In Search of the Perfect Plane

So today found me flying over to Ft. Lauderdale to look at yet another Cessna 172 SP 180 HP single engine aircraft.  Why, you ask?   Well, I guess it's because I can and choose to do so.

Now, wife is not so shot on the idea, claiming this type even used is three or four times the cost of our first house.  I remind her that that was forty damn years ago, and a 1971 Piper Cherokee still costs 26,900 (this week's Controller ad as a source).  So, sure - 42 years of marriage later and I doubt she'd want to live in a $27,000 home - and figuring that she would live in a 300,000 thousand dollar home in St Louis, a 120,000 aircraft is relative.   So, maybe I found a suitable aircraft for my son (and ultimately me) to build hours in, as he next pursues his instrument rating, later his single engine instructor and a multi engine rating.  He wants to pursue a career as an Air Transport Pilot, but when a single engine aircraft costs 150 an hour to rent, and he needs a good 1,500 hours to get there, one can actually see the value of owning a plane.

I figure we can both build hours and then sell the plane when he gets a job flying jets.  He intends to keep his night job, pursue his CFI (certified flight instructor) and once he has that he can use it to teach his own students.

When you consider it costs $150 a hour to rent a same type aircraft and he needs a good 1,000 hours, by buying your own aircraft, you're saving $150,000 dollars, and can later turn around and sell it for probably 90% of what you paid for it.  That's a damn fine return on investment.

No need for Google Earth

This is where I live, Bay Isles Assn, Harbourside

Today, I had the opportunity to fly over Longboat Key, on the way across the state of Florida to Ft. Lauderdale Executive Airport.  While aloft, I snapped a few pictures.

Sometimes you get lucky and find a shot that gets everything you wanted, and this was it.  At the bottom, you note the Marina, and around the square "island" in the middle, you shall see Ripley Wild's favorite golf course ponds where he enjoys a cool dip on a warm day.

Within the island, you'll see two very distinct housing types - 2 and 3 bedroom condos on the right, and single family homes on the left (to the west).  That's the gulf far left, the Intercoastal Waterway and Sarasota Bay to the right.

See the small body of water inside the condo neighborhood - that's ours, that is Winding Oaks, and adjacent to that is the Winding Oaks Pool.  Leave that pool, and head roughly 265 degrees (assuming top of photo is 360 North) and you'll find my unit on the corner of Winding Oaks and Harbourside.

Or I suppose you could just strap on a chute and drop in..........or then again you could be conventional, call ahead so we can clear you and your vehicle beyond the security post where you must get a pass to clear the second set of gates.  This might explain why visitors just don't drop in, unless of course the door is ajar and the pilot pulls a bank greater than fifty degrees.  See ya!

Oh, and if the chute fails, I'd try for the golf course ponds - our pool has a no diving restriction.

Behind the Green (?) Door

 Super Shed?  I don't think so, especially when it can be viewed from our deck, and worse yet from the street.   Today, a Sunday when no work is allowed to be conducted within Bay Isles, I shot some additional photos, including a picture taken through the rear window of the shed - you can see all the valuable stuff stored behind that locked door.  You'll note that there is a box to the side of the door,

where a light switch will be going.   Yes, we'll have lights in this shed so if some member of the Board wishes to fetch a bucket of paint at midnight, well there you are.  And, since that square space above the back window is actually cut in for an Air Conditioner (absolutely needed to keep mold from growing on that valuable pool furniture should a hurricane show up).  Rumor has it that the Super Shed will also be painted on the outside.  I'm hopeful that they'll paint it green, so it'll blend with the landscape.  Maybe even a mural.

While they're at it, I also hope they'll follow through and put up some sort of a stockade fence around those ugly Florida Power meters and various other freestanding items of related utility accoutrement.  That's French for ugly crapola, or stuff that should have hit the 40 cubic foot dumpster that lived in our park for too long, before departing.

And I'm sure they will......eventually.  All we'll have to do is endure another assessment no doubt.  The best news is that it's keeping Brian Welsh of Integrity Builders busy in the neighborhood.  He's a good man with tools, and the Trustees are five good men with checkbooks.........Ours.

The Little Shack Out Back

This is the preserve, a nature area outside my back door.  My home sits on a corner of Winding Oaks Drive and Harbourside Lane.   We bought here in 2010, when the preserve was far more wild and far less gravel - that was under the old Homeowners Association board, governed by a tightwad who never spent any money on common elements.  If you've read my blog, you recall the story of the pool that was promised with 60 days, but didn't open until 360 days later.

Well, once we had the new pool, then we had to have a place to store the pool furniture.  Mind you, at Cedars Tennis Resort we dealt with the issue of any pending "named storms" that threatened to turn pool furniture into aluminum missiles, by simply THROWING THE DAMN FURNITURE INTO THE POOL.   Of course, this is Winding Oaks where we have an image to protect.  Now, mind you at Cedars (where I lived before) the furniture only took one person to "store" and two to "retrieve", and the last hurricane to hit the Tampa Bay area happened in 1938.

So, without so much as a never mind, the Trustees (none of which can see this travesty from their homes) pour a concrete slab six inches thick, topped by the aforementioned shack measuring 10 foot wide by 20 foot deep, and a pitched roof reaching another 1.5 feet at the peak.  All this for pool furniture (half a dozen stackable chaises, 20 stackable chairs and five tables) and some paint?

 So, having promised that this "super shed" would be screened with appropriate plantings, we'll see how quickly that happens.  Probably be like to pool - we were told it would be done in October when we purchased our new home in July of 2010 .........they just didn't tell us what year.

Sunday morning coming down

Turning onto final, runway 14, at KSRQ

Always fun to give a blog entry a clever name, and while the title references a Country & Western song, sung by Johnny Cash, this is a story about another Johnny and his cash......paying for a great cause.

That picture is of the final approach back to Sarasota, Florida.  It was taken from the back seat of a Cessna 172, being flown by my John B, as PIC (pilot in command) with his flight instructor sitting right seat and observing.  I went along for the ride, having sat in on the "cross country navigation" class taught by Universal Flight Training's John Andrews.  Sunday morning, I should have been in church, but I had scheduled a flight lesson of my own.  In the end, my son took my time slot, and I was happy to be the guy in back, taking pictures and enjoying the ride over to Sebring, Florida and return.  It was the highest that JB or I had flown prior to this date, as we went over at 5,500 feet, and came back at 4,500.  If you are a FaceBook friend, go there and you'll see about two dozen pictures.  Since I'm moving very slowly in my own training, perhaps my future will be aerial photography.

Now, with all this beauty on a Sunday morning,
I think this would be a good place to reprint a
favorite poem, written by a Canadian pilot in the Battle of Britain.  It's called High Flight:

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds, - and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung. High in the sunlit silence.
Hovering there, I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung my eager craft through footless halls of air........

Up, up the long, delirious blue, I've topped the wind swept heights with easy grace.  Where never lark, or even eagle flew - And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod the high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

About the author:  John Gillespie Magee, Jr., born in China in 1922 to an American father, a British mother, both missionaries.  In school, he wrote poetry and sonnets. In 1940, rather than go to college he chose to join the Royal Canadian Air Force, and subsequently was sent to Britain.  His most famous work, High Flight, was inspired by a training flight in a Spitfire during August 1941, where orbiting at 33,000 feet, he was struck with the inspiration of a poem - to Touch the Face of God.  He wrote the poem upon landing that day.

Now, we were a long way from 33,000 feet, and the 172SP was nowhere near a Spitfire Mk 1, but the feeling was easy to understand that Sunday morning.  Someday, hopefully, my son will be at the controls of a jet flying at 33,000 feet, and look back to that first cross country where he was above the clouds and experiencing that same sense of wonder I had, a proud papa sitting in back, wearing the JAFO hat.

Cole explores Jungle Gardens in Sarasota

This blog entry has a few pictures, but if you're wanting to see more, go to my FaceBook page.

This past several days, we were graced with the presence of Caitlin, our daughter, and 22 month old Cole Robert Kreienkamp, our only grandchild.  He will turn two full years on November 11, 2013, but this visit is just a "tune up" for my wife, who'll go north following the Rock & Roll cruise - which will be followed by the Hawaii cruise.

So, we organized our events around the local weather, and since 19 of the last 21 days featured rain, we had to work quickly.  Yesterday we get to the point where Dad put on his jungle "boonie" cap and and lead the family patrol deep into the Sarasota Jungle Gardens, where fierce alligators and crocodiles (yes, they have both) and snakes share space with parrots and flamingos.

Elizabeth had been there, MANY, many, years ago, but it was a first for me, Caitlin and of course Cole.  I found the place surprisingly nice, tucked away in a very small (in terms of acreage) property between US 41 and the Sarasota Bay.  The place was one property, with the fellow who developed it living there for a number of years.  The house he resided within is not a small restaurant/snack bar.  No lions or tigers, but plenty of birds to view.  The place is classic Old Florida, where these type of facilities used to be along all the major highways, BEFORE the Interstates came along.  It may be nostalgic, but I did enjoy it immensely.

Today, the ladies are headed out to St Armands Circle, the local shopping mecca, while I hold down the fort with Ripley who has been one of Cole's newest playmates.  After all, I have leftovers in the refrigerator from our visit to Outback Steakhouse that second night of the visit - somethings are new each time Cole visits, including the visit to the airport to see his Uncle's flight school and look at the small private planes, but somethings remain the same (the perfunctory Outback visit).  Tomorrow, depending on how tired they are, Caitlin and Cole may accompany us to church.  I'd blow it off, except that I volunteered to be the lay reader, and Elizabeth and our friend Mark will be singing a duet during the offertory.  Fortunately, we have two cars here.

That's it from Longboat Key and Jungle Gardens, Sarasota.  Go view my Facebook page for more.

2013 Scholarship Breakfast

This is the day the Kiwanis Club of Longboat Key awaits every year, when the selectees for our Scholarship Program come in to receive their awards.

I took a bunch of pictures, of some of the students, some of the parents, and of course at least one with me along with the club President and the Scholarship Chairman.

We had 25 awardees, fifteen of which were to begin or continue Associate or Bachelor's degrees from Florida schools.  All came from our two counties, Sarasota and Manatee.  There were also ten students who attend Manatee Technical Institute, where they were learning life skills and trades - of these students, only six were there (the others were at work).  Our college bound students were headed off to move into dorms or apartments, a few couldn't even stay till the traditional group picture was taken.

This is the group to the left, and the program leaders are pictured right below.  Weldon Frost chaired the committee and emceed the breakfast, after President Richard Crawford opened our meeting with a song, a pledge of allegiance and a moment of silence from those present to reflect on the promise of those youth we recognized this day.  

I've posted many more pictures on my Facebook page.  Most of the readers of my blog are FB friends, so please go there.  Ultimately, the students ranged from the traditional to those re-entering the workforce with dependents to care for.  We had two single fathers (both tech school and both unable to attend), three or four moms with children of their own.  Ultimately, Kiwanis is about the kids and our motto is "serving the children of the world, one child and one community at a time.  We work hard at projects to earn those dollars we invest in our young people, and on days like today, we see the fruits of our labor in the grateful smiles of awardees.