I am writing this in Quincy, IL, 114 miles into my bike tour from St. Peters, MO to Minneapolis, MN. So far, the trip has been almost all smiles. The roads have been smooth (except where they weren’t) and level (except for the hills). The drivers have been amazingly courteous, compared to the folks back […]
Planning a Bike Tour from St. Peters to Minneapolis
Just over a year ago, I bought my Masi Giramondo touring bicycle. I have clocked over 2200 miles on it, mostly doing errands around town and using it for local transportation when I am going somewhere alone. I did manage a couple of short trips last year including an overnight to Robertsville State Park (temperatures […]
Bikecamping to Robertsville State Park
I got away for my first overnight bike trip of the year. I biked from my home in Saint Charles south to Robertsville State Park, camped, and came back the next day. I rode 91 miles and climbed 5935 feet in total. David joined me at the Pacific Brew Haus for dinner and rode the […]
Chevrolet Bolt EV First Road Trip
Overture “We could drive the electric car over to see Kevin and Elizabeth but it we would have to charge it while we are there and that would be a nuisance so why would we?” I opined. “Mmmhmm. Anything you say, darling,” Candy replied. 12 hours later: “I’ve been thinking: We could drive the electric […]
Departing AirVenture 2019
Flying out of AirVenture is easier than flying in. It is still an adventure but, unlike arrivals, the waiting happens while sitting still on a taxiway instead of while flying at 90 knots (115 MPH). Once I had my airplane all packed up, I got help from a couple of EAA volunteers to push my […]
Flying to AirVenture 2019
I flew my Bede BD-4C airplane to AirVenture 2019, closing a seven year gap during which I drove to Oshkosh because I did not have a flying airplane. I last flew to AirVenture in 2011, just before I sold my Piper Arrow. Sunday morning, July 21, 2019 brought high clouds in the St. Louis area, […]
Our New Mitsubishi i-MiEV Electric Car
We just bought a Mitsubishi i-MiEV electric car and boy-oh-boy is it fun! This little gem drives “just like a car,” costs about 3 cents per mile to run, has four doors (plus a hatchback), and is surprisingly spacious. Believe it or not, the Mitsubishi i-MiEV is the “big” car in our family, being 10 […]
When the Weather Cooperates
When last I wrote about weather, I had cancelled my flight to Oshkosh, Wisconsin because of thunderstorms between home and my destination. I speculated that there was a small chance that the storms would move east, allowing me to fly later in the day. As it turned out, that was exactly what happened. In this […]
How Pilots Look at Weather
People often look at me funny because I either choose to fly or choose to cancel a flight when the opposite course seems right. It happens because pilots look at weather a little bit differently, but that can be hard to explain when I do not have a computer handy. This morning offers a perfect […]
Tulips in Holland, MI
My father and step-mother took me to Holland, MI to see the tulips when I was a kid. I blazed away with my camera, gleefully shooting Kodachrome on a glorious sunny day. Ever since then, I have wanted to go back and I finally made it to the 2011 Tulip Time Festival. Here are a […]
Shedd Aquarium Photos
Candy and I visited the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago recently. It’s a magic place well worth your time when you next get to the Windy City. Here are a few of my photos. You can also click through to see larger versions.
Getting to AirVenture 2010
Getting to AirVenture this year proved to be much more difficult than I ever would have dreamed. Chris Seto, who is also in EAA chapter 32 with me, and I planned to fly up to Oshkosh on Sunday morning, July 25. This is not a very difficult trip in my Arrow, especially since I have […]
AirVenture 2009 Photos
Candy and I took a day out of our Door County escape to visit Oshkosh for the AirVenture 2009 airshow. Landing on “runway” 36R was fun. With only a day to spent, we saw the airshow and pretty much whatever we happened to wander by, such as the business end of this Thrush ag sprayer. […]
Door County Vacation
Candy and I are just back from a week in Door County, WI. Wow! The stories we were told were all right: gorgeous sunsets, great food, interesting parks, fun shops. We stayed in one of the bed & breakfast rooms at Trollhaugen Lodge on the north end of Ephraim. (They also have a log cabin […]
Express Lanes Ignore Real Problems
President Bush announced a “plan” to get holiday travelers to their destinations closer to on-time this holiday season. CNN.com wrote it up in, Skepticism about holiday air travel ‘express lane’. Bush announced a series of technical measures Thursday to reduce air traffic congestion and long delays that have left passengers stranded and turned holiday travel […]
Flying Home from Jackson Hole
That last chapter in our vacation saga is, unsurprisingly, the trip home. I had spent much of this vacation looking for ways to extend it indefinitely and, as had happened during all such prior investigations, I failed to discover the necessary magic incantation. As a brief aside: I am available to be adopted by the […]
Wildlife
Yellowstone is full of wildlife, blissfully unafraid of human beings and wildly attracted to picnic baskets. The terrible thing, indicative of the most horrible decline of American culture, is that none of the neighbor’s children, ranging from kindergarten through seventh grade, had heard of either Yogi Bear or Jellystone. (Click on the thumbnail images to […]
Yellowstone
Since I am known to be slightly crazed when behind the wheel of a car, it should be no surprise that Candy and I took off to see Grand Teton National Park and ended up driving all the way through it and up into Yellowstone. So much for a short, relaxing afternoon in the Tetons. […]
Flying Flatlander
I have actually been to the Rockies on vacation before, twice, with Art, in fact, via land transportation. And it was beautiful both times – Rocky Mountain National Park on the near side (for Missouri) just north of Denver. So the trip to Yellowstone and the Tetons was a first for me. I am also […]
Tetons
I first saw the Tetons when my father took us there for a family vacation in the early 1970s. I immediately fell in love with their grandeur and variety. I returned in 1979 on a camping trip with a college buddy (Ann Arbor to the Grand Canyon to the Tetons to Yellowstone and back, in […]
