Advertisement
Published: June 26th 2006
Edit Blog Post
Fly BY
Im in front, higher. "Watch the windsock Tom"! Haven't been able to get on for a couple of days so EVERYBODY JUST RELAX! I am fine. Sitting in the Giorgi's very fine house in New Mexico. Again, thunderstorms abound.
It's been a very exciting couple of days. After leaving Brownwood I had a very nice trip to Plainview, Texas. I was met at the airport by Marlin Miller, the owner of Miller Flying Service. Tied down the plane and mingled a bit with some of the other Bellanca owners. Tim Harding flew by in his Thrush, a BIG agricultural plane. right past us at about 15 feet AGL(above ground level). Very cool. After a bit I got a ride into town with Frank Holbert and Ron Quillen. They are from the SoCal area. Nice guys. Got a room in the Best Western. After settling in Frank, Ron and I walked to the Elk's Lodge. (You know the Elks Lodge, Debbie!) You can not buy alcohol unless you are a member. A fellow by the name of Randy Reed got us 'in the door'. Had a few beers and a nice dinner. Talked with Randy for a long time about flying. He used to teach how to fly Bellanca's,
Good BBQ
Brownwood now does aerobatics in a Yak 10. After dinner Cody and Randy gave me a ride back to the airport, picked up my stuff and back to the hotel. Pretty uneventful so far, huh? Well here we go.....
Got a ride from Marlin in the morning back to the airport. Talked to a few of the guys again;Marlin introduced me to his friend Russ Franklin from Georgia. We decided to do the Poker Run. Whats a Poker Run? Well you fly from airport to airport picking up cards from a barrel. You have to pick up a card at each airport and return them sealed. We went Plainview, Floydada, Crosbyton, Abernathy and back. I got a crappy hand as did Russ. Oh well. Then it was hamburgers for lunch and the briefing for the 'Canyon Run'. The canyon is the Palo Duro canyon about 15 miles south of Amarillo. We had 15 planes going. We tried this whole formation thing but it really didn't work too well. We were number 12 but when we counted we where really 13. A little confusion, perhaps? We finally formed up over the airport after I told Cody, "Hey Cody, just go to
the canyon". So off we went into the canyon. We dropped in and flew down the bottom of the canyon. It's about 1500 feet deep. We were on the 'deck' about 50 feet AGL following the Red River. Very cool but scary because there were many planes flying fairly close, very fast; about 180 MPH. I had no time for any pics but I am told, Russ, my back seat passenger, got some really good ones. We were just about to climb out and a guy named Chris says on the radio, "Mayday, Mayday I have an engine failure". I had been following him and we didn't realize it was him at first. We watched him trying to keep altitude and thought for sure he was doing the Patsy Cline; flying right into the side of the canyon. He did get the engine running again and climbed out. Very Scary. We thought for sure they we going to die. I bet he'll never run a tank dry again!
We broke off from the rest of the group and just meandered back to Plainview. About 20 miles out we caught up to the group with Cody, Tim Harding(the ag pilot),
Chris and another plane piloted by Craig Gifford. We decided to do some fly-bys. Chris and his passengers had had enough. He went in and landed. I don't know what happened to Tim after the first pass but it wound up being Cody, Craig and myself, three accross going down the runway abou 25 feet AGL at 180 MPH. When we got over Millers Flying Service we would break it off with a hard climbing left turn. Pretty cool.
Saturday night was the BBQ. Lots of fun, about 210 people. Pretty good brisket, too. Randy did an aerobatic show in his Yak. nice job, Randy! They had a really great band .Demita Crawford and Sharon Gifford tried to teach me the Texas two step. Spent alot of time talking with Randy and we started talking about doing rolls in a Bellanca. About that time the sun was going down, the band is playing, the smell of BBQ in the air, drinking Maragritas, perfect weather. From the south Tim Harding flies his RV-6 from behind the band over the crowd, about 30 feet above us. Very memorable experience. I can't tell you how truly nice all the people at the
BBQ where and what a good job Cody, John, Marlin, Dorthy, Everett and all the others did with everything. It was a great time! Thank you all.
This morning Randy picked me up. We went out in my Viking and did aileron rolls. He did one then I did one. Then another. Then more. We wound up doing 9 or 10 of them . Very neat but don't tell the government. I was starting to get them down by the end. Not scary but difficult to do right. And you don't want to do them wrong. Randy suggested, "Uh, don't practice these yourself". I'll take his sage advice. I guess I can't be great at everything. After a very pleasant lunch at Carlito's I said my goodbyes to Plainview and headed to Albuquerque. Uneventful trip here. The mountains are beautiful and Joe and Olga always take good care of me. Tomorrow it's off to Lake Powell, Bryce and Zion Canyon. It's U96 this AM.
Halls' Crossing Aloha!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.065s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 12; qc: 28; dbt: 0.0285s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 2;
; mem: 1mb
Debbie
non-member comment
GR!
hello father, im glad to see all is going well.. be sure to tell Joe and Olga i said hello. but i am angry with you, you talked to Chrissy and not to me :( .. not cool. well be safe and don't eat at the Elk's Lodge again i thought you learned the first time that that place is yucky, too many well old people. love you be safe. aloha!