Ah, another Saturday dawns, dreary, overcast, chilly, and misty. Something like we have grown accustomed to seeing in a low budget horror movie. So I slept in and thought great, I’m awake and the weather sucks, why can’t I sleep in? The telephone rings and it’s Kenny Downard saying, “let’s go flying, I called John Foree, Carl Cummins, and Barry Brown and they are going to meet us at their strips for a visit and we can have lunch with Barry on the river.” What, have you looked outside? Yes, it’s a little overcast with a low ceiling but the air is nice. OK, I will check it out with Paula and call you back.

Sure she says she’s game. I have to move some equipment out of the way so I can get the trike out of the hangar (toy shed) and get it ready to go. The runway is wet, but not soggy so we can probably do this. Paula is going over to Paul Huber’s strip, Seldom Scene, for me to pick her up there. We still have not finished the run-up area on our strip and 500’ is just a tad short for a 2 up take off. Paula leaves as it takes her about 25 minutes to drive to Paul’s, while I can fly it in about 10. After fueling up, pre-flighting, and warming up the trusty Rotax, I’m off like a bride’s pajamas. I circle the field checking out the strip improvements that I have been making and gain some altitude to fly over the Frankfort Airport. Whoops, not today, at 2100 feet the ceiling is solid, so I drop down and decide to fly low on the deck around the western end of the airport. I get to Paul’s about 2 minutes before Paula. I land and refuel and take my passenger (student) Paula aboard. I see Kenny’s clip wing Challenger approaching. He lands and we chat and discuss our flight route and head out. First stop is Perry Park, a wonderful old WWII turf strip right on the Kentucky River. 3000 x 300 and a really nice strip, however, it has been purchased by a development company that is planning on building condominiums or some such obscenity on it! Grrr, sometimes I just have to think of the old song, “They Have Paved Paradise and Turned It into a Parking Lot.” What a waste! Carl Cummins met us there and took us for a short ride to his house for a break and to look at his project. He has been working on a wonderfully crafted, side-by-side, 2 place that is going to be really sharp when completed. After a short visit we are in the air again on our way to Crawdaddy Landing Airfield in Carrollton, KY. I am looking for the strip, but I don’t see it, oh, there it is right next to the KY River. It is an interesting approach with a large transmission tower, and a huge old oak tree in the glide path. Not really dangerous, but close enough to be interesting. We land and I see someone shutting down a Cat dozer and heading our way. He has been working on an off river private port for his boat. What awesome toys this guy has, pans, dozers, drag lines, backhoes, hilifts, and boy am I jealous. This is Barry Brown’s playground. He says he is retired, but he still has a small factory just down the street from his house and playground. We drive by it on our way to lunch and he points it out to us. Small?!?!?! I don’t call a 100,000 square foot building small! We drive to a little restaurant with a glassed-in, elevated, enclosed patio, and have a wonderful meal watching the tows moving goods up and down the Ohio River and have a really great conversation to boot. All too soon it is time to leave and Barry shows us his hangar with his flying toys, a Cessna 150 and a 100 hp Luscombe. Neat toys. We take off and head for Dr. John Foree’s strip, Kenny gets a little ahead of me, and with the lousy visibility and no coordinates for this strip in my trusty GPS I get a little “antsie”. Kenny backs off a little and pretty soon we are pulling up with him again. He keeps us advised about the pattern and where the strip is, and finally I spot it. The winds have picked up a little by this time and it appears to be something of a crosswind to the strip. This could prove interesting as there are some trees on the sides of the strips and I am thinking rotors! However, we carried a lot of speed coming in and crabbed the trike in with no problems. When we get down to the hangar area there are Carl Cummins and Joe Sanchez. Carl has another toy hangared here, a perfectly restored Taylorcraft! Bright yellow and showroom pretty. John Foree has a Cessna 172 in the hangar and the remnants of a 2 place 3 axis UL of some sort. Interesting story about it, but that’s for another time. John and his wife come up from his office for a quick visit (it had to be quick as he was treating a four legged patient for seizures at the moment) and invited us back. Thanks John, we’ll take you up on that one. By now it’s going on 5 o’clock and the skies are starting to look a little threatening so we decide it’s time to head home before we get caught in the weather. We part company with Kenny as he is flying to his strip and we are going to overfly ours and then to Paul Huber’s to pick up the truck and for me to fly back to the house and put the toy away.

What a wonderful way to spend an otherwise gloomy Saturday. We flew 145.4 total miles with an average speed of 52.2 mph, maximum speed of 79.5 (nice tailwind part of the way) with a total flight time of 2:47:41. A special thanks to Carl Cummins and John Foree and an extra special thank you to Barry Brown for a wonderful lunch and great visit.