Bummin in Belmar

After spending the July 4th weekend in Canada, it was a pleasure to get to spend this past week in my favorite place-Belmar, NJ. My grandsons, Tiernan and Patrick have been taking swim lessons at our Community pool-Penn Brook. Tiernan passed his swim test-2 laps of the pool and a minute of treading water. He is now allowed in the adult pool unescorted. He is very proud of this accomplishment. Here are shots of Patrick and Tiernan on the diving board.

I spent Monday morning in Pennington. Headed down to Belmar in the late afternoon and have spent the last 4 days just enjoying Belmar.

Meg and Cate came down to spend Tuesday at the beach. Cate celebrated her 18 month birthday with a chocolate treat, and then had enough energy to wash off her beach toys.

That was a tiring day.

And of course, what's a visit to Belmar without a stop at Strollo's-everyone's favorite homemade Ice.

On Friday, Tiernan, Patrick, Finn, and Cate brought their parents down for the day. The boys ran in the Belmar kids race on Friday evening and spent an overnight with their parent's Cate and her mom went home Friday night but promised to come back for an overnight.

I couldn't get anyone up Sat morning 5:15 to see the sunrise and watch the beach sweeping. So these pictures are for the sleep heads.

From Savannah to the July Fourth Weekend

My anticipated 3 day trip during the week of 22 June turned out to be an a quick overnight trip to Vegas on 24-25 June. Winds were the lightest they've ever been and for the first time we made the westbound trip in just under 5 hours. There's always a trade off, and the light winds also made the trip home a little longer than the normal 4 hours. Historically, westbound flight are always longer than eastbound flight due to the Jet stream which moves air west to east at velocities of 50-170 mph at the flight altitudes of 30-45 thousand feet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_stream
Following the 2 day trip to Vegas, I had to return to Savannah on the 27th to pick up the passengers I dropped off there on the 20th.
I got home early on the 27th and my daughters and their husbands and children took my wife Ronnie and I out for dinner at the to celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary(actually June 28th). A great meal and a good time was had by all at the Big Fish Bistro in Princeton Marketfair.
I managed to get a day at the beach before leaving on an unexpected trip to Phoenix, AZ June 30-July 1. This is the approach to Scottsdale Airport-The Corporate airport for Phoenix. Temps in Phoenix during my 2 days there hit 108 and 104. Oh!, but it was dry heat?
This is the pool at the hotel, mid-day. Notice how many people are
cooling off? At the time I took this, the temp was 106 and the pool water is heated.

The sunset shot is at 41000 feet over Chicago. It's night on the ground but 8 miles up we still have a little sun.

And, what would my blog be without a cloud shot. This one is a nice undercast, down in the low teens, tells me there nice stable air around.

Arrived home at 11PM and left for Calgary at 9AM the following morning.

This is the Calgary Tower at 9th and Center.I stayed in the Marriott across the street.

I mentioned the theme for the week was "the wild west". Calgary is the wild west of Canada, just above the state of Montana.

It is a very clean, and very friendly Canadian City with a population of over a million. The city was celebrating the Calgary Stampede.You can click the title link above to check it out.I was impressed with the cleanliness of such a big city and happy I didn't hear any French. Only the money and prices(high) reminded me I wasn't in the US. They have a great daylight period. During my stay the sun rose at about 530am and set about 10PM. I don't know what their winter is like but they have a great summer. Temps were65-75 during the day, and 45-55 at night. Everything was western during the stay. Better than 50% of the populace dresses in cowboy/girl boots and hats for the 10 days of the event. The following pictures are random shots of the Stampede Parade and the people.

Yes, there are still Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and they have a great bagpipe band.

Street cleaners madeup to look western followed almost each of the horse groups. The parade lasted 4 hours and the streets were cleaned curb to curb at least every hour.

Western hats were encouraged and hat pins with "keep the legend alive" were distributed throughout the parade route by various groups.

The store pictured here is one of Calgary's oldest western stores and it was doing a great business.

I spent my 4th of July at a movie(Public Enemies) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1152836/ walking around the Turkish celebration.

Getting ready to leave Calgary, this strange DC-3 was taxiing out for takeoff. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1152836/

Quick round trip to Savannah

A month a go I had a scheduled trip to Savannah with a seven day stay. I hadn't made up my mind whether to stay for the seven days in Hilton Head or catch a commercial flight home. Had I not just experienced a lousy commercial flight experience it would have been a definite trip home. As luck would have it, the decision was made for me. One of the principals of the company needs the airplane on Tuesday for a 3 day trip. So, like it or not today's trip turned into a "stop and drop" or "quick turn". These terms are used to notify the FBO at our destination that we want to minimize the ground time. Mother Nature provided some cooling rain for my departure as she has done for the past 12 days in NJ.

As you can see from the picture of the Pilot's flight display below:

All the color at the top right corner of the screen is rain and thunderstorms from Trenton -north and east for about 100 miles.

The states are defined by the dotted lines. The miniature airplane (that's where I am taking the picture) is in the vicinity of Norfolk.

You can see the circle and the letters TTN showing the Trenton airport. If you're interested in the other information on the screen:the bottom line of information is the GS (ground speed) in knots(428) about 490 mph, the TAS (true airspeed) 446 knots, the SAT (static air temperature) in Celsius (-50) -58F. and the ISA(International Standard Atmosphere) +7 - that the outside temperature deviation from standard. Basically, as the numbers increase on the positive side, the aircraft performance decreases.

To make a long story short, we left rainy Trenton and landed 90 minutes later in 96 degree sunny Savannah, uploaded 450 gallons of jet fuel, ate 2 chocolate chip cookies and bottle of water, compliments of Signature Flight Support and took off for home.

Taxiing for takeoff you pass the manufacturing home for Gulfstream Aircraft. There were quite a few of parked new airplanes, waiting for an improved economy (aren't we all?)

And, as my luck has it, the rain that was passing north and east of Trenton on my departure was being replaced by rain coming in from the west. It would be over Trenton just in time for my landing.

If you've gotten this far, I don't have to explain the photos. This was the returning scene.

A thunderstorm in my path, topping out at about 45,000 feet and I'm on a descent for the arrival into Trenton.

95 minutes after departing Savannah, I was on the ground in Trenton, in plenty of time to go to dinner and celebrate a special birthday.

Where have I been?

"Yes, boys this is a deep fried Oreo. Isn't the Seafood Festival great?"


I've had a few people ask me where I've been. Why no blog? To make a long story short; I have my house FOR SALE. Check out the Virtual Tour: http://tours.virtualaccesstours.com/public/vtour/display/5281?_a=0&_b=0&_l=1
If you're are trying to sell a house in this disasterous economy, you have to pull out all the stops, and go with the Pros. So even though I had a flight to the Bahamas with a scheduled 6 day stay, I elected to leave the airplane in Nassau and fly home on a commercial flight, spend 2 days at home; de-cluttering, de-personalizing, and turning my house into a place I'm no longer comfortable in, and then turn around and fly commercial back to Nassau to get my passengers and return them to their homes-Miami, Chicago, and Trenton.
This week long experience renewed my faith in Corporate flying. No one, who can avoid it, should be subjected to the abuse and incompetence of Commercial Airline travel.
There are many little things that bother me about current airport security, and the poor service of today's Air Carriers , but I wasn't prepared for my experience at Continental.
I attempted to check in online the day before departure and was unsuccesssful. I thought it was because I was leaving the US and they needed to check passports. That might have been a part of it, but when I got to the airport and attempted to check in with an agent, I was again unsuccessful.
I was going one-way out of the US and had no commercial flight in the computer for a return flight. NO CAN DO.
(Me) "But I'm flying a corporate airplane back to the US."
(Continental agent)"The computer doesn't accept that."
(Me) You're not a computer, please, give me a boarding pass."
(them) "You'll have to talk to a supervisor".
10 min later.
(supervisor) " Go to that computer and check in"
( me) "I already tried that"
( supervisor) " Do you want me to help or not".
I did the same exercise of computer check in and it didn't work.
(supervisor)" Are you on the watch list or are you tagged for some reason?
(me) "I'm a retired military officer with 38 years of service and I'm not on any 'watch list' unless they started one for patriots."
(supervisor) " No reason to get belligerent, I'm just trying to help. Let me get my supervisor out here."
10 min. later.
(super supervisor) "Let's go to the computer and see what happens" ...
10 min later it was determined that I was leaving the country without a scheduled return. A couple of key strokes and overrides later, I got my boarding pass, and a renewed disgust with Homeland Security.
Returned from Nassau on the 8th of June to return to 'house for sale' prep.
Realtor 'Open Houses' on the 10th and 11th and a public 'open house' on the 14th.
More importantly, I was home for the annual Belmar Seafood Festival.



I took this picture at 6am on Saturday morning. It turned out to be a beautiful day.





The Seafood Festival takes place at Silver LakePark
across from the 5th Ave Pavillion, Belmar

















In addition to deep fried Oreos, there are many seafood choices from about a dozen vendors.












Can you see a difference a couple of hours make?





How to make a good day great?






















Closed out the weekend and the Seafood Festival with a litttle quiet time at the Columns Happy Hour in Avon-BY-The-Sea

Departed Trenton on Monday the 15th for a three day trip to Vegas and another stay at The M. An unusual couple of days for Vegas-some overcast and a couple of showers during the day.Went with my co-pilot to see "The Hangover". Ok, it was funny.

Had a wild ride home. At 41,000 feet, we had several encounters with MotherNature obstacle which coused me to deviate off my planned course.

The one pictured here, about 50 miles wide went up to about 55,000 feet. It was over St Joe, MO. I can only imagine how bad it was on the ground.

This shows my planned route(in green) and the deviation I was making.

Pictures were taken of the PFD(pilots flight display and MFD(multi function dispaly) The first is the actual radar return the second is the 5 min old Xm Radio sattellite image.

Celebrated the arrival home with a Jameson on the rocks.

I'm off to Savannah on Saturday. Talk to you then.