This website was about voyages on various boats and then a plane owned by John and Laura Lee Samford of Birmingham, Alabama. The last boat and plane have been sold, so the blog has turned to other travels and comments on life events. It also contains other blather user-generated content. Check out what you like and ignore the rest. Thanks for stopping by.

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Entries from June 1, 2013 - June 30, 2013

Monday
Jun242013

Operation Munchkin

Yesterday the lovely Laura Lee and I had the privilege of carrying out what we called Operation Munchkin, to get two cute grandchildren from Birmingham over to The Ford Plantation in Georgia. We have a family reunion coming up this weekend so we wanted the two oldest munchkins, Stella and Pierce, here early to spend a little time with “Pops” and “WuWu” without their parents in the way. As I’ve always said, children and grandparents get along so well because they have a common enemy.

We took off from the airport in Hinesville at around 10 am Eastern time and arrived Birmingham just after 11 am Central. The skies were fairly clear early in the morning, but typical summer clouds and showers were already starting to build on the trip west. I knew it was likely to be a bumpy ride back with the girls, but the real storms were scattered out enough to dodge everything serious.

Stella will be five years old in August and Pierce will be four in November. Stella has only flown once in her life on an airline when she was an infant (although the claims to remember it). Pierce has never flown before. So we wanted the experience to be fun, and it was. You can see from the giggling in the picture above that they seemed to enjoy themselves. Laura Lee sat with them in the back and they all giggled whenever we hit bumpy air. They are convinced that the clouds had the hiccups, and said their favorite part of the flight was the bumps. There were buildups on the return trip, but we dodged the worst of it and laughed our way through the clouds.

I’m convinced that people’s attitudes about flying can be formed early by conveying confidence and humor to them. If children spend time with adults who are afraid of flying, they will end up afraid of flying. If they grow up giggling at every bump in the clouds, you might spot them giggling on a business trip 30 years from now.

Pilots often claim that flying is safer than driving even though this has largely been disproved by statistics. However, what is true for a pilot is that safety is much more in your own hands flying than it is driving. There is no question that most flying accidents begin with pilot error or pilot misjudgement. If there is an accident, it is much more likely to be your own fault flying, as opposed to being blindsided by a drunk driver. So for me, I feel much safer flying than I do driving, and I’m happy to play a part in conveying my confidence to a new generation of passengers. 

Operation Munchkin was a great success, and we’re having fun with Stella and Pierce visiting us.

Monday
Jun032013

Zig-Zag Approved

I flew today with my friends Chick Preston and his wife Tricia, giving them a ride from the Savannah area back to Birmingham after they borrowed the plane for the weekend. It’s a fair trade. Chick is the most experienced and capable professional pilot I’ve ever known. He needed a ride and I needed some time with him in the right seat looking over my shoulder. A large part of what I still need at this point is simply confidence, and I got a kick out of Chick’s take on today’s weather compared to mine. I woke up this morning concerned about low ceilings and IFR conditions, with forecasts for thunderstorms building all day. I called Chick for his thoughts on the weather and he said “It looks great!”

We left the Midcoast Regional Airport in Hinesville around 1 pm for a 2 1/2 hour trip to Birmingham against a strong headwind, dodging bumpy cumulus buildups and going around more serious thunderstorms. It is expected that you will ask the air traffic controller to deviate around weather and a typical exchange would request permission to turn 10 or 20 degrees one way or the other to avoid weather. The controller will almost always approve the deviation and ask you to let him know when you are back on course. Today Chick handled it in a more casual way and told the controller we were going to need to zig and zag a little around some weather. He responded “N881RJ zig and zag approved.”

After dropping Tricia and Chick in Birmingham, I was looking forward to a strong tailwind to give me a quick flight back. However, that was not to be. As you can see from the FlightAware track, some lofty cloud buildups and a group of thunderstorms forced me to deviate south almost to Eufala, Alabama before finally turning due east towards home. While the tailwind helped after I turned east, I had gone so far out of the way that the return trip took 2 1/2 hours as well.

But it was a good day of flying, and just the thing I needed to get ready for typical summer flying in the south. Thanks for the help Chick. Zig and zag approved.