"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." —Mark Twain
There I was at 30,000 feet
After my post about the Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star, I asked some friends if they wanted me to blog about any aircraft in particular. My niece Rebecca voted for a floatplane, I imagine because she lives in Seattle and sees them all the time … also, of course, floatplanes being so cool. It happens that […]
Nothing much to say today, so I’ll post four photos instead. Wednesday at the air museum I photographed some aircraft awaiting restoration. It wasn’t till later, downloading the photos, that I realized all three aircraft were British. In the top left photo, sitting in front of the museum’s restoration hangar, are a Hawker Hunter (in […]
The end of the week has come again. The world’s most interesting couple doesn’t eat much steak, but when we do we eat it on Friday night … and with that in mind I took a flank steak out of the freezer this morning. This afternoon I’ll put it in a marinade of soy sauce […]
I’m working on the motorcycle today, so this’ll be a short entry. As an Air Force pilot I had to pass a complete flight physical every year. Under civilian rules, airline transport pilots are inspected even more often: two physicals per year, administered by FAA-certified doctors. So it’s unsettling that a pilot with obvious mental […]
So how’s the weather? Actually bad, for a welcome change. When Tucsonans complain about the weather, we’re usually griping about scattered to broken clouds, and, once in a great while, rain — weather that would be innocuous anywhere else, so don’t pay us no never-mind. When it snows, we act like the Apocalypse is at […]
Walking around the outdoor displays at the Pima Air & Space Museum (PASM) the other day, I stopped in front of a dusty relic, a Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star, America’s first operational jet fighter. I always think of the P-80 (later redesignated the F-80) as a Korean War-era fighter. It’s true that the P-80 first […]
GOP Debate Audience Boos Contraception. Oh give me a break! Nearly everyone in that audience uses contraception or has a spouse who does, and none of them are planning to give it up. So what are they really booing? They’re booing the other tribe: liberals, Democrats, progressives, those hippies down in Tucson. A rough translation […]
Project Boneyard is now on display at the Pima Air & Space Museum, where I volunteer as a tour guide. It’s an art project using old aircraft and aircraft parts as canvases. When I wrote about it last week, the exhibit hadn’t officially opened and just a few outdoor aircraft were on display. I thought […]