Air-Minded: Sunday Flying Blogging

What fun! Went flying with a buddy this morning, a retired USAF lieutenant colonel with a background in B-52s and C-130s. He knows people I flew with, I know people he flew with, and, like me, he was once a headquarters flight safety chief. Running out of things to talk about was never a problem.

We flew from Tucson IAP to an uncontrolled airstrip outside of Benson, Arizona, borrowed the airfield courtesy car for a breakfast run into Benson, then flew back to Tucson, managing to work in a flyover of my house on the way. Nice way to spend a Sunday morning.

Lest you think I’m doing suspiciously well for a school bus driver, he rented the plane, and all I had to do was pay for breakfast and do some of the flying.

For your amusement, a couple of photos:

100-0002_IMG — The other guy was as big as me … a tight squeeze

100-0003_IMG — A grand old bird – note the lubricant catchment reservoirs (if this were a military aircraft, that’s what we would have called them, and we’d have paid some contractor $10,000 per unit)

100-0005_IMG — Donna’s in the back yard reseeding our grass, but we couldn’t get low enough to catch that level of detail, nor did she notice us circling overhead

While I was taking photos of our neighborhood, Flying Booger, my hashing alter ego, was scoping out utility rights of way, shortcuts, game trails, and hidden washes … I have a feeling the next time he hares we’re going to end up at Casa de Booger.

— back to the Air-Minded Index