Traveling America

It is December here by the river. Snow has come this week and the cold has settled in. We had plans to spend Christmas in Florida with some children and grandchildren, and so have set off to drive there and that brought us to this river. The Mississippi at Natchez Mississippi. At this point on the Mississippi, the Arkansas that flows past our house has already become part of this flow. It is amazing

to think of water that flows past our house is now flowing here. We have been driving for two days and this morning will see us drive across Mississippi down to Mobile Alabama to Tallahassee to stay with friends. It is nice to drive across America when you can give yourself permission to wander as you want, to pause and look. I find myself always drawn to the water and the Mississippi is such a line for east and west of America. There are stories in the west, about our rivers. Those of us who raft the Arkansas here in Colorado, know stories, the Colorado River is certainly well loved with many tales, John Wesley Powell and such. But the Mississippi, is any river in America more written about? Can one stand by the Mississippi and not think of Mark Twain? It is especially impressive when you drive to it. I have flown a plane that far east and it is neat to turn circles over the Mississippi, but to stand next to it is the only way I can feel the immensity. We drove down a piece of the Natchez Trace to Natchez and I really felt the history of the Indians and the pioneers in the settlement of this part of the country. To then arrive at this river is to feel like you know what they saw.
  We are staying two days at the Miccosukee Land Co-op just east of Tallahassee Florida with friends.  This place is 300 acres of individual homes in the fecund forest and swamp of central Florida near the St Mark River. It is an intentional living community started by young people from an FSU course in the 70's and seems to be a success. Modest homes in the woods and a community center and pool. Our friends have a lovely garden and this time of year is when they do a lot of their gardening, the lemons and oranges are ripening, they just had a big Okra harvest that we enjoyed in gumbo last night.
    Tomorrow we move on down to below Clearwater for our Christmas week with my son Bill and his family from Denver and his Sister in law and family from Chicago.
    It is exciting to be seeing parts of America more intimately than just flying over them or even just driving by on the interstate. To drive America and see America gives hope to our future. It is not as bad as the news would have us believe. A smile will always be returned. A road curtesy acknowledged. A common purpose of life in America felt. I look forward to new experiences as we wander for the next few weeks before we are back and I return to being Will by the River.

Living with an Electric Car

A little over a year ago, this Chevy Volt came to live by the river with us. It was our second electric car, the first being a 1974 Volkswagen Super Beetle that had been converted to all electric. That VW and some solar photovoltaic panels, made it pretty nice to drive by a gas station after years of no choice except who was selling gas the cheapest. We had friend with a Volt we test drove and liked. What we liked about the Volt was that it was all electric drive until the range was depleted and then a gas motor came on to run a generator. There are also simple mode changes that let you save some battery range or share the range with the generator for more electric current when climbing hills. Something you do a lot around here. We have found that unless we leave the valley, we generally have enough electrical range to do what ever we want around here, so the nine gallon gas tank, if we were just around Salida and BV, could last for as much as 1200 miles.
       I have been using google alerts for accumulating articles on electric cars for a number of years. I also have a subscription to Green Car Reports. Between these two sources I have watched the evolution of the electric car industry, lusted after a Tesla, marveled at what BMW has produced in the i3 and the i8. Seen BMW build a state of the art carbon fiber plant in Washington State. Watched the beginnings of Tesla's and Panasonic's giga factory in Nevada. So a lot of what the Volt could do was not a mystery to us. But in my reading it was apparent that the electric car industry as a whole was struggling with selling the cars. Somehow even test drive was not always convincing. But the electric car industry could sell these cars if people had a little time in them and this has been our experience. The Volt is a complex car with a lot of ways you interact with it. The possibilities of regenerating braking becomes clear when you drive US285 to Denver and have only used 2.8 gallons of gas.
      A Boeing F35 strike fighter has something like 7 million lines of computer code. The Chevy Volt has 10 million lines of computer code. So it takes some getting used to the ways you use all the cars features. Chevrolet has struggled, I think, with there marketing of this car. Even so they have the highest approval rating on the Volt of any car they have sold in the history of the company. For us, here by the river, this past year has been one of learning to driver a little differently. Of marveling at the capabilities of the car and being challenged to use as little gas as possible. It is said of Volt drivers that they don't have range anxiety, they have gasoline anxiety!
     It is going to be fun to see what the future will bring in electric cars. There drivability is so much easier than internal combustion engines (ICE) and we prefer to drive our Volt rather than our ICE truck. Just check out Tesla videos on YouTube and you will see what I mean. In the meantime, I think I will go on a long drive in our Volt.
Will by the River

Life after Time Passes

All my children, grandchildren and spouses 2014

Last year at Thanksgiving we had that rare occasion of all my children and their families in the same place at the same time. It happens so infrequently as the rush of their lives intrudes, as the space between us all grows by States. But when one looks at a picture like this, at least from my perspective, I see what time passes means, to have gotten to live long enough to have a picture like that. It does give meaning to Thanksgiving and being grateful.
     I think that as each year passes, we all take time to look back. Look back the year, maybe even look back the long life that has been granted. As I said in the last blog, the idea of being grateful is good for health, but I also think that as I get older, one of the benefits is I have more to be grateful for.
Experience, hard won by mistakes and time, takes on a new shiny luster when viewed from the lofty perch of time passes. To have accomplished, to have made a contribution and to have set a new group of engaged with life young adults into the world is a reminder of what perseverance brings when mixed with time. One needn't start tallying their place in life with a picture like that one above, Enough is said there.
     But I have lived long enough, time has passed enough, that I can find peace in my family. I can look forward to what surprises they will bring to my life as I continue to make a contribution in return for the air I breathe. I think that time passes and your grateful list grows while I continue to experience new and wonderful things. This strange thing called life, colored by each of our own perceptions is pretty cool. I can't wait for tomorrow.
Will by the River

Thanksgiving and the Grateful List

It was an interesting week leading up to Thanksgiving.The Salida Brass played at the funeral for our fallen member Bob Cook. Then later I went to Aspen with my friend Ralph and we finished this Beech Bonanza we had worked on to repair the metal on the bottom of the cowl that had ground off in a gear up landing.  Two endings that came on top of each other.

       I have been on this project almost two years, working over there when we could. You would think I am grateful that it is done, which I am, but I am also grateful for the experience of the work.

      Just before Thanksgiving I read an article about having a grateful list. The author was trying to write something he was grateful for each day. The idea is that it increases happiness in your life. This happiness seems to also improve health. But his premise was our consumer society breeds dissatisfaction. 

We end up wanting more and never being happy with what  we have. This article caused me to review all that I am grateful for. On this Thanksgiving weekend of family and friends I have much to be thankful for. 

It seemed to me that this feeling of thankfulness was everywhere I was, with family, even just out and about. The lighting of Christmas mountain, with fireworks, and freshly falling snow was very much the holiday season. As I looked around at my friends and neighbors in Salida, they had expressions of gratitude for their community. 

       Keeping a grateful list was a family habit some years ago, but not lately, this article has me thinking it might be a practice again. At least for me, I have so much to be grateful for, and as I watch my grandchildren play, or finish work that was a joy, to use skills learned over a lifetime, it is with satisfaction that I can think of much to list. I hope everyone can enter this holiday season with gratefulness, to share of themselves and get back even more than they give. Be grateful and look to the future with optimism. Happy Holidays from Will by the River

A good life passes

It is November. They are starting to groom the slopes up at Monarch. We are well into the change of the seasons. While this evidence of the cycle of life goes on it's steady course a well lived life came to an end this week. Bob Cook, a founding member of Salida Brass, died of cancer at the age of sixty. Bob grew up in Salida, he and his Brother ran a hardware store and Bob went on to working as a accountant.
       This kind of steady and quiet life is such foundation for so much that gets done in America. This kind of life is, for me, a reminder of "one day at a time" is all we really have a promise of. Planning, obsessing if you will, about the future is shown to be the folly it is, when a good life ends before it's time, such as Bob's.
     The Salida Brass, with the founding father of the group visiting,  will gather this Saturday the 14th of November to honor Bob. We will be playing Christ the Lord is Risen as Bob did every Easter for 44 years.
      Perseverance is a human quality that I have come to appreciate more as I have aged. I feel it is the foundation of accomplishment. Certainly to accomplish you have to start, but, you have to also finish.  I view Bob's life as well lived.
       Rest in peace Bob, we will carry on, we will be steady, we will try and live with integrity, one day at a time..

Local Input

Many Chaffee County citizens gathered at John Held auditorium Saturday night to listen to Amy Goodman speak. She was on a long weekend whirlwind tour of Colorado and came to Salida from Carbondale, Paonia to Crested Butte via snowmobile. Amy spoke on recent uprisings around the world and attempts stifle the truth. Democracy Now circumvented the shutdown of satellite links, that hamstrung mainstream media and reduced them to using skype,by utilizing the Internet in ways that worked around censorship. My wife was viewing Egyptian news through a facebook page of a college friend who had lived in Egypt for many years. Your local radio station, KHEN-LP, receives all of it's syndicated content through website downloads or by mailed CD. It is possible access the truth of events in many different ways. What is harder is to sort through the noise and find what is true vs what someone wants to sell as truth. In the end it is the actions speak the truth. In the end it is the attention of everyone and sharing of this attention that illuminates these actions for all to see.
About a year ago I started down the path to run for Chaffee County Commissioner. I didn't win but at least I can now spell commissioner. But what I gained the most during the campaign was a knowledge of how many people in Chaffee County are involved in wonderful community sustaining organizations. I felt that again on Saturday.
Tuesday, the 8th of March, there is public meeting on the changes to our county land use codes. This process is now in it's 14th year. It has been stalled and worked around so a minority view, as represented by public input on our new comprehensive plan, can have the votes to prevent much of what a majority wants from occurring. I know that is a run-on sentence but so is this process. It would behoove the citizens of Chaffee County to be as many as possible at the meeting tomorrow to represent all interest in this important process. I have a conflict but I encourage everyone who can to attend.

The Danger in Flying

You can maintain your aircraft carefully and still have the unforeseen happen. On July 5th of this year I was on a flight back from Utah. I was over Taylor Park and starting to climb from 13,000 ft to 16,000 ft to climb over some clouds that were starting to build in the morning skies over the Grand Mesa and the Collegiate Peaks. As I pulled back to climb I heard a loud pop. I thought it had come from the tail but you can't see the tail well from the pilots seat. You can't pull over beside the road and check, so I went back to the business of flying the plane and donning oxygen for the higher altitudes at which I would be flying for a while. About twenty minutes later I landed safely in Salida at KANK the Salida airport where I base my Bellanca. Later, in inspection of the plane I found that one of the eight flying wires that support the tail had broken at the threaded area where it attaches to the vertical stabilizer. I was fortunate that only one had broken and that the other seven had continued to do their work, leaving the tail level and the controls free. After my mechanic and I had viewed the damage we came to the conclusion that since these wires were probably 40 years old, we should replace all eight flying wires. These wires can be seen in the picture in front of my hanger on this post page.
Here is where the internet becomes so valuable. I have gotten to view a number of opinions about how my flying wires were made and how they make them today. One thing that is different today is they "roll the threads" rather than "cut" them with a die, which may curtail a chance of a "stress riser" from the cutting. The FAA has no lift limit on these wires and that, plus input from the Bellanca engineer has lead us to a discussion on the tension settings may have been the culprit for the failure. It appears that the wires may have been too tight or not of equal tension. So I have taken to asking for opinions on what the tension settings should be. There is only a short terse one sentence description in the service manual. At Oshkosh this year, one wag suggested that since I was a musician I should tune them to B flat. At any rate we are currently carefully installing a new set of eight flying wires that were just manufactured in Scotland at Brunton's. We will have them equal in tension and I look forward to them lasting another 40 years, which "might" be longer than I will be flying this plane.
These older airplanes do take care, but in their simplicity they are a joy to work on and maintain. This Bellanca CruiseMaster returns the care with wonderful flying qualities.

Will by the River