It started pretty slow this morning because I was planning on taking Terry H quail hunting and come to find out he didn't buy his hunting license. So I called Terry A to see what he was up to and he was just finishing a build on a new airplane. Needless to say I spent the next hour or two gluing together a couple of planes and by 1:oo PM we were out in the BLM burning up the batteries. It was kind of windy and hard to really practice the fun stuff so I decided to get a little bold and try to do something we have been talking about for about a year now. There is a sign on the edge of our flying field that has two 4x4 posts about four feet apart which makes a cool little target to fly through. It would be like training your dog to jump through a burning hoop except your dog is a RC plane flying about 15 mph through a hoop of non forgiving solid wood. The fun part is training your thumbs to fly the plane right at you and to complicate things, when the plane is flying at you, left is right and right is left. I always thought I was good at thinking backwards, well any way, the target is about 48 inches wide and about the same height but the grass is about a foot tall or so. There is no missing on this one, so I setup and did about 5 or 6 practice runs, pulling out at the last moment. My plane has been crashed and glued back together so many times and it wasn't really flying straight any more so now was the time to be a hero or die. Well, you guessed it, I did make it through the hoop but I was about three inches too high. The sign ripped the canopy right off and the plane nose dived into the grass. I made it, but not in one piece. I didn't see any structural damage so I just launched it again, with pieces of foam dangling from the fuselage. It could still fly, but barely. (This wasn't my new Blue Extra 300 SHP that I'm so proud of, but an old foamy ready for retirement)
We sat and laughed for a while, then I remembered I put my shotgun behind the seat and I still had enough time to chase a quail or two. I figured this was allot better than walking around the block and watching Sam pee on every bush and mail box. I was wearing shorts and tennis shoes, but that didn't matter because most of the grass was laying down and where I was going there are many trails. I had walked about two miles down the river then up a ravine and was headed back to the truck when Sam's head perked up a little and he headed down the hill to check out a large silver thorn bush. He was making his routine circle of the bush when all of a sudden he jumps up in the air like a goblin just booed him. Immediately I heard the buzzing of a pissed off rattle snake. Sam has never seen a rattle snake so I was a little concerned about what his next move would be. I was screaming at Sam, the rattlesnake was screaming at him too but being a well trained dog he came back to me, looking over his shoulder thinking " what the hell is that". When Sam was clear someone from above unloaded a couple of volleys of number eights and the story ended. (seven rattles and a button) My first thought was "this is a sure sign of global warming, rattle snakes should be hibernating now". My second thought was "shorts and tennis shoes". Time to go home and make dinner for my wife was the next thought. The quail eluded me, the sign ripped off my canopy and a rattle snake sent me home to make dinner for my over worked wife. As luck would have it, when I mentioned that spaghetti sounded good for dinner, Michele said that lasagna was already in the oven. Such is the live of a retired old fart.
To keep up the exercise plan, I am meeting Rob tomorrow at his Pheasant Club and we will certainly have pheasant for dinner. I'm taking my video camera so maybe I can post a short movie with Sam in action. Stay tuned for more adventures.
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