So how come no updates?

Well, it turns out, being on vacation is way more time consuming than staying home. Irony, isn't it, that when you aren't doing much, you have plenty of time to tell people about it. I'll skip the part about how the ever so elegant iPad mini can fumble some of the simplest stuff, like updating a blog, that an old  XP laptop can do easily...

I'll try to catch up with a synopsis, then fill in some details over the next few days. Mar 13 was the previous entry, so continuing with ...

Mar 14: We spent this at Seminlole Lake Gliderport, where the Seniors Soaring Contest was in progress. I flew in it in 1999, a couple years after I retired. Some of the same people where there, along  with friends we don't see very often anymore, now that I haven't competed in contests for several years. About 50 pilots were competing during the 6 days of the contest.

 

Mar 15: The AAA guidebook made the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg seem worth the trip. It was an easy drive through the middle of Florida, which has several large wildlife management areas nearly devoid of human habitation. The museum was quite new, beautiful, and I had no idea Dali had such a range of paintings. 

Mar 16: We spent the day at friend's hangar, admiring his new glider, then helping his hangar partner remove the engine from his glider preparatory to replacing the fuel lines.

Mar 18: We meet Jim Lee, the Phoenix dealer, at his hangar at the Melbourne International airport, where we see our Phoenix for the first time. Here you see it with the short wing tips, giving a 36 foot wingspan that let's it fit into the hangar:

Now it has the long wing tips for a 50 foot span, making it a much better glider. The transformation takes only two or three minutes.