Terri and I took a trip to Seattle in the LongEZ last week to attend my cousin's son's wedding. The image to the left is a view of Mt. Rainier which stands 14,409 tall feet rising from sea-level. We have many 14,000+ feet peaks in Colorado (53 of them) but they don't look nearly as impressive as Mt. Rainier since they rise from a base that is around 7,000 feet. Terri took this photo out of the back of the plane while we were flying over the Cascades which were covered in clouds.

We departed for Seattle on Wednesday just before noon with widely scattered showers which made it necessary to fly up around Laramie, WY instead of the more direct route over the Rockies, which were obscured with clouds. As we headed west from Laramie, we encoutered lower ceilings and rain and had to land in Rawlins, WY after flying only a little over an hour. As we waited on the ground, the weather continued to get worse with heavy rain and after a few hours, it was apparent that we'd be staying in Rawlins that evening instead of Sun Valley, ID which was our original plan. Although the inclimate weather was forecast to continue, the next day the weather improved enough for us to get out and after stopping in Pocatello, ID and Walla Walla, WA for lunch and fuel, we were able to land at Seattle's Boeing Field. The weather in Seattle was nearly perfect for our entire visit and we explored downtown Seattle and caught up with our relatives, including some that had flown all the way from Ireland for the wedding.
We were scheduled to leave on Sunday, but it was raining pretty hard and the ceilings were low again, so we spent another day visiting with family and left on Monday morning. The trip back was very scenic and we were back in Greeley in time for dinner. Our average ground speed was about 160 mph for the 2000+ mile round trip. Flying small airplanes isn't for everyone since there's an element of unpredictability, but if you're the adventurous type, I can't think of a better way to see the country.

I talked with Karen Leonardi yesterday and she told me that there is an all-O'Reilly reunion planned to celebrate its 50 year anniversary sometime in February, 2005. Please stay tuned for more details.

How's it goin' everybody ???

Today Joe Petrasek sent me this photo of the Rush concert at Red Rocks just outside Denver. I wrote in the blogger about that concert about a month ago. As you know, cameras are forbidden at concerts so it was nice to find a cache of photos on the Rush website of the Red Rocks concert that I attended so I made sure to download a few of them to my computer as momentos ;-). Thanks for the tip, Joe! Rush just had a concert in Scranton last week (Aug 7th) so if you missed it, you can't blame me, because I let you know about that back in June.


I got a call from Kati Wood Gardner the other day to tell me that she and her family are getting settled into Boulder. I met with Kati for dinner last month during her vacation/house hunting trip while she was in Boulder and am still amazed at how fast she was able to find a house and move the whole family from California. Terri and I look forward to getting together with Kati and her family for dinner and perhaps take a hike around the Flatirons mountains, which are just up the street from her new home.

I've included a few pictures of the Flatirons below. You can click on any image to get a bigger one. These mountains absolutely stunning in their beauty and they give the city of Boulder its unique backdrop.

Oy vey! Dat sure nuff is a svelt looking plane, Lee!

Thanks for the update on our missing classmates Chuck. I hope that everyone else is having a good summer and staying out of jail. I just got back from my annual pilgrimage to Oshkosh, WI for the big airshow/convention. This year I got to fly there in formation with a few other canard aviators and we were able to park and camp next to each other. My friend Marc Zeitlin had quite and adventure this year. He had intended to do a 3 week tour of the U.S. in his Cozy MK4 culminating in his Oshkosh visit, but because of mechanical and weather problems only made it through about half of his intended itinerary. But he got the most important parts, that is to Colorado and then to Oshkosh :-). You can read about his adventure here. If you'd like to see a large library of Oshkosh pictures, my friend Rick Maddy in Denver has a bunch of them on his website. The picture above shows 3 Cozy MK4's (4-place planes). My LongEZ (2-place) is the svelte one (perhaps too svelte) one on the right.