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Tim Kaiser

Living Life, Not Watching Others Live It!

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Galveston

The Enterprise heads to Texas

This was to be one of our longest Enterprise trips...1150 miles in a week, that's not too bad. And when you're doing it in a motorhome it's much more tolerable. Saturday afternoon we headed out. Our first stop was Enjoy Field in Chebanse, IL where Hang Glide Chicago works out of. There were more ppg pilots there than we expected. It was sort of a "mini" fly-in. I was excited to try out my new wing. To me it's like getting a new car.

Jeff is working on a 4 disk training series for powered paragliding. So part of our mission was to do some filming and to learn how to use the steady cam. The steady cam is an interesting tool. It puts the camera on a gimble that allows motion of the camera without the tilts and pans that cause motion sickness for the viewers.

The next day we met Kenny Carlock in Coffeen, IL to fly his neck of the woods. I only flew for a few minutes. It was just too turbulent for me to enjoy. Kenny and Jeff flew longer than I did.

That afternoon we made it to my hometown of Salem, IL. We visited with my family and flew from my sister's place. Kenny came down and joined us for some flying fun.

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Tim Kaiser

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That night we got on the road again. That didn't last long. Sleep had it's way with us shortly after leaving. By Monday evening we found an airport used for crop dusting in Osceola, TN. It was blowing good. Jeff was able to kite his wing up the Enterprise. I got some good video footage of that. Later the winds died down and he did some touch and go's on the motorhome while I got still photos.

We headed on to Memphis hoping to fly there in the morning. We parked downtown and walked Beale Street, home of the blues. The streets were lined with blues bars, novelty shops and live bands. We couldn't help from singing "Walking in Memphis", a favorite of both of us. I didn't bring my camera so I used my cell phone to get a few pictures. When I figure out where those are I will post them.

Tuesday morning brought thunderstorms. That ruled out flying in the Memphis area. But a look at the radar showed that if we kept heading southwest we would get through the storms and hopefully be able to fly that evening. That plan worked out well. We broke through the rain and found a small airport near Vicksburg, MS. It was actually just over the border into Louisiana. Somebody had graciously harvested the hay to make a fun little slalom course for us. In some cases it was more fun to do touch and goes on them.

The next day we pressed on. At some point we stopped in a small town for lunch. Who would have thought a motorhome could pull into a Sonic drive-in for food. We weren't sure ourselves but as you can see it is possible to get a 27' motorhome in there, albeit barely.

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Tim Kaiser

Living Life, Not Watching Others Live It!

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Sometime early Wednesday morning we were in "looking for launch" mode. That brought us to a quaint little riverfront town in LA called Waterproof. It appeared to be a cotton farming community since every field we wanted to launch from was occupied with fluffy white plants. We resorted to stopping at a farm and asking permission to fly from their property. As we arrived a young man pulled up. He lived there with his grandfather and, after asking, had no problem with us flying from there. Oddly enough nobody even came out to watch.

Sedona

Tim Kaiser

Living Life, Not Watching Others Live It!

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Wednesday evening brought us to yet another small airport in Woodworth, LA. We got permission to fly from the airport manager. Again it was another windy day with tall trees surrounding the airport making for some ugly rotor. Jeff of course went to test the air and it was gnarly. I just don't enjoy that kind of air so I sat this one out too. By the time it calmed down enough to fly the sun was setting. Jeff practiced doing spot landings as I took pictures. I wanted one with the sun in the background so he obliged me for one more power off spot landing. He got dumped at about 50 feet. I don't remember if he hit the spot or not. All I remember is his wing drooping over an antenna.

Sedona

Tim Kaiser

Living Life, Not Watching Others Live It!

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We arrived late Wednesday night in Galveston to meet up with a friend Andy McAvin. Andy is a long time ppg pilot and instructor. The next morning he took us to East Galveston Beach to fly the remains of Hurricane Ike. I haven't done much beach flying...it is awesome with a steady wind. We spent the whole day there, flying at will. On Friday morning we went to the west end of Galveston and got see the damage there.

On September 13th 2008, Hurricane Ike made landfall at Galveston around 2:00am with 110 mph winds. That put Ike at the high end of a Category 2 hurricane. Although the wind was only a Category 2, Ike exhibited an unusually large wind field. This caused a projected storm surge of a Category 4.

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