The Speech that Wasn't

I had been contacted by the coordinator of one of the high school RV-12 build projects asking me if I would say a few words to some of his students that would be at Oshkosh. Because it was only eight students, I didn't feel like I needed to prepare anything. When he wrote back and said that the national director of these programs would be there, and that there would be a lot more kids than the original eight, I thought that I had better write something down.  Some of this will be familiar - it's from the article I wrote a couple of years ago.

The speech got cancelled when I had to take an ill Co-pilot Egg back to West Bend, but here's what I had prepared:

Some of you are preparing to embark on a journey, and some of you have already done so. You are participating in an endeavor that will forever brand you as "that guy (or gal) that built an airplane." 

It is a huge distinction. Consider how many high school quarterbacks there are. Now consider how many people have built an airplane while still in high school. There are far, far fewer of you. 

Also consider this: the physically smallest person on your team is the most likely to be the team hero!  There are a lot of tight spaces in an RV-12, and someone is going to have to crawl into them to finish various parts of the kit. So if you're built light like I am (or used to be, anyway [pat gut]), this is your chance to shine!

Those of you just getting ready to start might be wondering what it will be like.  I know I did.

Here is what I learned. This is an article that I wrote the day I ran into "The Wall."

"The Wall" is the time that occurs when you just want to give up. Things haven't been going well, the pressure has become too great, and you've had enough. You can see the results of "The Wall" in the dozens of ads on Barnstormers.com under the headline "kit for sale."   

In my case, it came after the plane was already done. I had no sooner finished it when yet another service bulletin came along, and it was a pretty big one. It wasn't huge relative to the overall project, but if you think of it as the 27th mile in a marathon, you will better understand why it hit me so hard.

So here it what I wrote: 

You will get a lot of questions from people that find out that you are building an airplane.

Some become routine.

Some test your ability to suppress an eye roll.

Examples of the suppressed eye roll variety are:

"When will it be done?"
"A real airplane?"
"Are you going to actually fly in it??"

And my personal favorite, usually asked rhetorically by everyone but your mother-in-law, is "Are you crazy??"

In some ways, the non-rhetorical answer is "Yes, I must be."

After a while you build up a library of ready answers for the most common questions, along with the ability to spit out a wordy “non-answer” answer when a factual answer would require too much time and effort, or worse, a commitment to a completion date.

It’s very much like the way that a politician answers questions. It’s like the “heat thunder” you sometimes hear in the summer: plenty of bluster, no rain.

The hardest question of all, though, is, "What's it like? What is building an airplane like?"

It's hard to answer that question because there is no simple, concise response that can truly convey what the experience is like. Most people have never tackled a project that requires the level of commitment, persistence, tenacity, frustration, elation, perspiration, dedication, and time that comes with the job of building an airplane.

There are parallels that can help people to understand, of course, but few of those examples will eventually result in a day when you are going to trust your very life to the end product. It is that aspect, I believe, that erects an insurmountable communication barrier between those that have, and those that have not.

It is important to understand that building an airplane is not just something that you are doing.

It becomes, to a very large degree, something that you have become. You become that neighbor, that friend, or that co-worker that everyone defines you, and often introduces you, with the singular trait “he’s building a plane in his garage.”

A project of this magnitude has a profound effect on your life. At work, at home, in the middle of the night when an anxiety attack resulting from an issue with the plane is keeping you awake - the project is always somewhere in your mind.

A bad day at work will often result in a bad day working on the airplane. A bad day working on the airplane can easily cause a bad day at home. It all becomes intertwined in personal relationships, work performance, and on any given day, your mood.

That goes both ways, though. The first time you step back from having placed the final rivet in something that actually looks like part of an airplane, or the first time you move the control stick and parts of the airplane move in response, or the first time you sit in it and make airplane noises.

The day you start the engine for the first time, and it sounds ever so much better than the pretend sounds.

These are the days that bring with them the sense of accomplishment and the pride of having actually created a part of something that hundreds, thousands of previous generations could only dream about. It will be reflected in your demeanor - you will be fairly vibrating with pride and excitement to the degree that people will be questioning what kind of wonderful drugs you're on.

And with each of those moments comes the understanding, the visceral knowledge that someday, someday, it will fly!

But even that glow is, of course, tempered by the immutable fact that you will be in it when it does.

That little demon is always in the back of your head, gnawing away at your elation.

That little demon has its purpose, though. There will be days of abject frustration. There will be parts of the project that are just plain hard. There will be temptation. "Screw it, this is good enough," the tempter will say. "Let's just get on to the next thing."

The little demon will have none of that.

These are the times when that little bastard is going to insist that you take a step back, maybe even take some time off, and come back refreshed and ready to do that task right. 

He is there to remind you that someday you will be betting your very life on the quality of this work. And if that doesn't do the trick, he is not above reminding you that the airplane has a second seat which will someday be occupied by an innocent whose life is also riding on the same bet.

Is that an emotional burden that can be hard to carry? Hell yes it is! It is part of the reason that building an airplane is not something you do, it is something you live. It is why even simple mistakes will plague your waking thoughts and disturb your sleep for days. And you will make mistakes.

There are few things you can do in life that can be as humbling as a project like this. You will be furious with yourself. You will be astounded to learn how fallible you are. You will question whether you should even be doing this. "How could I have missed that?" will be a question you ask yourself every bit as often as a curious person will ask "When will it be done?"

You needn't be alone, though. At least in the case of the RV-12, there are other people that have gone before and are willing to share helpful tips and pieces of advice. Not all of it will be useful; you need to be the final judge as to whether you want to follow anyone else's lead.

You will have visitors as you work. Sometimes they will be a distraction, at others times they will be a welcome break.

You may even be lucky enough to pick up ready and willing helpers along the way. Chances are that you will be blessed with new, lasting friendships.

Sure, there will be a few know-it-alls that think their way of doing any particular thing is the only way, but that's endemic to the breed of person that has the self-confidence to tackle a project of this magnitude. There are points of contention that actually bring out evangelistic fervor in some people. Emotions can run high.

It's not always easy to set that kind of thing aside and get back to focusing on your own work, but as with any of the plethora of other frustrations, you will learn that it is often best to just step back for a few days and get settled down before doing any work on the plane.

That is, in fact, one of the more important lessons to learn. There will be days when you realize that you aren't working on the airplane because you want to, you're working on it out of some sense of obligation or pressure from external influences.

It is at these times when you are more likely to make mistakes. Your mind isn't fully engaged. You can read directions that clearly state the need to drill a 3/8" hole and proceed to blithely drill a 3/4" hole. You will then spend a few days beating yourself up over it.

I know this, because I did just that.

The lesson to be learned is to know when to not work on the plane.

An adjunct to that lesson is to know when not to put pressure on yourself. Unless there is a good reason to do so, deadlines for completion are best avoided. Delays are inevitable. Parts may need to be replaced. Tools may need to be acquired. Midstream changes can come flying in from the factory at any time, often requiring the re-work of something you thought was finished and done.

Knowing at an intellectual level that these things can and do happen helps, but it cannot prevent the immense frustration that comes from an unexpected delay. It's just one more thing to deal with.

So in light of all that emotion and complexity, what's my answer when someone asks me what it's like to build an airplane? How do I condense all of this down into an easy answer that at least partially conveys the depth and subtlety of it all?

Like this:

"It's a journey of self-discovery."

Along that journey, you will learn deep and abiding lessons that will affect the rest of your life.

You will learn that most mistakes that you make can be fixed with various combinations of time and money.

You will learn to question everything you read, no matter how reputable you consider the source to be. Everyone makes mistakes, and that includes experts.

You will learn the costs and consequences of inattention to detail.

You will learn that there is no shame in asking for help.

You will learn to be critical of yours and others work, but not in the sense of overt, accusatory criticism or blame, but as dispassionate, fact-based observation of results. See also: teamwork.

You will learn to properly and safely use tools you never knew existed.

You will learn to not only use the right tool for the job, but how to deal with situations when the right tool isn’t available. Knowing when a suitable substitute can be used or when there is simply no other choice is an art you will start to master.

You will gain a deeper understanding of how mechanical things work.

You will learn to not be afraid to try to fix them.

You will learn that despite what the sticker says, sometimes there actually are user serviceable parts inside.

You will learn to live with people that think you learned more than you actually did: “If you can build an airplane, you ought to be able to fix….”

And finally, you will learn that no matter how big the job is, no matter how many people tell you that you’re crazy for even trying it, if you approach that dauntingly huge job as a series of much smaller jobs, you will eventually finish it.

And that is the most important lesson of them all.

Oshkosh 2014

After skipping OSH '11, '12, and '13, and figuring that there will soon come a day when Co-pilot Egg is no longer interested in doing things with her old Dad, I decided that we should go again. Fortunately I decided early enough to get some preparations done, having learned over the years what is and what is not important to bring along. I also figured that others would have also discovered the benefits of our special secret lodging in West Bend, so the first order of business was to make our reservations. That was back in April, and I got one of the last three available rooms.

With the idea of the trip on the back of my mind, I started acquiring things whenever I would run across them in the course of our normal shopping.  Most of this stuff was "impulse" buys from Wally Mart:

• The backpack was a real find. It's just large enough to carry the bare essentials, and includes a 2 liter water pack. The blue hose is the drinking tube. I have not forgotten the miles long trek across the airport in hot summer weather just to get off the airport for a $1.00 bottle of water. In the event, I filled it with a bucket of hotel ice and a pint of water and it stayed frosty cold for the entire day.
• The tripod was something I found while buying the Wifi router for Dad's Netflix-on-the-TV project. It's very, very light, and fits easily into a pouch on the backpack.
• There are three 32GB memory cards in the little plastic box, all freshly formatted. 
• There are two spray vials of sunscreen that I found in the Wally clearance aisle for $.30 each.
• The ear plugs were intended for hearing protection during the Thunderbirds show, but will come in handy in many other ways.
• There is a vial of sunscreen for Egg - she burns like dry tinder.
• You can't see it, but a value size bag of beef jerky fits in there too.
• And, of course, plenty of Schmetterling cards to hand out.

We have a choice of cars, in theory, but there was really only one that I wanted to take on a 500 mile drive.  And I wanted to be able to put the top down. That requires a strict 'pack small' strategy (which is not to be confused with 'pack light', as I was to learn) - we just barely got it all in there.

This is Co-pilot Egg three hours into the eight hour trip:

Three and a half hours:

Three hours, forty-five minutes:

She missed the halfway landmark:

We made it around Chicago by cleverly declining the Garmin Gal's suggestion of traversing The City via I-94 and using the I-294 bypass instead. The lengthiest delay was the minutes waiting in line at a toll booth while the oblivious woman in front of us tried to find a $1.50 in loose change rolling around on her floor mats. I was tempted to get out and pay the blasted toll for her.

Just across the Wisconsin border, we stopped for Egg's fave Wisconsin delight, deep fried cheese curds. It seems that they don't look the way she remembered them.

Here's a little something that I posted on Facebook when we got back:

The coolest, most memorable thing at Oshkosh 2014? Easily decided:

It was getting to spend four entire days with Erika Gamble, the most genetically predisposed person on the plant to share the entire gloriously wide spectrum of my sense of humor, who is now at age where we can make no holds barred, gloves off, anything goes, 'That's what he/she said' jokes.

By the last day, all one of us would need to is say "That's what" and the remainder was just assumed, although there were times when gender ambiguity in the opening led to spirited debates over whether it was "he" or "she" that was being quoted.

For those blessedly unaware of the nature of that type of puerile jocularity:

"Said the actress to the bishop" is an informal exclamation, said for humour in the form of a punch line after an inadvertent double entendre. The equivalent phrase in North America is "that's what she said".

I mention this now because, well, the gloves came off early. For example, she noticed a similarity in shape between one of her curds and a few bits of male anatomy that she commented on:

Oddly enough, there was no such comment about my repast.

This is the restaurant we were at - we chose it since it was pretty much named for her.

Did I mention that she is a huge fan of cheese curds? Well, I am too!  We were simply flabbergasted at what we called The Miracle Mile of Curds.

This is the panel of a factory-built RV-12. They do a great job!

I was mostly interested in seeing these new Dynon knob panels. They are primarily used for interfacing with the autopilot. I don't need the panel on the left, but I was very interested in the one on the right. It makes it much easier to adjust the altitude and heading that the autopilot is holding than diddling with the little multi-use joystick on the lower left of the main screen. It's not cheap, though - it's about $250.

Worth it, in my opinion, but still... I was still in the "thinking about it" phase.

At least until I stopped by the Dynon booth. Their booth is usually packed, but attendance seemed to be way down this year - there was very little crowding anywhere. That gave me a chance to ask about the new panel. The booth guy initially asked it I was interested in the new touch screen. I told him that I was not - my airplane bounces around a lot and it seems like a touch screen would be hard to use in rough air. He replied "that's why we left the knobs and buttons on it," to to which I replied, "Yes, and I already have those, I just want three more."

He proceeded to demonstrate just how wrong I was.  You will note that he went through it twice - I thought I had forgotten to hit the 'record' button the first time.

I was completely sold by that time. Had this been a product from Garmin, it would stop right there. Garmin is an extremely arrogant company, and they would think nothing of just leaving me behind as they upgraded the product line. Remember, it would have cost me $575 plus shipping just to have them look at my radio when I thought it was broken. That's roughly half the cost of the thing! Dynon will accept my old non-touch screen a a trade-in on a touch screen for $800.

I'm sorely tempted.

I also want to buy their ADSB unit in order to have weather and radar reporting in the plane. The guy went past it pretty fast, but you can see some of the weather stuff in the video.

One of the other fun things about Oshkosh is it allows you to consider future options. For example, I am very likely to move out of Ohio when I retire, and depending on where I go, I might want a different type of airplane. High on the 'maybe' list is the Searey:

There are usually a handful of military planes there, and they're pretty good about letting us tour through them. This is an Osprey from the US Marines fleet of cool toys:

The Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey is an American multi-mission, military, tiltrotor aircraft with both a vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL), and short takeoff and landing (STOL) capability. It is designed to combine the functionality of a conventional helicopter with the long-range, high-speed cruise performance of a turboprop aircraft.

I am quite proud of that picture; as part of my preparations, I broke down and bought a copy of Adobe Photoshop Elements to replace the free version of Picasa that I have been using to edit photos for all of these years.

Here is the same picture from before I fixed it up in Photoshop:

More of the Osprey:

As I was touring one of the exhibition barns, I ran into a vendor that I have always been interested in: Skip Barber Racing School. Again, there was no crowd, so I was able to spend quite a bit of time talking to one of the both guys. I started off with an intriguing "Ah, I've driven hundreds of miles in one of these."  Which is only slightly true - I've driven hundreds of miles in a very accurate simulation of one. In fact, the sim in question is advertised by the decal on the side of the car right under the roll bar.

Pilots and racers have at least one thing in common: we talk with our hands. We were able to compare notes about various turns and a collection of tracks that we have both driven, him in real life and me on the computer. The sim is accurate enough that our experiences are nearly identical.

This is a video capture of one of my laps. The track is Lime Rock Park in Connecticut, one of my favorite tracks of all, and basically one of the home bases for the Skip Barber school.

This is the view from the driver's seat of the real car.

Eventually I wore out my welcome. Mostly, I suspect, from the shocked "not anytime soon, Bub" look on my face when I found out that a three-day school would cost a princely $3,200.

Egg had one job, and one job only: get some pictures of me sitting in the car since it is highly unlikely that I will ever be able to afford allowed to take the class.

Yet again, I learn the lesson of leaving her unchaperoned with my camera.

As I was standing there talking to the sales guy, I glanced over and saw an opportunity to gain a little more standing in our relationship of wannabe vs. accomplished racer.

Page 92, baby, page 92.

Egg was getting tired by then, and the best place on the whole airport to have a rest is the museum. We were close enough to walk, so I was able to get a nice picture of one of the airshows within the airshow.

Dinner was with The Jackson Two and their entourage. This is our usual place: the Riverside Brewery. It's right on the bank of the Milwaukee River. I know this as a fact certain now - the first time I said it, a woman at the table next to us corrected me by saying that it was unlikely to be the Milwaukee River because Milwaukee is miles east of West Bend.

I postulated that perhaps the Milwaukee River takes a bend to the west....

It does.

On the second day, we went to another of the airshows within the airshow.

The little tripod was really coming in handy!

Here is another Searey. My desire to build one increases incrementally every time I see one.

I actually sprung for the $100 to ride in one back in 2009:


Can you see the appeal?

Something like this would work too, but there is just something about a true flying boat...

I wouldn't need to build it - you can buy one already built. And if I wanted to go back to a non-Experimental for some reason, I could also look at the Lake Buccaneer, the benefit of which would be having four seats:

I couldn't decide which picture I liked better, so you get both:

On the way back to the main show, we took our traditional main gate picture.

Five years ago:

Oh, an alternative LSA seaplane!

The weather started getting bad - a number of thunderstorms would be passing through.

Talk about being prepared!! She had fingernail polish all ready to go at a moment's notice. Remember how I said that packing small is not the same as packing light?

There was a break in the rain, so we looked at a few more airplanes before heading out to dinner.

It was something of a plague dinner. First came the high winds - that had the staff scurrying around taking down the umbrellas and collecting the napkins from the tables. Then there was a sudden swarm of gnats (I had bug spray!), and finally...

Remember how I said that there would be a number of thunderstorms passing through?

Yeah.

Plus hail. That, at least, solved the gnat problem.

Everything got drenched, including the food. It was disastrous for my pizza, but the folks having seafood said it made it taste even fresher. My biggest disappointment was that I couldn't dry off the table with a nice piece of sponge cake [rimshot].

We left the next morning. The drive back was a bit more hectic, but we did pretty good on gas mileage:

I love that car!

#FWP - resolved

A few weeks ago, I suffered a frustrating loss whilst pitting my computer technology skillz against an intractable opponent in the form of a Belkin wifi router.  They goal was both simple and laudatory: I was attempting to set up the router in order to provide the miracle of Netflix on my parents' TV rather than have it available only on their PC.

The Belkin beat me to a pulp after a grueling two hour battle of wits and patience. It was my own fault, really. I knew their product to be inferior to other, somewhat costlier alternatives, but I fell for the rock-bottom price anyway.

With gorgeous Myday flying weather yet again greeting me in the morning, and with my planned trip having been cancelled due to an inconvenient injury to the passenger, I went with Plan B: take another joust at the wifi windmill.

Arriving at the hangar and hoping to see the Steely Eyed Toad, I was instead met by an interloper.  I would have expected this guy to be prey for The Toad, but somehow he seems to have sent him packing.

I think I would run (or hop) away too!  He's a nasty looking brute.

The weather on this particular Myday was the best yet. These are the kind of sparkling morning skies that we see maybe half a dozen times over the length of the summer.

After the requisite trip to Wally Mart to procure a vastly superior piece of Linksys kit, I steadied my nerves and rejoined the battle. The Linksys put up nary a whimper. It was installed and running in roughly two minutes, proving again the adage that "you get what you pay for."

Setting up the Roku and configuring it for easy access to Netflix was a little more time consuming, but nothing too difficult arose. Although as I think about it, I may have skipped an important topic in my demonstration of how to operate the Roku in Netflix - I forgot to demonstrate how to use the Closed Captioning button. That will certainly lead to problems when selecting BBC programming.

While climbing out of KVES and climbing to cruising altitude for my trip back east, I received a text message from Kyle, Sr. Gadget Procurement Officer and Event Planner for The Jackson Two.

Answering texts while flying, even with the very capable autopilot at the stick, is uncomfortable, so the potentially leading but possibly simply curious "You flying anywhere this evening?" message seemed as if it could be a precursor to a lengthy conversation that I would have trouble managing.  I Swyped out a reply targeted at getting to the crux of the matter.

"Hadn't given out any thought."  Swype isn't super accurate, so we've all learned to mentally transpose things like 'out' to 'it' based on the context of the rest of the sentence.  Thinking that quick response to not cut to the crux quickly enough, I quickly followed up with "Got something in mind?"

"How does Urbana sound?"

This is shorthand for having dinner at The Airport Diner located, surprisingly enough, on the airport at Urbana.

"Okay."

But then I got to thinking.... had he said something about meeting me at Bolton?  I couldn't remember. As I was only about ten miles from Urbana at the time, and not keen on the idea of flying the additional 18 miles from Urbana back to Bolton just to turn around and head right back, I texted "Meet you there."

Except.... no I didn't.

No signal.

And this was a critically important message, something that these so-called "smart" phones are coded to detect, or so it seems, because these are the types of messages that consistently fail to send.

I figured I would pick up a signal again once I was over the city, but it wasn't quite as easy as that. Have you ever seen those people walking around holding their phone in the air as if it's some kind of 21st century divining rod?

Yeah, like this:

Having failed to get the message through, I decided to land and try my luck on the ground. As I turned towards the airport and declared my intentions, I got a reply:

"Four delta golf, two kilo lima is [I forget] minutes out."

To which I replied, "Confirm landing at india seventy-four."

"Confirmed."

To which I replied, "Not sure why I wasted all that time trying to text when I could have just called on the radio," which was slightly facetious as I had no idea at all if they would be on the same frequency as I was.

Now, I am perhaps the last person in Ohio to know this, but in my defense I only ever eat breakfast at Urbana, and I don't think they typically have patio seating set up in the mornings. That, or I am horribly unobservant.

I grabbed a table on the patio and filled the time reading a book on my iPad.

After a good New York Strip with two sides (priced at a paltry $10.99), we wandered the airport a little bit. We got a close up look at the Grimes Flying Lighting Catalog - this thing is adorned with just about every product in their inventory. It's amazing to see at night.

From there it was just a quick hop back to Bolton, where there was no sign of the interloper. No sign of The Toad, either.

It was a little bit lonely.

Maaarrrrkkkk.....

......Twwwaaaaaiiiinnnnnn!

Or, as you would more typically read it, Mark Twain. Which, as we all know, was the pen name adopted by one Samuel Clemens, the author of a couple of books that seems as if they were on every mandatory high school reading list back in my day, and certainly for years and years prior.

I doubt that they are anymore. If fact, one of them, Huckleberry Finn, is probably found prominently displayed on banned lists more often than not - people these days have no patience for the "unenlightened" manner of speaking of our forbears.

'Tis a shame - Tom and Huckleberry had a number of valuable life lessons to share, and before teen "literature" became all about witches and vampires, they provided stories of great adventure.  And not for nothing, they painted an intriguing view into the world of the old riverboats that plied the waterways of the big Mississippi.

Having grown up in Cincinnati, itself having grown up back in those days and benefiting in no small way from the river commerce enabled by the big paddle wheels plying their trade on the Ohio River, I have always been aware of some of that history - it was simply part of the fabric of the city of my birth and development years. I even had a tiny role in my high school's stage production of Tom Sawyer. I think my only line was 'Ugh!', uttered as I was struck on the head with a grave stone.

When Don, patriarch of The Jackson Two, mentioned to me that there is a river boat museum not too very far from the airport at Gallipolis, a small-ish town on the banks of the Ohio, I figured it was just a matter of time before I made the trip to see it.

This past Myday was that day.

I was met at the hangar again by my new hangar frog, whom I have yet to negligently run over with my car or trample underfoot. I cannot count on his survival instincts to help - this guy has absolutely no fear of me whatsoever. If he's perched in a dangerous location, I have to pick him up and move him.

I'm going to start calling him The Steely Eyed Toad.

The ride down to Gallipolis was glass smooth, but the high overcast kept it from being "sparkling." There wasn't much by way of morning fog in the valleys, so presumably the humidity was low or the ground temps were fairly high.

I did see this mysterious single line of cloud stretching off into the distance, looking for all the world like a contrail from a very low flying jet.

I eventually figured out where it was coming from.

The museum is located in Pt. Pleasant, WV, which is, like Gallipolis, located in the confluence of the Kanawha and Ohio rivers.  I think. As the Kanawha  is actually a tributary of the Ohio, I might be using the word 'confluence' incorrectly. In any event, the Kanawha is largest inland waterway in West Virginia, and it has formed a significant industrial region of the state since the middle of the 19th century.

Since I was approaching from the north, I was well positioned to enter a left downwind to runway 5 at KGAS, but I was also six minutes early for the agreed upon 9 am rendezvous with Kyle, lead slide whistle player for The Jackson Two. As such, I thought an orbit of the confluence was in order. This is a simple thing these days as I can just set the autopilot to hold my altitude and use the 'track' control to manage my heading. Just an easy twist of the knob and the plane will turn to and follow whatever direction I give it. That allows me to devote a few more seconds to picture taking than I could when I was solo sans assistance, which usually meant that the best I could do was hold the camera in the general direction of the subject area, press the button, and hope for the best.

Ah, well, I guess it was inevitable that I would look it up:

A tributary is a freshwater stream that feeds into a larger stream or river. The larger, or parent, river is called the mainstem. The point where a tributary meets the mainstem is called the confluence.

So there ya go, and here it is. Pt. Pleasant is the little burg on the right, and Gallipolis is on the left, on the far side of the Ohio. To get from Gallipolis to Pt. Pleasant, we would borrow the airport courtesy car, cross two bridges, and find the museum.

I crossed back over the Ohio and entered the left downwind for runway 5. The pattern is somewhat like landing at Portsmouth, OH (KPMH) in that there is a line of hills just off the side of the runway. At Portsmouth the hills are positioned such that you fly over them, but at KGAS you they are between you and the runway.

As you come back around on you final approach, you are actually below the tops of the hills. The winds were light at no more than four knots, but even then there was a notable amount of churn and turbulence from the disruptive influence of the hills. I don't think I would want to try this place on a windy/gusty day.

The little brick airport building was donated by Bob Evans Farms, the corporate owner of the venerable Bob Evans restaurant chain. I don't know if the rest of the country/world knows about or has Bob Evans restaurants, but they're a big deal in the American midwest region.

Sigh.  Yes, I looked it up.

The Bob Evans Restaurant chain started from a single truck stop diner near the Bob Evans Farm in Rio Grande, Ohio in 1946. The chain has grown to nearly 570 locations in 23 states, primarily in the Mid-Atlantic, Midwestern, and upper Southern states. All locations are corporately owned, not franchised. 

The restaurant chain started up after Bob Evans began slaughtering and packaging his own sausage for his diner. Truck drivers and other patrons began telling him that his sausage was superior. However, but did not have the capacity to fill large orders. He contracted with his cousin Tim Evans of Evans Packing Co. to package Bob Evans Sausage products. In the early years of The Bob Evans History, Bob was known to have made his way across the Southern Ohio Hills seeking some of the best cuts of meat. He was very well known in a little town along the Ohio River by the name of Gallipolis, Ohio, where at the local Meat Market & Grocery Store he and Earl Nance created sausage recipes. Evans tried to sell his sausage to area restaurants, but they turned him down, saying that customers wouldn't pay more for quality. Evans felt differently and opened his own restaurant on his farm in Rio Grande in 1962.

Having skipped my customary morning repast, the mere mention of his name got me thinking that perhaps the local Bob's (as we call it) would be a great place for breakfast. And as were were just a short drive from the farm in Rio Grande, we would go to the restaurant located there rather than the one located within walking distance of the airport.

But first, we had to walk over and look at a Waco that had stopped by on its way from (or to) North Carolina.  They were getting ready to fly out, and with a radial engine that means pulling a few blades through to make sure that any oil that has seeped past the piston rings doesn't cause a disastrous (to the internals of the engine) hydraulic lock.

While it is only four miles to Rio Grande, one never really knows how reliable an airport courtesy car is.

We made it.

Anyone who has eaten at a Bob Evans restaurant has seen a picture very similar to this:

The chain has spent the last few years completely (and sadly, in my opinion) updating all of its restaurants to a consistent, homogeneous design. If I had hoped for a "down on the farm" distinction between the home restaurant and the rest of the chain, well, it wasn't to be.

After another short (yet rife with tension - the gas gauge said 'full', but the sporadically illuminated 'low fuel' light didn't agree) drive, we were parked at the River Boat Museum, a readily apparent fact based on the huge paddle wheel and connecting rod.

Oh, and the painted sign, lest there be any lingering doubt.

One of the first exhibits was this collection of steam whistles recovered from the Mississippi paddle wheeler. Or so I thought at the time. Compare:

I was surprised at the level of interactivity the museum allowed:

As regular readers of this journal might remember, I am a big fan of the engine control repeaters common on older ships.

Chronographs, to. It's interesting to me how much two of the most important navigational breakthroughs in the history of our world were enabled by the advent of reliably accurate time measuring devices.  Before the development of accurate time reporting, mariners could only guess at their longitude:

The history of longitude is a record of the effort, by navigators and scientists over several centuries, to discover a means of determining longitude.

The measurement of longitude is important to both cartography and navigation. Historically, the most important practical application of these was to provide safe ocean navigation. Knowledge of both latitude and longitude was required. Finding a method of determining longitude took centuries and involved some of the greatest scientific minds. 

Determining longitude on land was fairly easy compared to the task at sea. A stable surface to work from, a comfortable location to live in while performing the work and the ability to repeat determinations over time made for great accuracy. Whatever could be discovered from solving the problem at sea would only improve the determination of longitude on land. 

Determining latitude was relatively easy in that it could be found from the altitude of the sun at noon (i.e. at its highest point) with the aid of a table giving the sun's declination for the day. For longitude, early ocean navigators had to rely on dead reckoning. This was inaccurate on long voyages out of sight of land and these voyages sometimes ended in tragedy as a result. 

In order to avoid problems with not knowing one's position accurately, navigators have, where possible, relied on taking advantage of their knowledge of latitude. They would sail to the latitude of their destination, turn toward their destination and follow a line of constant latitude. This was known as running down a westing (if westbound, easting otherwise). This prevented a ship from taking the most direct route (a great circle) or a route with the most favourable winds and currents, extending the voyage by days or even weeks. This increased the likelihood of short rations, which could lead to poor health or even death for members of the crew due to scurvy or starvation, with resultant risk to the ship. 

Since the Earth rotates at a steady rate of 360° per day, or 15° per hour (in mean solar time), there is a direct relationship between time and longitude. If the navigator knew the time at a fixed reference point when some event occurred at the ship's location, the difference between the reference time and the apparent local time would give the ship's position relative to the fixed location. Finding apparent local time is relatively easy. The problem, ultimately, was how to determine the time at a distant reference point while on a ship.

And, of course, the breakthrough that we ourselves have seen in our lifetimes, GPS, is based on the triangulation in 3D space of very. very. VERY precise time comparisons.

What does this have to do with an old river boat which, by the very nature of its design and purpose, was limited to an area constrained by the banks of a river?

Not a single thing.  But... it's still a fine looking clock.

Ooooh, another repeater!

More interactivity: and old steam calliope powered by an electric vacuum cleaner.  Seriously.

My performance was abysmal, as can be seen by the reaction of the audience.

So, so dejected.  He's heard it all, alas.

Covington, KY is just across the river from my home town of Cincinnati.  I was just down there a couple of months ago, and this bridge looked familiar somehow.

This would be why:

The Delta Queen has always been a part of Cincinnati history, and is easily the best known of the river boats there.

Three different United States Presidents have sailed on Delta Queen: Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman, and Jimmy Carter. 

In 1946, Delta Queen was purchased by Greene Line of Cincinnati, Ohio and towed via the Panama Canal and the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers to be refurbished in Pittsburgh. On that ocean trip she was piloted by Frederick Way, Jr. In 1948 she entered regular passenger service, plying the waters of the Ohio, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Cumberland Rivers between Cincinnati, New Orleans, St. Paul, Chattanooga, Nashville, and ports in between. Ownership of the vessel has changed seven times over the last fifty years. 

In 1966, Congress passed the first Safety at Sea Law that would put the Delta Queen out of business. After consulting with attorney William Kohler, Richard Simonton, Bill Muster, and Edwin "Jay" Quinby traveled to Washington, DC, to save their boat. As chairman of the board of Greene Line Steamers, Jay Quinby testified before the Senate to ask for an exemption to the law. Greene Line had to renegotiate the exemption every two to four years (probably in addition to campaign contributions - ed). The boat's Betty Blake Lounge is named in honor of the woman who rose from public relations officer to savior of the boat when Congressman Garmatz tried to block the 1970 exemption.
Thanks to the efforts of Betty Blake and Bill Muster, the Delta Queen was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970 and was subsequently declared a National Historic Landmark in 1989. 

One unusual feature of Delta Queen is her steam calliope, mounted on the Texas deck aft of the pilot house. It covers approximately three octaves, and was used to play the ship in and out of her berth while she was docking and undocking. The Master of the Delta Queen sometimes extended this courtesy to other vessels as well.

Was that the calliope that I played?

Nope.

The museum is not expensive - it was $5 each to get in. I was wondering how they get by on such a low entrance fee. As it turns out, they also have an amazing simulator that they use for teaching river tug drivers, and amazingly, they allow museum visitors to play with it at no additional charge.

A docent introduced us to the correct operation of the sim:

He also showed us a speedboat located right there at the confluence of the rivers:

I'm not joking when I say it was pretty easy to get a little seasick just watching it!

When it was my turn at the helm, I followed in Mr. Clemens footsteps and tried my hand at piloting a barge, with predictable results.

The liability concerns that are a natural reaction to an overly litigious environment probably preclude it, but I sure would like to ride one of those boats down river as far as Louisville, KY.

Rather than potentially performing as poorly as I did as a tug captain, Capt. Kyle opted instead to drive a speed boat in San Francisco Bay.

Elsewhere in the museum was a map that demonstrated why it took two years of study for Clemens to become a riverboat pilot.  This is similar to the amazing depth of knowledge required to be a London cabbie.

Just across from the museum, there is a small state park that is primarily a monument to a couple of local historical events that I to date had been completely unaware of.

One was the embarkation of a group of local militia that would make their way upriver to join in the battle of independence from the British.  The other was a memorial to Lord Dunsmore, the proximate leader of a battle against a consortium of indigenous Indians.

Lord Dunmore's War — or Dunmore's War — was a 1774 conflict between the Colony of Virginia and the Shawnee and Mingo American Indian nations. 

The Governor of Virginia during the conflict was John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore — Lord Dunmore. He asked the Virginia House of Burgesses to declare a state of war with the hostile Indian nations and order up an elite volunteer militia force for the campaign. 

The conflict resulted from escalating violence between British colonists, who in accordance with previous treaties were exploring and moving into land south of the Ohio River (modern West Virginia, Southwestern Pennsylvania and Kentucky), and American Indians, who held treaty rights to hunt there. As a result of successive attacks by Indian hunting and war bands upon the settlers, war was declared "to pacify the hostile Indian war bands." The war ended soon after Virginia's victory in the Battle of Point Pleasant on October 10, 1774. 

As a result of this victory, the Indians lost the right to hunt in the area and agreed to recognize the Ohio River as the boundary between Indian lands and the British colonies.

There is also a commemoration to one Col. Andrew Lewis, who for some reason Kyle thinks he may be distantly related to.  Could be - they share the name.

Like Portsmouth, Pt. Pleasant has a flood wall, and they have had murals painted on them.

There was no descriptive text to be found, so I had to do a little research after the fact.  Like, what was Ms. Bailey so angry about?

"Mad" Anne Bailey (1742 – November 22, 1825) was a famous story teller and frontier scout who served in the fights of the American Revolutionary War and the Northwest Indian War. Her single person ride in search of an urgently needed powder supply for the endangered Clendenin's Settlement (present-day Charleston, West Virginia) was used as the template for Charles Robb's 1861 poem Anne Bailey's Ride. She is known as the Heroine of the Kanawha Valley.

Of course, these days there is a completely different type of heroin that the local area is known for.

The murals are a mix of depictions of the lifestyle of those early years and some of the less peaceful interactions between the encroaching settlers and the local Indian tribes.

Oh, and there are remembrances of notable historical figures that passed through.

George Washington practiced the boating skills that would later be used to cross the Potomac.

(No, not really.)

You can actually see the resemblance, if you squint.

Lord Dunmore looks to be a bit of a fop in this instantiation. One could be forgiven for thinking he arrived on our banks with the goal of blasting away the trees with RPGs in order to build a golf course.

It was difficult to discern the meaning of a few of the murals.  Here's a guy slugging back some moonshine in the shadow of some type of surgical operation. Perhaps he's testing the anesthesia.

I'm sure I saw this scene in the movie Shrek.

Yep.


The battle scene was quite wide. These are the settlers pushing the Indians back to the river.

A treaty was signed.

Before long, the Indians faced American law, as depicted in this rendering of a DEA "no-knock" raid:

"Drop the peace pipe, and come out with your hands up!!"

The muralist snuck in some pretty creepy details, if you look close enough.

As we headed back to the parked car, we went past an interesting looking antique store.

I think one of these would make a great tap for a beer keg.

Don't you hate seeing things you had as a kid in an antique store??

This looks like it would still be useful today:

It can be difficult to determine the true age of certain items.  They nailed this one, though:

A soap box derby car!  Sadly, no test drives allowed.

This would make a good pen holder, or anything else that could be used to justify its position on a desk:

Pt. Pleasant is also home to a more modern phenomenon:

This dude looks meaner than Mad Anne Bailey, a feat I would have wagered to be impossible!

We stopped in to walk look around in the Historic Lowe Hotel, which has been in continuous operation since 1904. It would be a neat place to spend the night, if I hadn't already seen everything there is to see in Pt. Pleasant.

According to Trip Advisor, it is the #1 ranked hotel in Pt. Pleasant.

#1 of 1, so I guess that's a distinction without distinction.  It rates four out of five stars, though, so it actually is a pretty decent place. No word on room rates, though.

Here's a sampling:

"We stayed at this hotel on the way to Chicago. Its main attraction for me is its location in Point Pleasant, the point where the Kanawha River(the New in Virginia) runs into the Ohio River. The town has a beautiful river walk just behind the hotel. It features statues, a long mural, and a nice amphitheater. I walked in just a few moments to the Tu-Endie-Wei Ste Park, site of a very large battle with the Shawnnee and others before the Revolutionary War. I also saw several tugs and barges on the two rivers.
The hotel is a bit dated, but our room was spacious, cool, and quiet. The beds were comfortable. I could see the Mothman from my window. The owners were very nice and were in fact preparing to travel to Mountain Lake, Virginia for their 50th wedding anniversary."

"I stayed at The Lowe Hotel on Saturday, May 24, 2014 with my significant other. It was my birthday weekend, so the stay was part of my birthday present. I've stayed at the Lowe before and I love The Lowe and Point Pleasant. The owners and the local residents are very friendly and we enjoy going to the Red Parrot Cafe and bar located on the ground floor of The Lowe. There is a lot to do in Point Pleasant and we stay busy the whole time we are there. I've noticed in the reviews that most people either love or hate The Lowe Hotel. I love The Lowe because I love historic buildings and I have an appreciation of historic things. To me, the skeleton keys that operate the doors add charm and I really like them. I noticed someone else complained about the skeleton keys, so it just depends on your taste as to whether or not you will like it. Others complained about the place being "old". I guess they didn't realize it's a historic building with charm and character and that's an attraction to people like myself. If older buildings and furnishings are a turn-off for you and you like a fancy place, I suggest you stay at The Hampton. For those of us who love historic buildings, The Lowe is wonderful. I wish I could tour the whole building and explore every nook and cranny! I find it really interesting to see how it's built and how people lived back then. They have enough modern amenities (like TV, refrigerator, Wifi, etc.) to satisfy most people."

I had just enough time left to grab a quick lunch, which as good because there was no way that Kyle was letting me leave without trying a footlong hotdog at Remos Italian Style Hot Dogs.  I have to say, it doesn't have the street presence that would have encouraged me to try it alone.

It's tiny inside, so it's mostly a carryout business. The ordering process is very simple, and typically sounds like, "Hey, a long with sauce, mustard, and onion."  You can get pickles too, but you don't really need them - the sauce tastes as if pickle juice is one of the basic ingredients.

It was incredibly good!  I bought a pint of frozen sauce to take back up north with me.

Climbing out over Gallipolis, I got one last look at the Ohio River before turning north, back towards landlocked Columbus.