Update

The Monday flight was cancelled due to inclement weather. So I try again tomorrow night, Wednesday. I head off to work at 5:00 A.M. so I can get out of work before 2:00 P.M. Head out to the woods to check the deerstands, get back to change into longjohns, wool pants, insulated boots, choppers, etc. It gets cold buzzing around at 45mph in 20° air for an hour.
The first photo is of a Kolb plane. They are a little more streamlined than the Quicksilver that I'm learning in. They go faster and, of course, cost more!


Here is a shot of a Hawk. There are alot of these light sport aircraft out there on the market. I don't know how one would go about choosing.... maybe by best color or something. As Ivan mentioned, I really should be looking down during the landing process, not "looking up". So I'll try to keep a close watch on the runway when attempting to land.


Here's a Chinook.
For the first half dozen lessons I was just thinking about the process an wondering if I would ever get it. Now I'm thinking alot about what a gas it will be to be able to cruise around the countryside. I'm sure I'll get a new (correct) idea of how things relate to each other on the ground. I know I have some misconceptions about direction and where logging roads run. Seeing them from above will help straighten out that situation.


These Challengers are rather nice, one of the guys from Merrill has a new one and it looks great.
Steve has skiis for his plane. They go on in place of the wheels, and pivot at the center. A bungee cord keeps the tips up so that you can land without the skiis sticking into the snow.... each skii also has two rollers on it, kind of like scooter tires, so you can still land on runways. I guess they are like roller skiis that cross country skiers practice with on pavement. Steve says he like landing in the snow. We'll see.


The Carerras look O.K. too. Steve flys these ultra's all winter, so I am guessing that I will have my sport pilots license by spring. This license is an actual FAA issued license that allows slightly bigger, faster planes and lets you take a passenger. I think I will go for that instead of just the ultralight rating. Fortunatly, this current training will count towards the sport pilot deal. Did I mention that I'm having a good time with this???????

And the photo you have all been waiting for, Carlo the deerslayer with the trophy buck from the Northland.... well, at least we had a good time. We spent last Saturday evening at the Aspen hunting lodge. Someone suggested poker (you know that I have previously announced that I hate cards) so a game started. I'll be darned if I didn't come away with $$$$$10 more than I started with!! I slightly dislike cards. A few deer, a few good friends, some brews and there you have it, a successful hunting season.
Later, dudes and dudettes......

Yram's turn.

Here are some pics sent from the Left Coast by Yram. I will attempt to add captions that are representative of the text in the email that contained the photos. Or something like that. First we see BJ attempting to shake her head off her body, or dancing, or something.

And here we see that cronyism is alive and well in Milwaukee. Here is the Liz that works in the county law system surrounded by cops and more lawyers..... hmmmm....


Here are a couple of cousins that appear to be having a good time. How could anything else be the case?????



Here we see cousin Richard brewing up some way wicked drinks. Seems like a shot was probably a magnum that night!!



And here we have Tim doing his famous 'handstand-on-a-chair' trick. Go figure......















Once again I will offer to post on your behalf, just send text or photos/text, or whatever. You can become "published"!!!

Cheers, Carlo

Black Friday

This is supposed to be the craziest shopping day of the year. If you say so...... personally, I never heard the term 'black friday' until a few days ago. Maybe that's because I have a major allergy to shopping in general, and in particular to shoving one's way through a mass of shoppers in a frenzy.

Onlyhow, I spent the day sleeping late, playing piano, doing nothing in particular. Oh, yes, I did manage to get Peggy's and my motorcycles stored away in the garage addition. Put the battery tenders on them and then headed south to Ottertail. Just got in from a trip around the woods. It's cold out there! But it was a lot colder yesterday. We hunted in the morning until about 10:00 and we were all too cold to go on. So we drove around in some county owned forest land looking for deer, deer tracks, and eating junk food, etc. It was about 5° most of the day.
Tomorrow we all meet up in the morning and spend the day in pursuit of deer. We'll hunt the area around Wintergreen Lake, all public lands. I would imagine that we will get a truckload of deer (oh, sure) before we head back to the Aspen shack. That will be it for me for gun hunting this year. Sunday I will probably just goof off, if I can get away with it.

I had a flying session on Tuesday afternoon. All we did was fly the airport pattern and do a landing and take-off on each trip around. So I got in 12 landings, some really smooth, some kind of weird, but most of them pretty good. Looking up!!!
Supposed to go again next Monday, weather forcast looking pretty crappy, though.

Sigh on are ah, Carlo

National holidays, 2005

Deer season, that is! This is how it started, with a magnificent orange sunrise. All the snow on the trees had an orange glow, not the cold blue of earlier pix. The day gradually warmed and most of the snow was gone by the end of the day.


An unusual thing happened in gun season this year. Carlo actually got a buck!!!
First morning, back in the wilds of Ottertail country.


Of course, it's not the huge macho buck that would win the buck contest at work, but I am convinced that it its going to taste simply great.


Now you might think that hunting with this crew might be easy. Well, that's not EXACTLY the case. Notice the personalized orange suit on this guy. The monogrammed name reads... "Ivan Tushutealot". Go figure. Also has a compass stitched on. He looks down and sees that he's going North. Hmmm....


This was in the middle of the cooking of the trout. Saturday night Mike cooked up a mess of trout. Unbelievably good..... we also had potatoe salad, beans and bread rolls. Oh, yeah, and Milwaukee's Best Light. Dan had brandy. Did I mention that Dan had a lot of brandy?



After a day of hunting, the food was really welcomed and the first quiet spell of the day occured. Probably the only quiet spell. There was salad and some beans left over, but the fish disappeared!


Again, it's not necessarily easy, but the experience of this hunting crew is not to be missed. Here you see what we're up against. Way to go, Todd.


The required game of Texas Hold 'em in progress. Notice that Ivan and Todd are busted, and Tom is sitting pretty light. Soon after, Mike took the last of my chips on an all-in, and a few hands later Lee took it all home for the win. I hate cards.


So here we are on Monday evening. The crew is scattered for a few days til Thursday, when the gang rides again. Four deer in the freezer and much more beer to be consumed. Here's a cute little fuzzy critter. And the deer is kind of cute,too.

Tuesday after work I go for a flying session. I'm hoping that after this one, I'll have the landing part well in hand. Then I'll be able to solo and complete the remaining requirements, like a pile of take-offs and landings, a cross country and a few other things. Yee-haaaa!!

Did it snow????? Uh,,,YEAH!

The snow had begun in the gloaming. Well, here it started in the fading light of late afternoon..... It was pretty at first. Pretty depressing, that is. Just kidding.


The blueish lighting must be the effects of late afternoon. The rest of the photos are from the second day at about 15 minutes to dark. The plants became unhappy quite fast.


A little different view of the back yard compared to the pic from a few weeks ago!!


Heading out to the lodge.


Hmmm.... smoke in the chimney. I'll bet it's snug in there!


Remember that flowering crab with all the little red apples? The birds will have to work now.


South yard.


A cold silver maple... brrrr.

Here we go......

O.K., O.K., so it's been a while!! Lot's going on in the last weeks, I'll try to relate the main things and fill in a little about them. A while back, sister Liz called and asked if I could build a pergola for her wedding. Hell, I didn't even know what a pergola was... let alone could I build it?!


So she emialed plans and such and off we went. To the lumber yard that is. We mortgaged the house and bought a small quantity of cedar lumber. Well it wasn't exactly that bad..... We cut a bunch of sizes and shapes, sanded and screwed things together.

Peg was a big help with the project and I feel lucky to have had her help.


Eventually the thing started taking shape and we started considering if it was of the proper size for the use it was going to have. You see, it was going to function as the archway seperating the hall into two section, and also be the place that her wedding ceremony would take place.



I figured it needed testing to see if it provided a preachable area. Seemed O.K. but we added a few inches height and some width to the structure. Then we forged ahead with sanding and fastening parts together. We put it all together, took it apart and loaded it in Peg's van for the trip to Milwaukee......



Hunting this year has been not so productive for me. Venison wise anyway. I still have no venison in the freezer. The weather certainly has been mild all fall/early winter, and lots of things to look at in the woods. Ivan hunted at Ottertail one evening and saw a bird he recognized as the 'red bellied woodpecker' that I had been mentioning.



One night I saw that woodpecker AND a pileated woodpecker not only at the same time, but in the same tree!! What a night. Saw no deer.
Hunted with some of the other crew last week, some of us had the week off for hunting. The only deer we got is the one in the picture. Oh, well...... And yes, Liz, these are some of my 'stupid friends'.


On to other topics, you know by now that Peg has attained the exalted position of Granny!! Here is her son, Chris, with his brand new daughter, Hailee. He seems to be quite taken with her, which is a good thing. But he's missing the rut season bow hunting, which is a bad thing (which can be overlooked in a situation such as this :-) ).



As you can see, the little nipper is healthy looking. She is lucky for a good pair of parents and I'm sure she will grow and prosper in their care.


On the other hand, she may become spoiled rotten by someone.... but I guess this won't be the first time that happened. I will refrain from giving this child any mis-information or such. Maybe. I do read Pickles in the Sunday funnies....



On to the WEDDING!!! Here we see the hall decorating in process. John Noble did the entire "white paper globe suspension" project. And there were lots of them! It looked great, but I didn't recognize the constellation it was supposed to depict.



The hall is a pavilion right on the shore of Lake Michigan. It was built in 1936 and had some very unique features. A great choice of locations! And a lot of work was put into the preparations.



The pergola was decorated with a ton of miniature white lights and some grape viney things. Liz' sisters, mother, neices, etc all helped with the decorating (Peg, too). Some trees about 8 feet tall had been gathered from somewhere and placed in buckets with stones to hold them up. White lights went all over them, about six of them, I think.



Kate was sort of in charge of the table decorations. Each had a center decoration of stuff (not sure what it was) with fruit and other items blended in. If anyone wants to comment on what that consisted of, feel free.


So here are a few shots of how the place looked with the preparations complete.




















Now we go to Liz and Dennis' house, where final preperations were going on. Or goofing off, more likely. We got to see the new bike that the sisters chipped in together to get for Liz.











The rest of these photos speak for themselves. I'll try to get all of them loaded up somewhere that you can all access, as this is just a sampling of the day. Enjoy!!!





















Oh, yes, how do you like Liz' shoes??????