The World Cup, Karen, Balty, a bit of Egypt...plus more on Jack Norworth.

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We had a great time this week with our guest, and long time friend Karen.

Of course, we talk about the World Cup. We headed over to the Duke of Edinburgh Pub to watch the final and joined a crowd in there. It was standing room only, but fortunately we got their very early to grab a table. Ashok joined Karen, Greg and Simon and we had a great few hours, supporting both teams along the way. We chatted about Paul the octopus that has predicted the correct outcome for 8 games in a row. That can't be chance!

Earlier in the week we joined Karen up in her local stomping grounds of San Francisco and we had dinner at the House of Prime Rib on Van Ness. Fun was had by all, and boy those prime ribs were good, as were the Yorkshire puddings! Apparently, the alcohol was pretty enticing too.

Karen joined us today to talk about her blog, http://baltazarfishegyptdiaries.blogspot.com. She's an aspiring children's author and she also talks about the trials of trying to find an agent and be published. The blog is linked to the main character of her current work in progress, Baltazar Fish. The blog is being written in the first person, and is set as a prequel to the novel. We discuss Egypt a little, as Karen's travels there inspired her book.

Earlier in the week, Greg, Simon and a friend, also called Simon watched Monty Python's Holy Grail, so there are a smattering of quotes from the movie in this week's podcast.

We then go over some of the recent news articles. Our favorite was a crocodile on the loose in Frankfurt. As Greg said: "The more you know, the less you care."

Before closing we go back to the previous week's story of the Jack Norworth memorial stone being placed at his burial sight. This project was undertaken by 2 friends, JP Myers and Chris Epting, both guests on the show. The event to put the new stone in place was on July 11th, 2010 and photos were taken. There are some article and photos about and from the event.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=106832&id=118727941506682

http://picasaweb.google.com/fultonavenue/July11th2010NorworthMemorialMarker#

http://dailyme.com/story/2010071100002916/seventh-inning-special-belting-102-year-old-hit.html

Post Podcast recording we headed over to one of the more incredible local restaurants, Sent Sovi. We indulged. Boy did we ever. We laughed ourselves silly and ate like royalty for the evening. Worth every penny! We'll talk about this a little more on next week's podcast.

BMSMA.

G&S

Instrument flying and such stuff

So my instrument rating training is coming on apace. Well, it's been going slowly actually but things have picked up of late, since I've got my teeth into my written exam study. I'm not sure why I want to put myself through all this at 43, but I do and I've got a load more exams yet to go before getting my instructor rating. I had a glorious flight today. We're very lucky to live in the San Francisco Bay Area, where in the summer the clouds come in from the Pacific and back up along Skyline Boulevard, making Half Moon Bay airport almost always in cloud. I was up doing exercises that I haven't done for a while, like 60 degree banks, holds and unusual attitude recovery and my instructor decided it would be fun to add a pop up clearance into Half Moon Bay. I got it filed, programmed into the G1000 and off we went. I've done a lot of approaches, including to Half Moon Bay, but this was the first where the cloud base was actually down to minimums. (KHAF is 370 feet and it was about 400 feet today so as I approached minimums I thought I'd have to do a missed approach for real rather than one for exercise.) Flying back though, VFR on top, and the vision restrictions goggles off, we got this massive panorama of the cloud bank, that was over the Pacific but ended abruptly at Skyline. It was the kind of view that just makes you stop and gawk. It's a pity I didn't have my camera with me, as it was unbelievably impressive.

My instructor is away for the next few weeks, so I'm going to focus on study but am going to take a couple of flights just for the hell of it. Greg, a buddy, and myself will be off to somewhere for a $100 burger somewhere. Should be fun and this time there will be photos.

S

Isn't California amazing.

Today, we were in the supermarket. This seems rather mundane and not usually something worth writing about. However, this is Silicon Valley, California, so it's a little different. So I'm a pasty white Caucasian and my Mrs. is Asian. We're going to a Chinese supermarket, so she can find specific fruits. The supermarket is chock full of Chinese and a few Indians, and yes 1 pasty white boy, me. (Usually there's a few white husbands in tow, but today there was just me). The staff are all Mexican and are speaking Spanish to each other and English to the customers. The children of the Chinese immigrants are all speaking English with the Californian twang and the parents are speaking it with various degrees of accent. Here we are in the USA, in a Chinese supermarket with Hispanic staff. Now if that isn't a melting pot, I don't know what is!

Funnily enough, all the stereotypes do also exist I'm afraid. The Chinese are still bad drivers and are a big danger when in control of a supermarket trolley. This is no joke when confined to narrow aisles. They'll also happily block an aisle with their trolley and walk away without thinking anything about it. Makes it all the more entertaining. I'm told to keep quiet and not get angry when this happens. I guess we know who's the boss in this household, especially on home(ish) turf!

off we go.

So after a rather splendid week in Florida (yes even in the middle of Summer), we got back to regular life. For me this involves daily chores, taking on my persona of Elma Fudd to take care of those pesky wabbits, and back to my regular Instrument Flight training.

But first, a brief recap.....Florida. Why the hell would you go there in the middle of summer you moron? Well might you ask. It was just a ruse you see, as we wanted to go and see Wendy, whom we met in Africa (Burkina Faso and Mali to be precise.) and who, fortunately, lives right at the bottom of the Florida Keys....lovely. I know, very long winded and I'll spare the excess information. She was on tour with us in November and we hit it off so well that we promised to keep in touch (which we have) and meet up....which we now have. Even though my wife and I met somewhere deep in Central Asia many moons ago, we've not followed through like this with someone we met abroad. This is mainly as we haven't met anyone we liked as much, and were obviously a little nervous about doing heading over there at first. It turned out we needn't have been as we seemed to get along as well as we did during our baptism of fire in Burkina Faso. (We called that trip "boot camp" as it certainly felt like one). So Wendy and her hubby were a delight, and their 2 doggies, Max (20...yes 20 years old) and Ace, were equally wonderful, as doggies invariably are. We really didn't want to come home. However, here we are and are fully back into the thick of things.

Today I was up flying over the coast, into the clouds with my trustee instructor Chuck. The view restrictors came off for a while for some real time cloud flying, which is always a little nerve wracking but also quite wonderful. However, the landing is what made my palms sweat today. 19kt cross wind and he was giving me slightly inaccurate (non precision approach) vectors so I'd be a little high and perhaps a little off from straight in to final approach. Being the over cautious pilot that I am, I made 2 missed approaches. I guess he's upping the anti so that I get used to what it's like in reality. Good but not nice. A couple of weeks ago I flew myself and a couple of friends up to Redding in Northern California (ostensibly to see Mount Shasta) and it's stuff like that which makes flying enjoyable. I don't really enjoy the training, not when it's like it is today, but boy does it make you a better pilot! Bugger me if I wasn't exhausted by the end of 2 hours of that. Now on for Wednesday which should prove to be equally hair raising.

up with the Gods

There's a lot to be said for seeing the earth from 10,000 feet. Sometimes it's flat and boring of course, but then you get to see the most amazing sights imaginable. This week just gone I took a flight over Yosemite. This little valley is one of my favorite places on earth. It might not be as huge as the Himalayas but, it's just a lovely place. It's up there with Borrowdale in the Lake District. It's peaceful and BIG. It's nature at it's damn near grandest scale. I love visiting there as regularly as possible. However, seeing it from 10,000 feet is quite something else. It's gob smackingly gorgeous and very moving indeed. I took the plane up to 11,500 feet and circled around for a while, while I and my friend took photos. Quite astounding really and worth the couple of hours round trip.

Good to be back.

'tis good to be back. I took a hiatus but thought it was time to restart my blurb.

There is nothing like a close brush with death to make you want to spill your guts and put it out for the world is there. I jest? Not really. Last weekend was Memorial Day. A quiet day I thought, and so myself and my buddy and fellow flight enthusiast, went up for a 3 hour flight. One of the stop off points was a little grass strip near the town of Hollister. We came into the landing strip, I got us to pattern altitude and was turning into the pattern. Scanning the sky I saw 7, yes 7, identical small planes coming straight for us. Holy crap, I increased the bank angle to avoid them. Now I think about it, it was perhaps a little too steep an angle, since we were only at 1200 feet. However, we avoided the planes but probably would have anyway, even if I hadn't gone into emergency banking. My old instructor chuckled and said it's a big sky with small planes......3 dimensions to help avoid the incoming hazard. Well, perhaps, but it instantly raised my blood pressure and heart rate for a while. I was too high on the subsequent landing and redid it just to be safe. As the phrase goes: "There by the grace of God go I." That might be fitting if I was particularly religious. After that, the rest of the 3 hour flight was uneventful and fun. Just how I like it.

Lets take a break

Phew. I'm glad that's over. It was exciting though, but it is over now. After the dust settles, Obama will have quite a mess to clean up, after the Republican over indulgence for the last 8 years (6 years in total domination that led to this mess). I don't envy him though. Bush/Cheney have left such a mess, both economically, militarily, socially and politically (internationally primarily). Obama's been put on such a pedestal, by wishful thinking and the media, that there's no way he can actually accomplish everything so many people hope he can. There will probably be a backlash at some point, as disappointment sets in, but, lets see if the hope he has created can actually guide the US back to a course that fits with it's own self image. I think the rest of the world just collectively breathed out heavily.