The Flight Crew

Community fundraising and flying go together like peas and carrots. And what could be more fortuitous than the added bonus of finding a new recipient for zucchini squash. Our illustrious Navy Vietnam Veteran (two tours), pilot Tom H., has acquiesced to accepting a wheel barrow or two of squash and  cucumbers. It’s a good thing. The Food bank shuts the doors and pulls down the shade when they see me in the distance now. I planted too many again this year and can never bring myself to end their lives.  My neighbors are usually the first to begin shunning me. They’re fair-weather friends in June for strawberries and again in August when the tomatoes come in. Call it what it is- the zuke days of July. I get it.

Gunsight Pass. Click once to magnify. Put cursor on area you want closeup of and click again.

After a breathtaking trip through Gunsight Pass up in the Olympic Mountains (above), Grandson Connor, Son in Law BJ and I convinced Tom to buzz the whole neighborhood where we live. After we stampeded the cows, we were off to the other mountains- the stuff of legends. Although many may not be acquainted with Mount Rainier, scarcely anyone alive is oblivious to the name Mount Saint Helen’s and her 1980 temper tantrum. It blew a cubic square mile of itself into the atmosphere May 18, 1980 and destroyed untold hundreds of square miles around it. To this day, much below still looks like a moonscape.

Glacier on eastern flank of Mt. Rainier @8,300′ ASL

Mt. St. Helen’s from the north. Note steam from active fumarole.

Here’s a closeup of the new dome inside the caldera:

And then we buzzed the ‘hood again. A good time was had by all and Conner will now probably decide to be an airline pilot instead of a forensic dinosaur hunter. I don’t blame him. It’s a disease to want to fly like a bird. An incurable one too, I might add.

Clicking twice on any of these pictures will magnify them. They’re rather high resolution and eat up storage bytes but what the hey. This is a top drawer tour. Tom was caught out on rather short notice and apologized for no Perrier Jouet champagne and Morel mushrooms on lightly toasted, 7-grain toast points. We graciously forgive him. Truth be told, I don’t think Conner noticed.