Me. The Silver Eagle. Just arrived in Factoryville, PA. I had to force the smile off my face to take a serious picture. This is a fine damn airplane.
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Back From PA

Long time no post. I've been on a lil adventure out to Sun Valley and on to Pennsylvania.

I went last weekend to Sun Valley and stayed with Rod and Linda again. I hung out and hiked, took Toby the Dog for a walk or two. Just nice to be out of the city again, and remember how much I like Ketchum and the Sun Valley area. The fantasy of making a shift over there is smashed, of course, as I see that there is nothing within about 15 miles of Ketchum that doesn't have six zeroes attached to the $ sign. The locals can't understand it either, but those who already own are rather smug.

The real reason I went was to get together with Gordon Rock. He has a crazy cool new (used) airplane, and it needed to be flown out to Pennsylvania, from Sun Valley, for some work. He is the one who loans me the big Cessna I fly.

This airplane is also a big Cessna, but better. Pardon me while I barf nuts and bolts:
it's a pressurized Cessna 210 (meaning you don't have to wear oxygen masks when you get into the altitudes - it maintains an 8,000 or 9,000 interior even when you're at 23,000. Just like yer ol' 747). The thing that makes it really special is a rare conversion it has. They put a 450 hp turbine (jet) engine on it, turning a prop. This just means it goes really, really high, and it goes pretty fast. 240 mph or so.

So I got ten hours of turbine time which I pretty much couldn't get any other way. Essentially I get to write "10.4 hours jet -" in my logbook. Gordon said it was because he needed a co-pilot; he may have done, but he gave me a great opportunity.

We're going back out in August to fly it home with all new instruments and some other crap that no one really wants to read about here.

Anyway, I had fun. Great weather almost the entire way. A couple of instrument approaches, but really just nice, nice, nice...

One negative note: stay as far from Newark, NJ as you possibly can. We flew back commercial from there. Driving the streets of Newark actually made me feel guilty for living in Seattle. Like I should be telling them all, "it isn't like this everywhere...you can leave..."

And this is Sun Valley, the Warm Springs lift side. Ketchum is in the valley just below those wild flowers. I went for a hike on the Fourth and thought about Wiley and the boys.
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I came across this fantastic collection of iron sculpture about 10 miles out of Sun Valley toward Stanley. This was about a third of what they had out. It was all for sale.
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And Grand they are. 19,000 feet over the Tetons; Jackson Hole airport is off in the distance.
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Between 8 a.m. and 11 a.m. they turned this gorgeous machine into a stripped out hulk. It was unbelievable - interior, instruments, prop, engine... all gone in three hours.
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