October, 2016

So long Canada!

After a quick visit to my mother and sister in Toronto, we could see that it was that time of the year again. The weather threatens to get chillier, the water levels drop in the river and the geese are heading south. That is our cue  to head west. After pulling the boats and jet skis out of the water, tucking the plane in for the winter (yes, the repairs were completed on time and I flew it a few times before winter, storing it at the airport) we hopped the plane (commercial variety) and headed to the other home for the winter. You guessed it, sun, sun, sun. California..we are back.

It didn't take us long to get the place in tip top shape. In spite of having a superb property manager there are always maintenance issues deferred until we return and we have been on it like bears on honey. Eight months is quite a while since our departure and over 500 visitors have been here in our absence. (We rent our home for short term vacation rentals during the months we are absent)  We are now awaiting French friends that, as I write, are heading our way from Europe for a 12 day visit. Much more on that next month for sure.  

Janice's mother was anxious to see us and we are happy to report that she is doing better than ever. She continues to be our shining beacon of hope and our benchmark for what we want to emulate. A terrific mother, grandmother, great grandmother and a mother in law for the stars.

While on the subject of mothers and stuff, we have received great news from our oldest and youngest daughters that they are both expecting, bringing the total count of grand children to.........drum roll please........10!  Seven from our oldest daughter and 3 from the youngest. If our other 3 kids get on the   J... O...B   we will have a platoon! I will have to carry a rolodex to keep track of them all.

The California drought was hard on some plantings so Janice has been gardening with a vengeance and putting in more drought tolerant color. My deck project from last year just got its second coat of finish and is back in business. We are making 5 o'clocks here with a glass of wine on our deck a new habit.

In between chores we are finding it fun to return to our favorite sites and being just a few minutes from our Mexican restaurant of choice is a great break from work. Mexican is not high on the list of dining choices in the islands:) Another change in our daily routine is not boating to everywhere we go. Janice is off on her walking rounds in the morning and going from airplane related projects to keeping up with our 3 acre property is my new drill.

In spite of being goaded from the right and the left (politically as well as figuratively) we are trying our best to get through the next political month unscathed. We are in a situation where no matter what we do, think or say, we are wrong. I have decided some time ago not to crawl into the swamp and have entertained few discussions about our current morass. Life is too short and what will happen, will happen.

Long time readers of the Epistle have a decent idea of what I believe so there is little point in beating a dead horse into the ground. The rest of you are allowed to be wrong. (Lighten up, I am just kidding!)

The plan is to play like crazy while we have company, then look see what we can do about our winter project that we planned last year. Fortunately, all the required building supplies were bought and stored, awaiting our return to put them in place. More on that later.

 The word from the flight deck

 

I glossed over the plane returning to service a little quick back there at the top. I bet that more than a few people believed that after what they saw below, the thing would ever see the light of day, much less the wind beneath my wings.

Well, it took about 3 weeks of serious work, after 3 weeks of chasing down parts but I have friends who were almost as determined to see me back in the air as I was to get there. I see the plane as a piece of art, albeit with a 31 foot (11m) wingspan.  I am temporarily back on wheels (so wrong in so many ways as this baby was born to play in the water) but that will be corrected upon my return.

Meanwhile, anytime I tell someone new that I fly a small plane, the first thing they tell me is a story about a crash--some ghoulish tale filled with lip-smacking gore. Their implication is that flying a small plane is about as safe as taking two sticks of dynamite with a glass of water to cure a hangover. Ain't life grand?

Flying tip of the month: A ship is safe in harbor, but that is not what ships are for.

September, 2016

Hello everyone!

Last month, I wrote a long winded saga about getting my plane wet. I had written about how wild stories were being bantered about the imagined causes of the incident and the non existent injuries. When our local news magazine mentioned information that they had gleaned from the local papers, I wrote the editor (who is a friendly acquaintance) taking exception to the 'facts' being reported and pointing out that the only truth in the story was that the plane had been recovered. Every other 'fact' was indeed, wrong. The Thousand Island Life magazine is published monthly and has a wide range of fascinating stories about the islands, the people and the various 'happenings' in our local area.

There is a widespread feeling that the media in general plays fast and loose with the facts, are lazy in fact checking, and jump to their own conclusions. Then they wonder why they are as welcomed as a mosquito in Rio. Even if completely untrue, there is also a widespread feeling that private pilots and small airplanes are inherently 'dangerous', and my experience fit their narrative perfectly. Great stuff for the local papers on a slow news day. Still, I was dumbfounded by the editor's reaction. 

She immediately asked if I could write a story not only explaining what had actually happened, but printing the entire blog entry - photos and all- including my email to her sharing my feeling that I had been somewhat torpedoed by the reporting. We send our monthly newsletter to our family and a handful of friends, but the magazine has a reach of well over 5,000 readers in the immediate local area and have the ability to get a lot of tongues wagging or put the kibosh on people telling tales out of school. 

I have heard of the occasional rare retraction but this was a genuine expression of regret over how they had relied on information from the local press, and wanting to not only make things right but getting a new story out of it too. If you are curious about the TIL magazine retraction and the subsequent article, it can be found HERE.

Just because a boy doesn't currently have an airplane to play with, doesn't mean there are no fun and games to be had. We had our club's annual fly-in at our private airstrip and I got certified as an experienced (but uninsured) toilet paper bomber. A friend and I climbed to 1000 feet in his plane and I 'carpet bombed' the BBQ in progress below. Watching toilet paper rolls unravel into 75 foot long streamers silently landing all over the participants who were shaking their fists at us is what boys currently without an airplane do for fun.

A friend is gone

On a sadder note, we lost a dear friend to cancer this month. Barb, of Wayne and Barb fame, are island friends who we have known pretty much since our arrival here. We docked at the same marina for some time, traveled with us in Europe and have been a big part of our summer lives. They have helped with untold projects that needed another hand or more importantly, a knowledgeable hand. She was a real treasure, and our lives were all the richer for having known her. We miss her already.

These kinds of events have a way of coming in two's and it was the case here. We were notified that Janice's uncle passed this month also, so we we flew to Nebraska for a few days to attend the services and be with the family.

Next month: California or bust!



 

August, 2016

Once again

Just when Janice thought she had all her little surgeries behind her and would have a whole summer outside of any hospital, she had to go in this AM for a simple 'intervention' (read surgery) once again. It was a quickie of sorts for feminine plumbing issues (no relationship between the two) and its beginning to look like she is making this a yearly event. She was back home today, none the worse for wear.

My poor bride will have the rest of the summer to recuperate. 

How we spend a lazy summer day....

http://www.1000islandsphotoart.com/

The book

About a year ago, we were contacted by a Australian writer who had seen the Cottage Life Television Network segment featuring our Island. She wrote that she was writing a book on "Island Homes of the World" and was interested in including the Bee. We traded emails and phone calls over the last year, answered her questionnaire and sent her all the pictures she requested.

Last month, she sent us a copy of the finished work, a 125 page hardcover book featuring 15 island homes from all over the world, but Honey Bee being the only private island of the lot. Ours is also the only one featured in North America and one of two in both North and South America. Obviously, it is not a book about the Richard Branson type mega islands of the rich and famous but islands owned by little people like us.

There are 8 pages of text and pictures on each island, telling its story and of their resident owners. The book is available in both hard and softcover through Barnes and Noble, Amazon and other booksellers. What a kick!

Projects update

Hey, would you like to hear about our latest construction projects? 
Me neither. 
We don't have any so, so much for that.

 The fantasy

If you are not in the mood for stupid airplane stories, you can probably stop right here as this was a BIG aviation month in these parts.  
In 2000 when we bought the island, I had a secret fantasy to be able to have a float plane here. Needing to renovate the place first meant putting that crazy idea way back on the back burner. 

Sometime in 2008, friends Wayne and Barb were over for a BBQ when Wayne asked why we had a broom stick handle sticking out of the mud by the shore of the island. Janice nonchalantly replied "Oh, that's where Michael wants to put a dock for a float plane he is going to build and learn to fly". They didn't know if they should laugh or cry but they nearly choked. I am far more prone to let the cat out of the bag after he is in it, but Janice prefers to spill the beans before we get a cat or the bag.

This is going to take a while...

In the summer of 2009, the 3000 parts that comprised the aircraft were delivered, with my goal to have it all assembled that summer. Life got in the way but in 2012, I finally took to the air. Then, in 2010 I bought an aircraft carrier (also know as a pontoon boat lift) and had a half dozen friends help me position it in the river, in anticipation of building the dock around it for the plane.

In 2015, it was a done deal... 
but still no floats on the plane .

Finally this year, after getting my float rating I got to bring it home,
 making a dream come true.

The TIAF (Thousand Island Air Force) sea base located at Honey Bee Island was now open for business and was ready to begin patrolling the area, on the hunt for terrorists, democrats, criminals and Canadians trying to sneak into the land of the free and the home of the brave :)

Landing at the island

The first time I landed at the island, I was so excited I thought I would pee my pants.  There was testosterone flying all over the place and I was as pumped up as Henry the VIII double fisting cans of Red Bull, eating a turkey leg and demanding another wife to behead!

 Up, up and awayyyyyy

The rest of the story...

24 hours after I brought the plane home, I took it out for a flight to practice my new landing skills since I was now on water. The flight over the islands was absolutely magnificent. It was all I had ever hoped for and then some. Returning home I came in for a superb landing and had, well, an 'incident'. 

I won't belabor the situation, but when I touched down on the water the floats delaminated (split in two)  and the plane instantly went up on its nose. I didn't fall out of the sky and 'crash', I was one foot off the water and landing. Nevertheless, the cockpit filled with muddy water and I went through my emergency egress mental checklist (non dramatic way of describing crawling out of a cockpit full of muddy water while under water). I didn't have a scratch on me. 

Looks worse than it is.
 OK, I'll admit it. Its an unconventional way to wash an airplane.

Funny how while still under water and realizing that I was not hurt and would be fine if I just got out of there, my first though was... "I wonder how much damage to the plane there is and how long before I will be able to fly my baby again?". I got myself out and didn't even bother to inflate my life jacket. Within seconds I was surrounded by boats but I elected to stay in the water for some time inspecting the plane as it looked perfect, except for the floats and the nose first in 7 feet of water part. A salvage company pulled it out and it went into the shop for repairs. 

Naturally, I called Janice the moment it happened and told her I was fine. She was waiting at our dock when the coast guard brought me home later and I sheepishly stepped off their boat. The first words out of her mouth were "fix the plane and get back in the air".

For all those who are yelling "I knew it!" or "I told you so", well, you have the satisfaction of knowing you were right. Since the incident, I have received both encouragement to "get back on that horse" and admonitions to "learn from this and quit while you are ahead, stupid". That said, I will never stop flying. I guess this means that other than wanting to prevent this from happening again, I have learned nothing:) I had a car accident once too and I didn't give up driving. How about you?

Yes, the floats are trashed. You can see the de-lamination of the top and bottom half of both floats from front to back.

From the first moment, I took total, complete and absolute responsibility for this event. I am not good at blaming other people or things for my mistakes or shortcomings. I may have had over 500 flawless landings on wheels but I only had 6 landings on water so my lack of experience on this medium loomed large. There was this incident, I was the pilot so I am at fault, period. Right? I certainly thought so.

Not so fast.

Over the following weeks, a chorus of dissenting voices began to make themselves heard. Two flight instructors, the transport Canada investigator, the manufacturer of the floats, my mechanic as well as a slew of other pilots all concluded what became obvious when the floats were inspected post incident: that the floats suffered a rare, catastrophic  de-lamination, like a banana being peeled, probably due to issues with age or previous ownership. There were no breaks, cracks, tears or shredding in the fiberglass anywhere, only a clean smooth separation between the top and bottom half of the floats.

My instructor told me that there did not appear to be anything I had done - or that he would have done- that would have prevented the accident. The irony did not escape me that the only part on the airplane built by 'professionals' (the floats) failed but that the plane itself that was meticulously hand crafted by a so called 'amateur' (me) operated flawlessly.

I am perfectly aware that if I had a car accident, no one would give a second thought to getting in my car with me afterward and driving off. But in a plane... few will likely want to line up for a ride now. The shame is that I so wanted to share the spectacular beauty of this area from this unique perspective with those interested. It is what it is.

Speaking of which, you can total your car and no one will give a rip. Me, I get my plane wet and I immediately made the 6 o'clock news and the newspaper. I was never contacted by anyone, but people boating by asked "Is it true you ran out of gas?" or "Did the wings really fall off?" Our local magazine reported that I had been injured and the cause was "wind gusts". No point letting the truth get in the way of a good story, I guess.

Then again, there was You Tube. Some guy sent a drone up to film it all, put it on the two You Tube videos seen below and to date have had over 6,500 views combined. 

Meanwhile, the repair work is progressing a breakneck speed. God willing, the sucker will be back in the air by the 1st of the month, albeit without floats. My new floats will not be manufactured until after we have left and are in California in October. June 1 will see my next attempt to re-activate this wing of the Thousand Island Air force. Its inevitable that after this your flying buddies would come up with a playful nickname for you. Mine is 'aqua man'. Cute, but I will put a stop to this shortly. 

Sooooo....anyone want to go flying? We could be on Ellen! :))) This concludes another quiet, laid back month at the island.