Wednesday I took to the sky again for a local area photo flight. Haze was noticeable but these days, any flying is good flying. Just click on the pictures to make them bigger.
A good pre-flight, followed by a run through the checklist, and it's start-time!
Cleared for take-off, and it's down the center line we go. Come on, 55 knots... That's where we transition from wheeled vehicle to flying craft.
Here on the left is the Charles Town Racecourse. No horses running at present. Too bad. I always wanted to see how racehorses handle a high-speed fly-by on the deck.
To the right we have beautiful downtown Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, home of tons of Civil War (War of Northern Aggression) history, and the place where John Brown--America's first terrorist--met his end.
And since it felt like a good day to take in more local war history, here's the famous "Burnside Bridge" at Antietam National Battlefield near Sharpsburg, Maryland. This is the bridge over a shallow and entirely fordable stream that Union General Burnside fixated on, allowing a small Confederate force to pin him down and delay his advance on Sharpsburg by nearly eight hours while inflicting more than a few needless casualties on his force. Had Burnside just gone up or downstream a bit, he could have crossed with little or no opposition and routed the Confederates, who had dug in above the bridge in a line just below the parking area that's now visible today.
On the way back we overflew Shepherdstown, West Virginia, home of, among other things, Shepherdstown University. And for all you local football fans, there's no mistaking this field below, eh?
Well fun's been fun, but after an hour and a half aloft, it was time to put the plane back on the ground. Here we are on final, with the runway made. And modesty aside, it was a perfect no bounce, no squeak touchdown.
And here below is my trusty airborne steed...
Don't I wish! Actually I'm still pedaling the Cessna. But I'm saving my pennies, and there are F-86 Sabres like this one out there. And whenever I want to see one fly, I just need to pop in my copy of Lee majors' B-move, The Last Chase, and watch Burgess Meredith chase him across the county with a Sabre as he flees a tyrannical government in a race car. Stupid movie, great plane.
And after I finished flying, I went out for another run. It was cool, I'd had a good pasta dinner, and I felt pumped, so I pushed it and made five miles. That, along with my last, shorter run where I just went for speed (I'm back under an 8 minute mile again--Yay, me!) gives me a run distance of 35.5 miles.
You ran after eating PASTA?! OMG. You must have great stamina.
ReplyDeleteOnly exercise I do after eating pasta is "head hitting pillow"...
Lotta good carbohydrates in that pasta. Energy food...or fat if you don't burn it off. Fat I already got plenty of.
ReplyDeleteI love the pics. I'm jealous. I haven't flown in several years.
ReplyDeletenice blog, great pics. but I don't think you're fair to old john brown. The notion that he was the "first american terrorist" is a real case of selective memory. lots of people were mortally terrorized before the 1850s in this country. And Brown didn't get into the mix until pro-slavery terrorism was already overrunning Kansas. Even his failure at Harper's Ferry highlights his "failure" to be a "terrorist"--he was too worried about his prisoners and he delayed too long, which is why he was caught. Had he been a terrorist, he could have massacred lots of people. Terrorists don't dialogue and allow their prisoners to visit their families while occupying their enemy's town. Brown is a victim of lots of bad press, misinformation, and plain old prejudice. Well-meaning people like yourself often "inherit" this misinformation and assume it is correct. It's not true in this case, but prejudice and rumor are hard to overcome, even by biographers like myself. Best wishes.
ReplyDeleteWell Mr. Decaro, thanks for the reasoned opinion, and welcome to this humble site.
ReplyDeleteHowever I tend to refer to Brown as a terrorist because he unlawfully and with premeditation took up arms against the United States government for political reasons, and in doing so, he assaulted and murdered American civilians, both in Harpers Ferry and earlier in Kansas, where he and his band of bushwackers murdered in cold blood any man that they thought supported slavery. Brown's reputation has been largely rehabilitated through the passage of time and the forces of political correctness, but I can never see a man who did the things that he did as anything less than the forerunner of the 9/11 hijackers and others who willingly kill over a mere difference of opinion about how we all ought to live.
Aw, cool!! Loved the pictures from above!
ReplyDelete