Back...

So I stopped out to the airport to get something from my plane and check a couple of things. I'd hoped that I might go up and make a few night approaches, just to stay sharp, but the weather ruled that out. It had been nice all day here, and it was still clear and calm when I walked out my door, but when I arrived at the airport half an hour later, winds were suddenly blasting across the airfield with gusts that blew my SUV door shut on me twice before I could force it open to get out. The line attendant said that it just picked up about fifteen minutes before I got there. I asked him what the wind speed was, and he said that when the wind sock was horizontal, it was at least 18 knots. As he was saying that, both of the metal trash cans outside the building blew over and rolled away.
"So how fast is the wind going when that happens?" I asked.

The tower reported gusts up to 31 knots when we phoned them. Impressive, but I decided that this would probably not be the best time to log some night pattern work. A man's got to know his limitations, after all. So I just walked out to snug down my plane's tie-downs, only to get bopped in the head by a wing for my trouble. (Ow.) Old plane was rarin' to fly with or without a pilot and actual forward motion. Funny things, those planes. All they need is air moving across the wings, and they really don't care if it's moving because they're going forward through the air or because they're stationary and the air is moving in the form of wind. Given enough wind speed they're going up, hence the tie-downs.

So with flying off the agenda, I went to the movie theater. The Bond flick was already sold out, so having nothing better to do, I grabbed a ticket to the remake of Red Dawn.

Before the movie started, I got to sit through about eight previews of coming movies, and at least half of them were remakes of existing movies. Isn't there any creativity left in Hollywood? And honestly, I've yet to see a remake that was as good as the original, and that includes this new Red Dawn in my opinion. First off, we're supposed to believe that North-fricking-Korea invades us? Come on. I know, it was originally written as China (a bit more plausible) but the producers didn't want to offend the Chinese who are buying so much Obama debt. Still...

Then there was the fact that virtually every vehicle owned and operated by the Chinese North Koreans was American, usually a HMMV. They had more Hummers in that movie then we sent to Iraq, I swear. Every AK-47 looked like something TAPCO cobbled together, too. Aside from that, the military tactics sucked, the plot had a million holes and loose ends and a few aspects that could have been fleshed out pretty good but weren't, and the whole thing seemed written so as to show as many close-quarters gunfights as possible without regard for the actual storyline. I won't blow the ending, because it does have a bit of a twist that you won't see coming, but all in all, the remake sucked. Save your money.

So now I'm back home with Murphy. Hes got a new marrow bone that he's all happy about, and I've got beer. The wind's still blowing, but we don't care. We're good here. Hope you're all good there.