August, 2017

Friends Joe and Charlotte, formerly from sunny California but now hailing from the great state of Tennessee, spent a few days with us this past month. Joe is a pastor who led our congregation back in California and he and Charlotte do missionary work in Albania on a regular basis. He offered to try to save a number of you but I told him it was too late as you were from the other side of the political aisle.  
Just kidding! :)

While traveling back and forth to Albania, they have made a point of stopping by to visit us in Brittany when we had a place there, then this past winter on the Riviera. This was their first time at the island after listening to us go on and on about the area for years.
We visited many of the obligatory local sights such as Boldt Castle, the boat museum and a good run around the islands including tearing up the river on the jet skis.

We love having company because it gives us an excuse to stop our chores. To be fair, if I did any less this summer I would be in a coma.
Laziness happens.

 What's new?

One of the fun things about being in this corner of the country is that we have found a local sawyer who runs his one man saw mill near us in upstate New York. Over the past several winters we have researched what we think of as really cool one of a kind pieces of furniture, send him pictures and he goes off into the forests he has access to, to harvest all manner of hardwoods.

We even took some of the pieces he made for us back to our home in California after furnishing much of our home here. This year, we commissioned a Maple Burl coffee table. It is a spectacular piece with more burls and spalting in any piece we have ever seen. The slab was cut from a hundred-year-old tree and has the characteristic 'live edge' we so love. With no room to add anything else, I think we are done.

Last month I wrote that we would have to re-roof the place. The fellows (yes, I got lazy and had it done) had the misfortune of hitting a wire and a hot water line with their nail guns. So, we had some electrical and plumbing work thrown in as part of the job.

Roofing day at the island

Island life

On an unrelated subject....

My wife refused to buy me these pants. I wonder why?

From the flight deck

Pic courtesy of Joseph Melrose

I flew to my first 'fly-in' last month. It's like any club gathering only here there were about 20 general aviation airplanes. It provides guys with an excuse to fly somewhere for a reason as opposed to just flying somewhere because. There was a lot of scratching and spitting, testosterone flying all over the place with talk of "my plane is bigger than your plane" or "my plane is faster than your plane" to which I chimed in with "Yea, but my plane flies lower and slower than either of your planes".

So there.

Besides, you could buy 6 of my planes for the price of one of theirs. A bonus to being a poor American, I guess. I wore my coolest sunglasses and practiced my swagger for days. A plus was that kids were lined up 10 deep to have a chance to climb into the cockpit, wear one of the headsets and pretend that they were 'sky pilots' while their parents took pictures.

On my way home, I took the long way back by flying over the lost villages near Iroquois. This is an area of the St. Lawrence river that was flooded in 1958 when the seaway was created. 9 villages were moved before the area was submerged, and portions can still be clearly seen from the air and some from the shore. Very cool.

Roadways and foundations under water

You would think that with over 250 hours in the cockpit I would have settled down and 'gotten over myself' with all this yammering on and on about how extraordinarily cool it is to defy gravity, play Peter Pan riding my magic carpet, hovering over the world below me, but no, I still...well... yammer on and on.

 

While visiting us, Joe threw all caution, common sense and survival instincts to the wind and climbed aboard for a flight over the islands.  I am thinking of getting some "I survived a flight with Michael" T-shirts for the occasions. 

 

In flight admonition on the back of my seat facing my passenger

Shortly after they left, I had my friend and former instructor Claude 'drop in' for lunch. He was our first fly in guest and it immediately occurred to me that with my plane here, there would be no room to dock other planes. "Sacrebleu! Quelle horreur!" So, I set out to correct this omission by creating two mooring stations in our sheltered bay. That way, they can tie off and I can pick them up in our runabout boat.

You can see the video of him taxing in below.

 

His plane, being identical to mine except for the color, docked on the aircraft carrier. Stub out on the left of the dock is the storage and refueling station, under construction.

Flying tip of the month:

Flying is the 2nd greatest thrill known to man.

Landing is the first.