Leaving the ground at highway speeds.....

The airfoil is an amazing thing.

It's hard to believe that a shape is responsible for human flight, but there you have it. What brought me to this particular blog was thinking about my past. You see, a while back, when I still worked for the newspaper, the Civil Air Patrol was having a drill.

This is the group of people (all volunteers if memory serves) that are called into action when a small plane goes missing. There's prolly more to it than that, but I'm not going to do all the research to find out, and it's not central to my story in any event.

All you need to know is that none of the other photogs wanted to go up in the search plane, a Cessna 4-seater, and I jumped at the chance. I mean, really, wouldn't you?

In any event, I was in the plane slated to find the 'downed aircraft,' which was actually debris from an older crash, and I was stoked. I've had flight in my blood for as long as I can remember, and if you offered me a chance to go into the air in anything, I'm your boy.

So, picture it: I'm in the back, camera bag on the seat behind me, peering forward at the instrument panel. I had a class in High School, Aviation Science, and while I may not be a certified pilot, I can certainly read the instrumentation. I was watching the Air Speed Indicator (speedomoter when on the ground) intently, and I shit you not, we left the ground at 65 mph.

Yes, you read that right. 65 miles an hour. It's kinda cool if you think about it. Cars go fast enough to fly, if only they were shaped a little different and equipped with wings.

Not that I think it's a good idea for cars to fly. The idiots out there are bad enough on the ground. I hate to think what would happen if people could just take off and land wherever they chose. The very thought makes my blood run cold.

Buenos con queso,

T.