Sunday Flying

By lex, on June 1st, 2008

A nearly perfect southern California day – blue skies, perfect temps and sea breezes right down the runway. Some low, scattered clouds just to give the blue on top, the blue on bottom, something of a context. 10+ statute miles visibility, the horizon looking like it had been drawn in with an artist’s pencil.

Right there at my personal minimums.

More often than not I end up flying with a recently retired Marine colonel. Thirty years in the Corps, Phantoms and Hornets. Command at several levels. A good fellah and the best thing of all is that, although we’d never met before flying together at Barnstormers, I know him and he knows me. Hand signals and head nods and the very briefest bit of radio comm are all we need.

Credo

"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me."

— John Paul Jones

"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature"

— George Bernard Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra

"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."

— Friedrich Nietzsche

"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."

— Edmund Burke

"Μολὼν λαβέ"

— Leonidas

"Blogito Ergo Sum"

— Neptunus Lex