two tables outside the bakery with Penny, munching a pasticiotti and sipping a rather disappointing coffee while watching various vendors drive up and begin setting up their spots for the street fair. Bovella’s pasticiotti was passable, but not nearly as good as they make them at Ferrara in Manhattan’s Little Italy. But their rainbow layer cookies, which bought to snack on throughout the day, were perfect.

Although I would have liked to attend the fair, it didn’t start until 10 AM and I certainly wasn’t willing to sit around for two hours. So we walked back to the car, climbed aboard, and headed out.

Return to the Palisades

Where were we going? I had some loose ideas. I wanted to hike along the New Jersey Palisades. There’s a wonderful trail there called the Long Path and I knew that if I parked at the State Line Lookout, I could easily access the trail. So that’s where we headed first.

But we didn’t take a direct route. Instead, we went up the New Jersey Turnpike to the Paramus Park Mall exit. I had this weird idea about driving past my old house. For years, when I worked in Red Bank and, later, Roseland, NJ, I’d come home this way and I figured that I’d just follow the road as I had back in the 1990s. But although I remembered a lot of landmarks, I didn’t remember all the turns. I couldn’t find my way from memory. Ouch. I wound up following road signs instead.

Eventually, I drove past my old house — the first house my future wasband and I had bought way back in the mid 1980s. The house looked remarkably the same, although someone in the past 20+ years had replaced the jalousie windows with modern ones that were likely a lot more energy efficient. The neighborhood looked a bit run down, but still suburban New Jersey. In town, the butcher/market where we’d bought food for dinner most nights was closed with a For Rent sign in the window. The town looked sad. Even the gas station on the corner was boarded up. I continued on my way, taking only one photo, noting the deer grazing on someone’s lawn as I drove out of town.

Harrington Park Market
One of my fondest memories of my first house was walking one block into town to this German butcher shop/market to buy fresh, hand cut meat for dinner.

There was construction so I couldn’t drive the usual way — which I did remember — to neighboring Closter, NJ. I followed detour signs and eventually made it into town. Although the town’s Main Street looked pretty much the same, the strip mall that used to have a Grand Union supermarket was different. Now there was a Whole Foods. I stopped and picked some soup, bread, and dog food. Then we continued on, up the steep hill into Alpine and eventually onto the Palisades Interstate Parkway.

It was a gray day and fall had not yet arrived. I remembered the last time I’d been at the lookout — with my future ex-sister-in-law in 2013. It had been closer to Halloween and the leaves were just peaking. We’d gone for a hike down to the ruins at the bottom of Peanut Leap Falls and, afterward, hiked to the State Line Lookout. State Line Lookout was also a big part of my past — in the 1990s, before moving to Arizona, my future wasband and I had belonged to a motorcycle club that met there for rides most Sundays in the spring, summer, and autumn.

View from State Line Lookout
The view from State Line Lookout, looking southeast. That’s the mighty Hudson River down there. The cliffs on the New Jersey side stretch all the way down to the George Washington Bridge, which is just beyond the range of this photo.

The place looked just the way I remembered it: the big parking lot filled with visitor cars and motorcycles, the old CCC-built refreshment/gift shop, the lookout points where you can see up and down the Hudson River and out over Westchester County. We got out and went to one of the overlooks where a bunch of photographers with long-lensed cameras were scanning the skies. Birdwatchers. I asked what the’d been seeing. Mostly hawks, but they had seen a bald eagle earlier in the day. I didn’t tell them that a bald eagle often roosts in one of my neighbor’s ponderosa pine trees at home.

Palisades Steps
Looking back up the steps that take you down toward the Hudson River from the top of the Palisades at State Line.

We set off on a hike along the Long Path. My destination was the Women’s Federation Monument, a stone structure built and dedicated in 1929 that looks like a little castle. To get there, you follow a well-marked trail into the woods, down a flight of rugged CCC-built steps, across a little wooden bridge, and up a trail on the other side of the ravine. It’s not a long walk, but portions are steep. I remember taking my grandmother on this walk years ago, not realizing how steep it was. Along the way, she saw a snake on the trail and attacked it with her walking stick. (She was a gutsy old lady.)

We passed a few hikers walking in the opposite direction when we reached the bridge. That’s where the trail forked off and descended all the way down to the river. We continued to the little castle. When we arrived, we had the whole place to ourselves.

Womens Federation Monument
The Women’s Federation Monument is a tiny castle overlooking the Hudson River on top of the New Jersey Palisades.

I took pictures from various angles, went up to the parapeted rooftop, and came down for a look over the river. Although it was quiet there, I could hear the sound of cars zooming by on the Palisades Interstate Parkway only a quarter mile away through the dense forest. After a while, another woman hiking with her (larger) dog arrived. We chatted briefly before I continued on the trail. I hadn’t gone far when something an odd shade of blue-green caught my eye. I made my way through the undergrowth and found myself at the edge of an abandoned swimming pool.

Abandoned Swimming Pool
This long abandoned swimming pool is the only trace I saw of the cliff-top estates that once lined the Palisades. The woman in the upper right corner of the photo is the other hiker, who I called over when I found the pool. She said she hikes there all the time and had never seen it.

(By the way, you can see a weird little documentary about the history of the Palisades Interstate Park here. It includes a photo of the dedication of the Women’s Federation Monument in 1929 and some footage of construction at State Line Lookout.)

Penny and I followed a narrow side trail that kept us close to the edge of the cliffs. It was quiet and gave the illusion of being remote. I met up with the other hiker a few times and a jogger passed by once. Other than that, it was surprisingly deserted for midday on a Sunday.

After a while, we made our way back past the monument, down the hill, across the ravine, and up the stairs to the State Line Lookout. I got my soup and bread and the dog food out of the car and sat at a picnic table with Penny for a quick lunch. A motorcyclist stopped by to chat about the Maserati for a while — he knew more about it than I did. I put Penny in the car and walked back to the Lookout’s snack bar/gift shop building for another look inside. It looked the same, but better. I was glad that the hot dog cooker (and its smell) was gone. I bought a bag of potato chips and headed back to the car.

There was a Ferrari and a few other exotic cars parked in a fire zone along the edge of the parking lot as I left. I wondered if I could have made a few new friends if I joined them with the Maserati, but didn’t bother to try.

Piermont and Beyond

My brother had recommended taking the car up route 9W (no, not 9 west, Google) to open it up a little. So that’s what I did. I don’t know what he was thinking — there were lots of lights and just enough traffic to take the thrill out of driving. Maybe he expected me to go all the way up to West Point? In any case, I didn’t make it that far.

I stopped for a while in Piermont, an old town just downriver from the Tappan Zee Bridge. When I was a kid, it barely existed. But in the past 40 years, it had become gentrified, with lots of upscale housing, shopping, and dining on and near the pier. We walked through a disappointing Farmer’s Market and then strolled through town, where I visited a few shops. I also stopped in the park for a look at the bridge that replaced the old Tappan Zee, which I hear they want to name after Mario Cuomo, a former New York Governor. To me, it’ll aways be the Tappan Zee, named after the Dutch name for the wide area of the Hudson River it crosses.

Tappan Zee Bridge
In the distance, I could see the old Tappan Zee Bridge, which is now being dismantled, along with its replacement.

Then we continued up 9W along the river. I stopped for just a moment at the site of the old Hudson River National Defense Reserve Fleet, which is now marked with a placard and pair of ship anchors. When I was a kid, my family had a small motor boat that we’d launch under the George Washington Bridge. Common day trips back then included a cruise around Manhattan Island, a trip down to the Statue of Liberty, or a trip up the Hudson River, sometimes as far as West Point. Back in those days, the Navy had a fleet of ships anchored at a point along the river, waiting in storage in case they were needed. I clearly remember my father steering our little motorboat up and down the rows of huge ships parked there. They were removed back in 1971 — gives you an idea of how old I am (!) — and sold for scrap, but the memory is strong.

Ghost Fleet Monument
This is all that remains of the dozens of Navy ships once anchored here.

At this point, I was just driving, trying to enjoy the fast car but getting stymied by traffic lights and slower traffic. But I kept driving. Part of me wanted to see the old Bear Mountain Bridge, which was the next Hudson crossing. Another part wanted to check out the rib joint my brother likes near West Point. I eventually reached the bridge but, by that time, I decided to skip West Point. Instead, I headed toward Bear Mountain State Park. I would have stopped in for a quick visit to the Bear Mountain Inn — I remembered its cafeteria-style dining from my last visit 25+ years ago — but it looked crowded with day trippers from New York and the parking lots were full. And had there aways been a fee for parking? So instead, I hopped on Seven Lakes Drive, a place I knew I’d get a good driving experience. It was there that we’d often come with our motorcycles on a Sunday morning, whipping, one after another, around the curvy roads that wound through the forest between the lakes.

Perkins Tower
Perkins Tower, from the ground.

But first another stop: Perkins Tower. I couldn’t remember ever being there, but I know I had been at least once, probably on a motorcycle outing with the group. I followed the road up to the top and squeezed into a parking spot near the tower.

Leaving Penny behind, I made the short walk to the tower and the climb to the top. There were a handful of people inside — I guess most of the folks whose cars filled the parking lot were out hiking or admiring the view from ground level. At the top is a room with views in every direction — and annotated photographs for each direction that point out landmarks.

Perkins Panorama
Here’s a panoramic view of the inside of Perkins Tower, shot from one corner.

I popped a quarter into one of those binocular do-dads for a look at the skyscrapers of Manhattan through the haze, then made sure anyone standing nearby got a look, too. Autumn had barely touched the area; I knew the view would be spectacular in just a few weeks.

Perkins View
The view south from Perkins Tower on that overcast day. You can see the Hudson River above the trees on the left. Manhattan’s skyscrapers are nearly dead center over the trees, but you can’t see them in this shot. My brother’s car is just left of the path; I’m not really sure if that was a parking spot, but it worked.

I came down the tower, climbed back into the car where Penny waited, and then drove back down the mountain. I followed signs for Seven Lakes Drive. Soon I was on vaguely familiar winding roads, ignoring the posted speed limit signs just as we had on our motorcycle flights through the area years ago. It was pleasant, but it wasn’t the same.

More Reminiscing — and a Good Meal

At the south end of the drive, it was time to return to my brother’s place. That’s when I was reintroduced to the unpleasantness of Sunday afternoon traffic.

I quickly got off the highway and started taking back roads, using Google Maps to help me find one county road after another. I wove my way southeast through Rockland County. In one area I drove through, there were all kinds of makeshift huts erected near people’s homes and in their driveways. They triggered a memory from my college days when the on-campus Jewish student club, Hillel (thanks, Google!) built similar structures in September. Doing my homework now, I realize that it was September 23 and the structures were sukkah structures for the Sukkot festival. I was passing through an Orthodox Jewish community. I hadn’t seen sukkah structures since I left the New York metro area back in the late 1990s.

I eventually made my way back to the Palisades Interstate Parkway and got off at Exit 2. From there, I drove to Hillside Avenue and turned west toward the town I’d been raised in, Cresskill, NJ. I came down the hill past the huge estates, recalling the days when my father would take the family on a Sunday drive up “the rich people’s hill” where the big houses were. He had no idea what was to come.

I drove through town, past the building my grandparents had owned with their bakery on the ground floor — it’s still the upholstery shop that went in when they sold in the 1970s. Then up Grant Avenue, past my third grade best friend’s house — she moved to Old Bridge after third grade — and right on Brookside Avenue. I turned left onto Merrifield Drive — renamed for my neighbor after he won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1984 — and drove slowly past the site of my old house. Built in 1901 on 3/4 of an acre of land, it had been torn down about ten years ago and replaced with a pair of ugly McMansions. This was the first time I’d seen them and I wasn’t impressed. It was nice to see that the rest of the neighborhood was mostly intact and that the Heberts still lived in their house on the corner and had a big garden every summer.

And no, I didn’t take a picture. I’d rather remember it as it was.

Why “The Farewell Tour”?

You might be wondering why I titled this part of my trip account “The Farewell Tour.” Well, it’s mostly because I spent so much time revisiting the places that had been a part of my life from birth through 1997, when I moved with my future wasband to Arizona. I don’t get back east as often as I used to, mostly because my only relative there is my brother. Throughout this trip, I worked with the premise that I might never be back at all. So every time I revisited one of the places I used to go, I looked at it through the eyes of someone who might never see it again. I know it sounds odd or even sad, but I’m realistic about these things. Why revisit old places again and again when you can visit new ones? That’s what I need to focus on from now on.

I drove south on Jefferson Avenue, past the place I used to pick up newspapers for my paper route in the late 1970s, eventually getting to Tenafly. From there, followed the road along the tracks to Englewood. I’d already decided where I was having dinner: Baumgart’s. That’s where my wasband and I used to eat once in a while. It’s a Chinese restaurant with an Art Deco look and a Jewish name. My grandmother used to eat there sixty or seventy years ago when it was a regular old lunch counter cafe.

I ordered the cold noodles with sesame sauce — they used to make the best — and an eggplant with chicken dish. Then I texted my brother to see what he wanted and made another order to go for him. I took my time eating, remembering other meals there. The noodles weren’t as good as I remembered them and they no longer put pickled broccoli stems — don’t knock them until you’ve tried them — on the table to munch on while you wait for your food. But my meal was good and I was glad I’d come.

Inside Baumgart's
The inside of Baumgart’s in Englewood. There’s still a lunch counter up front. There weren’t many people there, probably because it was pretty early for dinner.

I let Google guide me back to my brother’s place. By that time, traffic had subsided and I was traveling away from New York, anyway. I had a little trouble finding my brother’s home — he lives in a huge garden apartment complex — but eventually homed in on it. I parked the car, locked it, and went inside with Penny for the night.

Tomorrow would be the start of my first big trip on this vacation and I wanted to get some rest.

(Continued in Part 3.)

How I Spent My Autumn Vacation, Part 1: The Plan and Getting There

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A recap of where I went, who I visited, and what I saw.

Regular readers may have noticed that I’m blogging a lot less frequently that I had been in the past. I think the main reason is that I’m keeping so damn busy. This means I’m spending a lot less time in front of a computer and have a lot less time to spend getting my thoughts out in this blog. To my supporters — especially those who have donated to help keep this site up and running — I apologize for not delivering the content you expect to find. Please try to accept another promise to do better.

And that’s what this series of posts is about: summarizing how I spend 18 days from the end of September to the beginning of October. You saw some of the pictures in “postcard” posts; here’s a bit more to fill in the gaps.

The Plan

I began planning this vacation years ago — probably as far back as 2014. The idea was to go out to Vermont to visit my friend Tom and his wife Tammy. Of course, you go to Vermont at the best time of year — autumn, when the colors are peaking. But for a few years I just couldn’t get the trip together. First I was busy building and finishing my home. Then I was busy enjoying my home and satisfied myself with local trips I could easily make with my truck camper.

But by 2017, I was ready for more substantial travel.

As you might know, my work keeps me pretty much glued to the Wenatchee, WA area where I live from mid May through August. Last year, I was lucky enough to be able to escape to Oregon for the big solar eclipse; my cherry season work ended just a few days before the eclipse. That same year, I’d decided to move my camper and boat down to Arizona in October so I could enjoy the trip down there. (The previous year, I’d gone down around Thanksgiving and it was too cold to hike or even enjoy the various places I stopped along the way.) So I turned that into a two-week long road trip that took me to visit friends and sites in Idaho, Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. Obviously, I couldn’t squeeze another vacation between my August and October trips — I have to be home sometime.

This spring, I started thinking about it again. I had lots of airline miles on Alaska Air. I had lots of free time after cherry season. I consulted Tom for the best time to come. I consulted my brother, who lives in New Jersey where I’d likely enter the area. And I thought about the other things that I might do when I arrived, like spend some time in Washington DC, taking in a few museums.

I sat on the fence for a week or so. And then one morning I just said “screw it,” and I booked my flights to and from Newark. Cancellation fees would make it very expensive to change my plans. My trip dates were set: I’d leave here on September 22 and return home on October 9 for a total 18 days away

(I should mention here that the only thing that makes trips like this possible is a great house-sitter to watch over my home, my garage-based barn cats, and my chickens, who were producing an average of eight eggs a day. I have the best house-sitter.)

Arriving in Newark

I flew into Newark with Penny, a half case of wine, and a huge rolling suitcase.

Because there are so many wineries in the Wenatchee area, Alaska Air will check a case of wine on a flight out of Wenatchee Airport for free. I packed a half-case box with four bottles of wine, a bottle of locally produced apple moonshine, and two jars of my honey. I padded them around with bubble wrap and shoved two of my scarves in there. As you might imagine, the baggage handlers managed to break one bottle of red wine, soaking — but fortunately not ruining — my scarves. A nice woman at the baggage claim area gave me a $75 credit on my account for the next time I fly.

My brother met me at the airport with his Maserati, which I assume was a gift to himself after his divorce. (Everyone should give themselves a gift after a divorce; my gift to myself was my new home and the flexible lifestyle I’d tried (unsuccessfully) to enjoy with my wasband throughout my marriage.) It’s a low-key black sedan that’s very comfortable and wickedly fast. I got to give it a try myself the very next day.

On the way back to his place, we stopped for sushi. As we polished off an enormous sushi boat, we reminisced about the time years before that’d we’d gone to a favorite sushi restaurant in Teaneck, NJ for “happy hour” half-price sushi and had eaten until we were ready to explode. Langers love good food.

Sushi Boat Empty Sushi Boat
Here’s my brother Norb with the sushi boat we shared for dinner. Seriously: it could have fed four people.

Back at his place, I settled into his bedroom. He’s only got one bed and he let me have it because he had to get up very early the next morning. He’s a competitive shooter and had a match in Old Bridge. He left me the keys to his car — he’d take his Toyota truck. We chatted for a while and then turned in for the night.

(Continued in Part 2: The Farewell Tour)

Polished Stones from Slabs

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More polished stones. (Yes, I’m addicted.)

I just wanted to take a moment to share two photos of stones I polished into cabochons posed right beside the slabs I cut them from.

Wild Horse Picture Jasper
Wild Horse Picture Jasper.

Ahwanee Jasper.
Ahwanee Jasper. I have two slabs and I made two cuts with my tile saw to remove a portion of one slab for this cabochon.

A slab, in case you’re wondering, is a slice of a rock. These were thin — about 1/8 inch. I prefer them thicker — maybe 1/4 to 3/8 inch — so I can get taller, more rounded cabochons. You need a slab saw — a large saw capable of cutting through stone — to make slabs. I don’t have one but I have a friend who does. He’s been cutting slabs from local obsidian and petrified wood that I gave him in exchange for jewelry-making classes for his family. I’ll show off finished cabochons from that soon.

These finished stones and remaining slabs are for sale. I’ll be adding them to my ML Jewelry Designs website and its online store soon. I just need to get better photos of them.

Flying with a 1914 Curtiss Flying Boat

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The challenging part of this photo flight wasn’t the photo flight.

It had been on my calendar for months: take a photographer to fly with a rebuilt 1914 Curtiss F Model Flying Boat, supposedly the only one in existence from the 300 originally built.

My friends Mark and Karen at Century Aviation had been working on it for over a year, restoring it for businessman and aviation enthusiast Bill Nutt from the few parts they had managed to acquire. I saw the start of their work at their annual hangar party in the summer of 2017. By June’s Aviation Day event at the airport, it was pretty much done and on display in one of the FedEx hangars.

1914 Curtiss Flying Boat Under Reconstruction 1914 Curtiss Flying Boat Fully Restored
The Flying Boat project in August 2017 (left) and in June 2018 (right) when it was pretty much finished. Fun fact: There are more than 8,000 tiny screws holding the wood planks in place on the plane’s hull.

The great thing about this restoration is that the owner wanted a fully functional plane. That meant it had to fly. So they scheduled a test flight for July and contacted me about taking along a photographer to document the flight. Unfortunately, some engine issues caused a postponement and they had to work around the pilot’s schedule. He was next available in mid August so that’s when we rescheduled the flight.

The folks at Century had to disassemble the plane, stow it in a custom trailer built just to transport it, and tow it down to Moses Lake, which was where they planned to fly it. The plane does not have wheels or any landing gear at all; it’s a boat and can only take off and land in water. Although the Columbia River is right here, they felt that Moses Lake, about an hour away by car, would be better. Less possibility of crowds and boat traffic and no obstructions like overhead wires, bridges, or dams. They also needed a place to reassemble and launch the plane; they arranged with some folks who lived on the north end of the lake to use their property.

They drove down on Monday morning and spent the day working on the plane. The test flight was scheduled for Tuesday with the possibility of trying again on Wednesday if necessary.

Getting There

Spoiler alert: the most challenging part of the mission for me was just getting my helicopter to Moses Lake.

We’d decided that I’d go down on Monday so I was ready first thing in the morning to fly. I packed a tent and sleeping bag, all prepared to camp out in the yard. I also brought a cooler with ice and water and a bed for Penny.

I watched the weather all day. I wasn’t worried about storms — it was visibility that was an issue. For three weeks, we’d been dealing with smoke from various fires north of here. The smoke drifted into the Wenatchee Valley and settled in, thick enough to smell. I monitor air quality via an app and website and smoke was giving us “Unhealthy” and even “Hazardous” air. Visibility at the airport just four miles away had gotten as low as 3/4 of a mile. That day, it was hovering around two miles.

Wenatchee Pangborn Memorial Airport has class E airspace. That means that when visibility drops below 3 miles, I can’t fly there without a special VFR clearance. Trouble is, there is no tower at Wenatchee so to request my clearance I need to contact Seattle Center. And the problem I encountered that afternoon, as I idled at my landing zone in a deep valley, was that I simply couldn’t reach Seattle Center on the radio.

I could reach the local Flight Service Station, however, so that’s who I called. They relayed my request to Seattle and relayed the response back to me. There was a plane on approach and I couldn’t get my clearance until he was on the ground.

So I sat there, spinning, burning fuel, grateful that the helicopter has air conditioning. I listened in on Wenatchee’s radio frequency and heard the plane call 10 miles out. That kind of pissed me off because I had a 3-minute flight ahead of me and could have done it at least twice before he even entered the airspace. But okay. Whatever. I waited.

Then he was on the ground and a helicopter made a call. Shit. How did he get clearance before me?

I called Flight Service again to remind him that I was still waiting. He mentioned the helicopter and then told me to hold. I held. Eventually, he came back and gave me my Special VFR clearance to reposition to the airport. I wasted no time climbing out and heading across the river.

It had taken me about 20 minutes from startup to landing less than four miles away.

I ordered fuel, wondering how long it would take for me to get out and on my way to Moses Lake.

Fortunately, the wait to depart was much shorter. After topping off both tanks and checking the oil — hot dip stick! — on level ground, I started back up. This time, I called Seattle Center directly. They had me hold until a cargo plane that had just departed cleared the airspace to the west and then cleared me to depart Special VFR at or below 10,000 feet. Easy enough; I had no intention of losing sight of the ground.

Instead of flying direct, I departed the airport and descended down until I was about 400 feet over the river. The problem with the direct route is that it would take me right over the top of Lower Moses Coulee, which is a relatively wide canyon east of the airport. I worried that once I left the canyon’s west rim I might lose sight of the ground below me and the opposite rim. I don’t like to lose sight of anything when I fly and I wasn’t taking any chances.

I watched my position on Foreflight’s moving map and called Seattle Center to report clear of Class Echo when I was abeam the mouth of Lower Moses Coulee. By that time, I was low enough between the cliffs on either side of the river to have garbled communications with them. I thought I heard them ask for my altitude and heading so I reported both. Then I changed frequencies, eager to silence their nearly constant communications with airliners coming and going around Seattle.

I followed the river down to Crescent Bar and then climbed up over Babcock Bench before setting course for Moses Lake. The farms and orchards of Quincy emerged below me out of what looked like a fog. Visibility was slightly better than it had been in Wenatchee. The air was smooth and I was very surprised to discover, when comparing airspeed to groundspeed, that I I had about a 15 knot headwind. No turbulence at all. I turned on my radar altimeter — the $10K piece of equipment the FAA made me buy — because I was curious about how high up I was comfortable flying in the muck. 350 to 450 feet. I soon lost sight of the hills north of Quincy and had some trouble staying on course with nothing on the horizon to aim for. The radio, tuned into Quincy’s frequency and then Moses Lake’s, was eerily quiet.

My landing zone was on a piece of land three miles west southwest of the airport, within the Class Delta airspace. That meant talking to the tower. Fortunately, visibility there was four miles so a Special VFR clearance was not necessary. I told the controller where I planned to land and he cleared me for transition. I was just setting down when I reported landing assured.

On the Ground in Moses Lake

They had a sprinkler going in an area that would have been a good landing zone, but I didn’t know if they expected me to land there so I didn’t. Instead, I landed in a spot between a small orchard and some overhead wires. There was a burn pile nearby and I was so focused on that, wondering if I’d blow it away, that I was a bit surprised when my left skid touched down before my right one. There was a little slope to my landing zone, but not enough to be an issue. I set down, reduced the throttle to cool down RPM, and opened the door. I dropped Penny out to investigate while I finished shutting down.

One of my hosts, Lois, appeared moments later. When I shut down and got out, she greeted me. She immediately offered up a bed in the house. Faced with the choice of a bedroom near a bathroom or a tent in a smoky yard, I agreed to take the bed.

The plane was parked in front of Lois and Virgil’s garage, sheltered on one side by its big transport trailer and on the upwind side by a motorhome. It was tied down firmly at four points; it would be tragic indeed if the strong wind coming out of the east blew it over.

Curtiss Flying Boat in the Driveway
The plane was securely tied down in the driveway, sheltered from the wind on three sides.

Then Karen, Century’s co-owner, pulled up in her car and whisked Penny and me away to a Mexican restaurant in downtown Moses Lake. The Century crew, the plane’s owner (Bill), and a bunch of friends — I think there may have been 20 of us — sat a long table. We enjoyed drinks and huge portions of Mexican food, treated by Bill.

Afterwards, Penny and I hitched a ride back to the landing zone with Bruce, who was staying in the motorhome. (The others were staying in two rented houses in town.) That’s when he told me about flying helicopters in Vietnam and gave me a firsthand account of his participation ferrying people out during the fall of Saigon. He said that they had to toss the helicopters into the water because the helicopters waiting to land were running out of fuel and ditching and the rescue crews were working nonstop to pull people out of the water. (Seriously, kids: never pass up an opportunity to talk to an older person about the amazing things they were part of in their lives.) Now he flies freight in airplanes for a living, but he wished he’d gotten his civilian helicopter rating.

Back at the landing zone, a young guy in a uniform was hanging around by a pickup truck parked near the plane. Hired security. He’d be spending the night. I thought it was completely unnecessary — heck, you couldn’t see the plane from any road or the lake — but better safe than sorry, I guess.

I chatted with my hosts for a while before turning in. I’d been up since 4 AM, which is relatively common for me, and was tired. My bedroom was small — barely big enough for the queen sized bed! — but the bed was comfortable and the place was quiet. After feeding Penny some chicken and rice from my dinner — I’d forgotten to bring dog food which she probably wouldn’t have eaten anyway — I set up her bed on the corner of mine and turned in. I slept relatively well.

Fly Day

I woke around 4:30. This is one of the reasons I hate being a houseguest. I wake up very early and then I have to stay very quiet until other people wake up. So I did what I often do: read articles on the Web, visit Twitter, complete crossword puzzles. That took me to nearly 6 AM. By that time, it was daylight and I was ready to go outside. So I dressed, washed up quietly ,cleaned up the room, gathered my belongings, and slipped outside with Penny in tow.

Curtis Flying Boat, Parked
The plane was safe and sound in the morning. On the right side of this shot, you can see part of the trailer it travels in.

The security guy was gone. Virgil was awake, doing stuff outside. I helped him pick raspberries from his garden for breakfast. We chatted, skirting around the issue of politics. He started to say something about liberals, thought better of it, and was likely relieved that he had stopped talking when I admitted that I leaned left. I said that I wished people would gather information from reliable sources and form their own educated opinions rather than latching on to the opinions of others. And we left it there.

Back in the house, Lois was making breakfast, which consisted of a lot of fresh fruit, oatmeal (the kind you cook, which is honestly the only kind worth eating), and meatless sausage and potato patties. There was no coffee, which I (mistakenly) thought wouldn’t be a problem. Virgil said grace before we put food on our plates. He had a lot to say to the Lord that morning, from thanks for the food to requests for good weather and a successful flight.

Other people started arriving after 7 AM. Bruce came in and joined us. Then some other folks. Soon we had a bunch of cars parked haphazardly around the place and people going in and out to use the bathroom. I thanked my hosts for breakfast and went back outside, where Penny was already giving hell to the three-legged dog from next door.

The crew got right to work on the plane. They had to check all the wire fasteners for tightness, add oil and fuel, and do countless other things I have no clue about. There were ladders all over the place. I managed to get a few interesting shots of the plane and its controls while they worked.

Working on the Plane
The crew works to prepare the plane for flight while others look on. That’s the pilot, Rob, in the black shorts.

Cockpit of 1914 Curtiss Flying Boat
The cockpit is pretty simple. For this flight, they had the “everyday” fabric seat cushions in. The leather cushions they made will likely be installed when its on display.

Experimental Label
Karen affixes the Experimental placard to the inside of the cockpit as required by the FAA.

Curtiss Flying Boat Engine
A closeup of the Flying Boat’s engine with pusher prop. This is (obviously) not the original engine, but it was built specifically for this plane based on period designs. You can see Mark’s face framed by the engine supports just below the radiator.

Mark & Karen
Mark and Karen pose by the plane’s tail for an interview by NCWLife, a local television channel.

First Try

We got all the cars moved out of the way and Virgil moved the motorhome. Mark did a briefing on what would happen next and they started moving the plane, on its cart, down to the water. I had my phone out with a battery pack on it and Periscoped the whole thing. It was long and, in more than a few parts, boring. That’s because it happened at the speed of real life, which tends to be slow. Mark and Karen weren’t taking any chances rushing through things.

Of course, I wasn’t there to put the event on social media. I was there to fly a photographer in my helicopter. That means I needed to be ready to fly when they were. At first, Mark asked me to get the helicopter going just before they started the engine, but when he realized how much I wanted to hear the engine, he said to do it right after they started. So I stuck with it, narrating and answering questions along the way. There weren’t many viewers until right around the time they started the engine. So instead of shutting it down, I handed it off to one of the other bystanders. Apparently, she wasn’t as dedicated as I was and eventually put the phone down without turning off the video. If you do watch it, have patience.

I’d already briefed the photographer, Steve, and told him he could keep shooting until after I got the helicopter started. So it was running when he joined me. I helped him with his life vest — I always supply flotation devices when doing photo flights over water — and made sure he was strapped in. Then I made a radio call to Moses Lake tower, telling the controller we’d be operating over the lake. They were already briefed about what we’d be doing and I’d likely be operating below the airport field elevation anyway. For the rest of the day, all I had to do was call when I took off and call again when I landed. It was automatically assumed that the Flying Boat would be operating at the same time.

When we took off, the plane was just taxiing into the lake. I formed up immediately with it, flying on its left (port) side. Steve is a smart guy who had no problem with my request to sit behind me for the flight. Doing so made it possible for me to see exactly what he saw and put him in position to get the best shots. I’ve dealt with too many stubborn photographers who expect me to get them into position when I can’t see what they’re looking at. I now require all photographers to sit behind me for air-to-air flights.

Rob took the plane down the lake, slowly building speed. We followed off his left shoulder. At first, I was kind of high — the water was glassy smooth and I really don’t like flying low over featureless surfaces. But I worked my way down, matching the speed of the plane below me at or below 100 feet over the water.

It wasn’t very eventful. He didn’t get very far. After a while, he killed the engine and the boat drifted to a stop.

I circled a few times as a boat with some of the crew on board motored over. Of course, I didn’t know what was going on. The Flying Boat didn’t have a radio and my cell phone was with Rita. When they came out with a jet ski and started towing it back to base, I headed back in and landed.

By the time I’d shut down and returned to lakeside, the plane was back. It turned out that there were multiple problems:

  • Water was getting into the boat’s hull. This was probably a combination of seepage and possibly a leak or two.
  • The engine wasn’t getting enough power to get the plane up to speed.
  • There wasn’t enough rudder to steer the plane properly.

Needless to say, we were all very disappointed. As I watched them bail out the plane with a small bucket, I started wondering if the whole thing was a failure.

Second Try

It was still early in the day and the place was crawling with mechanics and engineers so there really wasn’t any reason to give up. I went with one of the guests to a sporting goods store to buy a handheld pump to make it easier to get water out of the boat. Because I had a splitting headache likely caused by caffeine withdrawal, we stopped at an espresso stand for an iced latte. (It worked! Headache was gone before we got back!) Then Home Depot to get some hose.

While we were gone, they did something with the rudder cables to improve steering. Oddly, the design they’d worked with had a wooden block back in the tail; they had no idea what it was for but included it anyway. Apparently, it was to tie the cables in such a way that they wouldn’t rub against another part when the rudder was full left or right. So they were prepared for the fix. I imagined a mechanic back in 1912 having the same problem and solving it with that little wooden block.

Meanwhile, we had lunch — sandwiches with fresh tomatoes from the garden. Penny shared some of my turkey.

Then they were ready to try again. Steve and I headed out to the helicopter. This time we were airborne before they started the engine. We got to see Mark crank it — there was no electric start — and the prop start spinning. Then Mark climbed out of the way and Rob took his seat. As we circled about 200 feet up, he headed off into the lake.

This time, Steve and I paid closer attention to the way the plane moved in the water. We realized that spray from its movement was coming up under the rear horizontal do-dad — heck, sometimes I really wish I knew airplane parts! — and spraying up against the rudder. The hull seemed to ride low in the water. Although Rob seemed to have better steering control, he still didn’t get enough speed to take off. So he killed the engine again. The boat and jet ski moved in and I went in to land.

Third Try

One of the crew bailed out the boat with the hand pump while the others talked to Rob. It seemed that the steering problem. But the water getting in the boat was weighing it down and it seemed to be too low in the back. They decided to try ballast.

They filled two big black garbage bags with gravel and weighed them. I didn’t get the weights. They took one of the bags and secured it at the very front inside the plane’s hull. They were turning the plane around to face the lake when Steve and I headed back to the helicopter.

We launched and circled as they started it back up. It headed out to the lake. The tail was definitely riding higher in the water. Rob seemed determined to get it up to speed as quickly as possible — possibly to minimize water in the hull. He took it pretty far down the lake and I really thought he might take off. But then, suddenly, he killed the engine and let it drift.

It looked for a moment as if the wind might blow it to the opposite shore of the lake, but then the jet ski came out and attached the tow rope and they were headed back. I was back on the ground looking for chocolate chip cookies before they got back.

Fourth Time is the Charm

The verdict was that the weight in the front definitely helped but they needed more. So they secured the other bag of gravel. As they turned around the plane, Steve and I headed back to the helicopter. As I lifted off and called the tower, I said “Let’s hope fourth time is the charm.”

“Good luck,” he replied.

Again, we circled the plane as they started it up and Rob taxied it out. He headed down the lake, right into the wind, picking up speed quickly. He wasn’t messing around — he clearly planned to get it off the water if possible. I had a feeling that they’d all agreed that this would be the last try.

I dropped down as low as I dared, watching the plane the whole time. It looked light on the water.

“I see light under the tail,” Steve called out.

And then it lifted off the water and into the air. It was flying.

Flying Boat Floating
An aerial view of the Flying Boat flying over Moses Lake for the first time on August 21, 2018.

I keyed the mic; the radio was still tuned into Moses Lake tower. “The flying boat is flying,” I told them.

“Fourth try was the charm,” the controller replied. “Congratulations.”

Meanwhile, Steve was snapping photos like crazy. The plane kept moving and I kept moving along with it. It got about 50 feet off the water. It came down for a landing, skirted along the top of the water briefly, and came back up into the air. It flew for a while longer.

We’d gone well over a mile from base and were coming up on a bend in the river with a bluff ahead of us. Our FAA authorization limited the plane to straight and level flight, so it was time to come back down. Rob landed, turned around, and started motoring back on the water, moving fast. For a moment, I thought he might try a tailwind takeoff — the wind wasn’t blowing more than 10 miles an hour — but no, he was just in a hurry. He came all the way back, past base, and turned around. I got the feeling he was going to try another takeoff where onlookers could actually see him. He sped up a bit, crossed the lake, and pointed into the wind. He started moving quickly, but then shut down. I suspect that water in the hull was weighing him down again.

And that was it. We circled around a bit while the boat and jet ski moved back into position to bring him back. I landed and Steve got out while I cooled down the engine and shut down.

Winding Down

Needless to say the entire crew — and the onlookers — were euphoric. The day had started bad but ended great. The only thing that really disappointed the onlookers is that they hadn’t been able to see the plane actually fly; it was too far down the lake for them to see.

I gave helicopter rides to my host and his grandkids. Then I watched them pull the plane out of the water and tow it back up the driveway. I said goodbye to everyone, adding congratulations to Mark, Karen, Bill, and Rob. Then I loaded the helicopter back up, gave one last helicopter ride to the folks who had let us use their boat ramp, and headed home.

Visibility was much better; I didn’t need a clearance to get back into Wenatchee airspace. Still, I followed the river from Crescent Bar. The water was smooth as ice. I was almost disappointed to set it down at the end of the flight, but I had places to go and things to do and I was already late.

Columbia River Reflections
Just downriver from the mouth of Lower Moses Coulee, the water was glassy smooth.

I Live for This

I realized several times during the 24 hours I was part of the Curtiss Flying Boat crew in Moses Lake just how much I enjoy things like this. I live for opportunities to be part of something amazing and this restored plane was definitely that.

It reminded me a lot of another classic airplane project I’d been involved with back in the early 2000s, when I was still flying my first helicopter, an R22. Back then, it had been a replica 1919 Vickers Vimy, the world’s largest flying biplane at the time. That project predates my blog so I don’t have any posts about it. I can’t even find any photos of it, although I’m sure I have some somewhere. My involvement was several months long but ill-fated; I have a very low tolerance for incompetence and the project was very poorly managed when I was part of it. Still, it was fun flying in formation with a giant four-engine biplane and I did very much enjoy my one and only ride.

Life is short; we need to make the most of the time we have. For eight years out of college, I worked the nine-to-five grind and I pretty much hated it. I was living inside the box that society builds for most of us, the box my family clearly expected me to stay inside as I worked my way up a corporate ladder I had no real desire to be on. Surely there was more to life than an hour-long commute to sit in a cubicle before another commute to get home, repeated daily five times a week, 50 weeks a year.

I got a glimpse of just how much more was out there when I started my second career, as a freelance writer, and got to travel, see more of the country, and speak at computer conferences in San Francisco, Boston, New York, and Toronto. Traveling from hotel to hotel, setting up classrooms for training, teaching people what I knew, getting tastes of the cities I visited. Meeting with publishers and software developers. I enjoyed my behind-the-scenes participation as a computer trainer, speaker, and author.

Later, as my helicopter career began to grow, I got a chance to be involved with the kind of flying missions that most people never even imagine: multi-day helicopter excursions, raptor surveys, pipeline patrols, Grand Canyon tours, desert racing photo flights, cherry drying, frost control, air-to-air photo flights, cattle spotting, horse herding.

I cannot imagine a life without these fascinating kinds of work. A life where every day is the same as the day before it — and the day after it. How do people do it?

And it’s not just the work — it’s the people I meet along the way. People like a businessman who pays to restore classic aircraft to share them with the world. People like the aircraft restorers who can take a pile of scrap wood and fabric and turn it into a beautiful working airplane. People like a helicopter pilot who made 15 flights to help evacuate Saigon before he helped them push his helicopter off the ship. People like an airplane pilot who has flown several airplanes dating back to the early 20th century, when aviation was in its infancy.

Watch My Helicopter Videos on YouTube

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Flying M Air Logo

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I have to add — because it was on my mind so many times on Tuesday — how sad I feel for my wasband, who could have been part of all of this if he hadn’t been so fearful of joining me in my life outside the box. The man I knew well — before he apparently lost his mind — would have really enjoyed the experience, even if he had been stuck on the ground for the flight attempts. He was an engineer, after all, and the plane is fascinating. I could almost imagine him talking to the mechanics, asking questions and learning about the plane’s idiosyncrasies. But I also know that if we’d stayed together, I’d likely miss out on so many of the opportunities I’ve had since our split. What’s sad for him is good for me. I’m sure he’s perfectly happy with his life inside his box. He’ll never know what he’s missing. Most people don’t.

But this is what I live for — experiences that make my life fuller and more interesting. And I’m always looking for the next opportunity.

Want More?

Watch this video produced by NCWLife: