Last Wednesday, I met a friend for lunch. I drove up to Longmont and met my friend Steve and his friend, Greg, at the Longmont airport, and we flew to Greeley and had lunch, then flew back. My friend owns a 1963 Beechcraft Musketeer, and it was the first time I’d been in a plane this small since a flight in a Navy trainer.
It was an interesting flight, and I’m glad I took him up on the offer, even though I get nervous flying. Steve’s also giving Greg some informal flying lessons, which didn’t do a lot for my equanimity. It wasn’t quite as bad as the tight turn Steve threw us into to check out the “spirit level” application in Greg’s cellphone, which required pulling a few G’s so that we could determine whether the cellphone used an inclinometer or an accelerometer. We determined that it was an accelerometer, which means that they can use the cellphone to develop an application for flying. I don’t think I left any crush marks where I was holding on …
Marion didn’t like hearing that we came within a few hundred feet of a collision, though. One of the ways they control air traffic is to assign certain altitudes to traffic in different directions. As we were climbing to cruise altitude on the way from Longmont to Greeley, another small aircraft passed almost over us travelling west at the eastbound altitude we were climbing toward – we were about 400 feet below the cruise altitude at the time. I was actually less nervous about it than the turn or Greg’s shaky flying, actually.
Then, on Thursday, Marion and I went to Grand Junction. She had a trade show to attend, and I didn’t have a job to prevent me from accompanying her. Nor had I spent any time in Grand Junction before, although I think I may have stayed there overnight while travelling cross-country in 1975.
I spent much of Friday wandering around downtown Grand Junction while Marion was busy, then met her at the end of the day. I did get to wander around the exhibit floor a little and picked up some swag. I skipped the pens except for two places: Ecos Environmental and Olsson Associates. The first one was just because I’ve been working for the last few years with the eCos RTOS, and I thought it was amusing. The second one was because the pen was multifunction: it has a bottle opener back end and is a refrigerator magnet. Neat. I also picked up few thermal beer/soda can holders, including one from Halliburton.
Anyway, fun activities for the week that were related to things starting with the letter ‘G’, giving me the post title.