Myrna CG Mibus - Idyllwild

My family recently returned home from a huge vacation to Saratoga Springs, NY with a quick visit to New York City adding in. Our plan was to fly our little Pacer to Saratoga Springs for our 11th Short Wing Piper Club convention. I wrote about the start of our trip in a recent post, The Airplane Notebook . In that post I mentioned we had taken off for NY in our Pacer but were waiting out the weather in Rushford, MN. Guess what? The weather never got better so we flew the Pacer back home and decided to drive to New York. It took us 22 hours to drive to Saratoga Springs - that's a whole lot of driving! After the convention we drove to Yonkers, NY where we left our car with Short Wing friends, Andy and Gloria, then took the train to NYC. We spent a day and a half in NYC then it was train back to car and car back to home. We drove the return trip without stopping to sleep at a hotel. I don't think we'll do that again though, I will admit, it was nice to get back home earlier...

With our trip to the Short Wing Piper Club convention in Saratoga Springs, New York right on the horizon, I realized it was past time for me to write down hotel reservation information and the like. I set off in search of a nice little notebook to write things in and discovered what I call The Airplane Notebook. It's a smallish, spiral bound, blue notebook with lined pages. The cover has a cut out with a little silver airplane in the window. I picked it up in about 2005 to use as a travel journal for our SWPC trip to Vancouver, Washington. I haven't taken The Airplane Notebook on every trip to the SWPC Convention but it has gone with us to most of them. It's also traveled with us on other trips, too, like a flying trip to Custer, South Dakota one October, as well as a trip I took via commercial airline back to Washington State to write about Stewart Systems, a environmentally friendly airplane paint system. The Airplane Notebook turned out to be more of a place to jo...

We're gearing up to go on our annual vacation to the Short Wing Piper Club convention. There's always a lot to do before heading out of town and this year we're feeling a little more behind than usual.    The Pacer's annual just got signed off tonight. Owen and I both have to get current in the plane before we head out on our big trip with the family to Saratoga Springs, NY. We have to pack, of course. We have to deliver Rocket the dog to the kennel, George Lucas the Guinea Pig to my parents' house and Zelda the Leopard Gecko to the reptile sitter. Owen's been busy with work and I have been, too. So we're all kind of running around doing our best to get ready to go and feeling more than a bit frazzled. Well, that's all the more reason to look for some Vacation State of Mind moments in our days! I snapped this shot of Ryan a couple of days ago because I realized that I was in a perfect Vacation State right at home. Here are the perfect little ...

I love to travel.  I love the adventure of going somewhere new, of finding fun little places for a cup of tea or perfect pastry. I enjoy meeting new people and exploring areas that are off the beaten path. Traveling gives me a chance to see the world and how other people live and come back home with a fresh perspective. I'm hardly lacking when it comes to travel adventures. I get the chance to go on a big trip to our Short Wing Piper Club convention each year ( like our trip to Utah last summer ) and have gone many, many other places and have been on amazing adventures. But the silly thing is I have this tendency to compare myself with people who get to travel more than I do. And when I compare I start thinking that I don't get to go anywhere. And that's a total lie. I've realized a few things lately: I've gone more places and seen more things than most people I am so lucky and truly blessed to have had so many great opportunities to travel! I have a great...

Ever since we bought our Piper Pacer, a classic tube and fabric four-passenger airplane, our family has loaded it up each summer and flown off to the annual Short Wing Piper Club convention. This airplane type-club convention has taken us all over the country - as far west as Vancouver, WA, as far east as Kingston, Ontario, Canada, and many points in between. We’ve attended every convention since 2003 - this year marks our tenth in a row! When we tell people we have a plane and fly it across the country they usually think we fly fast and get places quickly. They also often have this idea that our plane is big and expensive. In reality my Pacer is about the size of a VW Bug and a person can buy one for far less than they would spend on a full-sized SUV (I call our plane our SUV - ShortWing Utility Vehicle). And though we do average around 124 miles per hour we only fly about four to five hours per day so getting places still takes a long time. It's kind of squishy in the ...

We had a great time at the Short Wing Piper Club convention , the annual gathering of people who own, fly and simply admire " short wing" Piper airplanes. This year's convention was held in Spearfish, South Dakota. About 170 people attended and 42 Short Wings airplanes. The convention is full of social activities, some meetings and presentations and a lot of hanging out and looking at airplanes. It's the ninth convention our family has attended, last year we flew to Middletown, Ohio and other years have brought us to Vancouver, WA and as far northeast as Kingston, Ontario, Canada. We figure that since 2003 we've flown over 8,300 miles in our little Pacer just attending conventions. That's about 80 some hours in a little airplane. This year I, Owen and the kids did a presentation titled "Short Wing Family" at the convention. The secondary title, by the way, was "How to fly all over the country with your family and still like each other when ...

The kids are out of school. It's summer. You'd think a person would have time to do things like ride a bike. But no. Things aren't working out that way. Why? Well the weather has been yucky for one. Rain. Lots of it. And I've been busy working on getting ourselves ready for our Short Wing Piper Club convention vacation. And other things that I won't get into right now. I've ridden very little in the last two weeks. And I'm frustrated. But I will survive and will get back on the bike and logging some miles soon. So, in the absence of real riding, take a trip back in time with me to April when I took part in not just 30 Days of Biking but the 30 Days of Biking Team Loving the Bike challenge against Team Bike Radio. Each day of the challenge team members could take pictures from their rides to earn a point. The picture from each day that earned the most "likes" earned another point for the team member. One of my pictures won one day - it was a pic...

Sunday we loaded up our 1955 Piper Pacer, took off from our airpark home and spent five hours cruising along at 7,500 feet above the ground to Middletown, Ohio. What’s in Middletown, Ohio? It’s the location of this year’s Short Wing Piper Club Convention and it’s where we’re spending our family vacation. This summer marks our eighth summer vacation spent with our Short Wing Family, a group of aviators who love vintage Piper airplanes, at the Short Wing Piper Club Convention .  2010 - Rose and Ryan strapped in and ready to go to Middletown, Ohio. Before you think we have some big fancy airplane, let me tell you that our Piper Pacer is not big or fancy. Inside we have less room than you would have in a VW Bug, the avionics (radios and navigation gear) are basic, the cruise speed relatively slow (about 123 mph) and the purchase price far less than most new Sport Utility Vehicles. We bought the plane eight years ago because we wanted an inexpensive, economic family airplane. New...

Owen just got back from his first group ride with the Northfield Bicycle Club . He had a great ride, 33 miles with an average of 16 mph and I’m so happy for him but, I confess, I’m also a little jealous because I didn’t get to ride with him. I’m not just jealous because he got to spend the morning with eight fit guys in bike shorts, it’s because going on a group ride has been one of my goals since I started cycling and I stayed home. And it’s not that staying home is all bad. In fact, I had a great morning and flew my airplane. The real issue is that I’m forced to sit on the sidelines for awhile. Why? because I have a sore bum and, well, other “girly parts” for lack of a better way to say it. To be honest, talking about my sore “girly parts” is kind of embarrassing and I’ve wondered if I should blog about this at all. But most bicyclist deal with some soreness issues so I’m not alone and I’m hoping writing about mine will help someone else. I’ve been riding my road bike, a Giant Avail,...