What a whirlwind.....

Last Thursday very late in the afternoon I found out that I was going to a meeting in Sunnyvale, CA for work. On Monday of this week a little voice popped up with 'JetBlue' has really cheap tickets from the Bay Area to Long Beach'. After some quick checking with my boss and the travel folks I had them change my return flight from San Jose to LAX and grabbed myself one of those cheap tickets and here I am :-)

Certain little curly haired tot is napping right now but we have been very, very busy with going to the park and the zoo and reading books. She sure is a cutie but I wish that I had brought a camera.

And now we return to "real" life

Well, last weekend was pretty darn good. This weekend.....sad to say more normal. And six hundred dollars later the Suburb has a brand spanking new radiator. Guess I know where my ballooning budget just went. Sigh.....maybe next year will be better.

WOW!!

Two flights in two days!! My dear wifey does love me :-)

And Mother Nature has decided to behave. Nick and Ruthie mentioned last night that a week or so ago that they flew six nights in a row. But I will gladly take my two nights in a row. Other than Alice we had a completely different crew from the night before. And if I was going to be trying for a third night in a row (which I can't) it would probably be yet another crew. It is good to be flexible I suppose.

This flight we actually went over Morse reservoir. The other three balloons all went low and played with the boats. I heard a rumor that Gary tried washing the bottom 18 inches of his basket. I stayed high because I wanted to get west of the water so that I could practice a couple more approaches. I ended up landing about 200 yards to the right of where Nick landed (of course he was 500 yards further downwind) so my staying high didn't buy me much. But I did get a couple of approaches down to inspect the soybeans from close range.

The landing wasn't as smooth as the night before but this landing site (another new subdivision without houses) had a lot more obstacles in the form of lot signs and stakes. I was kind of indecisive about where to put it but when I put it we stuck it pretty firmly. With more experienced crew I would have been less hesitant to use my drop line but these guys were pretty much rookies all around. So we just "crash landed" with a thump. But we didn't come close to hitting anything either. Alice did a nice job of "spotting" the one stake during the deflation and we packed it up and headed that a way. But not before watching Geoff give his passengers the full flying at dusk experience. But that is another story....

So I am almost caught up for now. Of course, in a couple of weeks I'll be "itching" again.

Also, one of the Friday night crew guys and his 15 year old daughter took a BUNCH of photos and posted them at http://www.pbase.com/dowleyk/jaydotyballoon . Go have a look.

Back in the air!!

HOORAY!! For only the second time this year Trouvie got to get out of her trailer.

It was a very good flight with a very good "new subdivision" landing site.

Man! But it is neat to glide along, chat with the folks out in their back yard and with only a small pucker when I came up over a tree line (lining up on a great side yard for a landing spot) only to discover that the field between the trees and the side yard has four horses in it. I was already burning to get up over the trees. I just burnt about 10 seconds longer than I had planned and hoped that was enough to let me "coast" past the horses. Of course, it scrubbed the yard as a landing spot but none of the horses got "jumpy" so that was a good thing.

SMILE!!

The State Fair Balloon Race with out me...

Well the Indiana State Fair Giant Hot Air Balloon Race has come and gone for another year. And, unfortunately from my point of view, it came and went without me. :-( Since I have had a grand total of ONE flight this year I didn't meet the "eligibility" requirements that Nick and Ruthie were forced to add a couple of years ago (long story). So I went this morning and crewed for an out of town pilot who came without any crew (not even a driver - strange, that). For those who have been around awhile it was the guy who years ago flew the Early Times Whiskey Bottle special shape. But this year he was flying just a regular balloon. He was impressed however when his crew picked out a landing site for him before he got there. We told him about it and he flew right to it.

The amazing part was that every pilot that flew threw their baggie and had it scored. Well except for Nick. He was the last one over the X and he just landed even though Ruthie warned him it would mean he was disqualified. If I remember correctly the furthest baggie was something like 131 feet from the X and there were only two or three over 75 feet. Two years ago I was sixth at 75 feet and last year not a single baggie was scored because we all missed the field where the hare landed. This year fifth place was 68 inches.

Finally, the first flight of the year.....

Yeah, so the title of the blog isn't so "true" right now. With me being down here and the balloon being up there (and for example, the weather being great right now and a crummy forecast for Saturday - the only day when the balloon and I are in the same place) it makes it difficult to get flights in. In fact, last Friday was my first flight of the year. The sandbags enjoyed it as much as ever and I REALLY appreciated that Ann, Sarah and Dan served as the primary crew with my lovely wife as the driver. Raley and her Grandmother came along as "interested observers". And, Jamie and James came for the launch.

Good flight but I sure could tell my "skills" were a little rusty for the first approach or two.

Now, if I could just figure out how to get the weather to cooperate so that I could get another flight in.

And the new job continues to "amaze" me...

Yesterday I learned yet another new term. Administrative leave. Yeah!! Apparently, The Captain (doesn't matter what his real rank is as the commander of a Naval installation his title is "The Captain") has the discretion to award all of the people that work for him up to 59 minutes of administrative leave. One hour or more requires at least one layer higher in the chain of command. So yesterday, if you had clocked in to work you were awarded 59 minutes of leave (to be taken yesterday only) as a "thank you for working hard and let's kick off summer". So my "short" day (every other Friday I work eight hours - Mon-Thur I work 9) got even shorter. I won't argue. If yesterday had been my RDO (Regular Day Off for you non DoD folks - that would OBVIOUSLY be the Department of Defense) like several of the folks in my group, I would have "lost out" on the 59 minutes. Of course, I wouldn't have been working either :-)

The other news is that, in an apparently very unusual twist, I may get to help a department that works in the building across the street out of a bind. Seems that usually the various departments don't mix at all, especially not at the project level (due to the way things get funded). However, this department is in a bind because the main guy who had been working on the VHDL for this particular FPGA was notified recently that he was being deployed to Iraq. I am not sure if he is National Guard or Reserve but, not surprisingly, there are a lot of both on the base. They thought they still had it "covered" but his backup had a heart attack and died last weekend. Suddenly, they have no one in their department that knows VHDL at all. I don't have a lot to do right now, they have funding to pay me (my boss likes that aspect a lot) and I get to learn FPGA design by doing. And, in a few weeks, I will be able to add FPGA design to my resume. Sounds good to me. Now if I can just make the FPGA work. I have casually looked through some of this guy's code and it appears that there are some holes big enough to drive a truck through (shall I say software guy with little hardware experience writing what he considers software - they always seem to forget that the objective is to make hardware). But, alas, I HAVE seen this kind of stuff before and the chance to play with the FPGA programming software is just too tempting.