Friday Flyday

Aloft again, this time on a beautiful day with a photographer that I actually like. He wanted pictures of the area, and a local construction project in particular, so off we went.

Here's the lovely Shenandoah River as it winds along the Blue Ridge. The bridge is Route 9. (clicken zee pics to maken zem bigger!)
Here's part of the construction project. It's a bridge across the Shenandoah River at the end of a four-lane highway built to bypass the old Route 9, which was just a two-lane road. The Late Sen. Robert Byrd(D)--KKK, appropriated the money to build it all the way from Martinsburg, WV to the state line despite objection from the Commonwealth of Virginia on the other side of the line.Virginia naturally retaliated by refusing to widen Route 9 on their side of the line, and they're even talking about putting in a few traffic circles now to deliberately slow the traffic that they've made it clear that they don't want. So now we have a new bridge across the river, just a mile or two downstream from the perfectly serviceable old Rt. 9 bridge. And you thought Sarah Palin's "Bridge to Nowhere" was a boondoggle!

And here's another one of the "Byrd Bridges" It's actually quite large as it has to cross a valley and an existing road.All this for a relatively rural part of West Virginia exclusively. Your tax dollars at work, people!

Here's a shot of the Shenandoah River a bit south. One of the bridges can just be seen in the upper right.

A local church is having a carnival.

Back into the airport. Look at all of the ramp queens C-5 Galaxy transports sitting over on the ANG side of the field.Final approach to Runway 8, MRB.
The winds were 10 knots, gusting to 14, and despite the tower claiming that they were almost straight down the centerline, I could tell by the way that the plane felt--and by blowing construction dust at the far end of the runway--that they were wrong. My first landing looked like one of Jerry's Kids was flying the plane but I got it down. That wasn't good enough to quit on though, so power up, carb heat off, flaps up, and off to try it again. The second go-around saw me bounce it so bad that I used it for a "missed approach" drill (because I promised myself that I'd practice that one more) and went around again. But the third time...that one was good. Hell, it was great compared to the first two. On that note, I turned off onto the taxiway and headed back to the plane barn with another 1.3 hours logged.