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| Saturday, 15-May-2004 00:00 |
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Hiking up Mt. Baden-Powell
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View of the mountain as we're driving to it
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Trees are always a welcome sight in the desert!
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Lingering snow
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Getting near the top - looking towards Edwards
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The "Wally" Waldron Tree (estimated to be 1500 yrs old!)
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Cool tree at the summit
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Looking towards Mt Baldy (one of our next hikes)
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"Mr. Mountaineer"
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Rip & I took a short "Saturday-morning break" from academics, drove a little over an hour to get near Mt Baden-Powell, & hiked to the top. The mountain was named in 1931 for the founder of Boy Scouting, & true to its name, we encountered several groups of boy scouts on the way up. (We passed all of them, being the "monster hikers" that we are!) We climbed a total of about 2800 ft to get to the 9399' summit. Quite a view!
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| Thursday, 6-May-2004 00:00 |
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Gliding at Tehachapi
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Opus (one of our instructors) and myself
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Rainman (our Marine pilot) after his first solo
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Scandal (our Canadian pilot, eh) after his solo
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Hee Haw, our class leader (didn't catch him in the glider)
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Our first glider sorties at Techachapi. Four of us went up & spent most of the day at the gliderport. Flew several sorties each, & the pilots each soloed a couple times. Too bad we had to "ruin" the day by driving back for class in the late afternoon!
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| Saturday, 1-May-2004 00:00 |
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Mountain biking near Santa Clarita
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Beginning of the trail
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Viper 'snaking' along the ridgeline
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Steep, rocky descent! (hard to tell in the picture, though)
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Went out riding this Saturday looking for the Los Pinetos trail. Ended up taking the wrong trail(much more advanced than I was expecting that day!). Turns out this one was called 'Viper' - sounds a bit ominous, huh? Well, it was named appropriately!
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| Friday, 23-Apr-2004 00:00 |
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Albatross checkride
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Slasher (our U.K. pilot) and myself
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Reminds me more of a 'boat' than a plane...
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No time for a nap, but this was a perfect place for one!
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Finally reached the end of our Performance Phase (sort of like a Test Pilot School "semester"), & this was our "final exam" - a checkride in a plane we've never flown (or actually seen!) before. Lots of planning to get ready for this flight, but actually it was loads of fun. Old aluminum amphibious plane, big old radial engines (on the ground, they sounded like they were ready to stall at any second!), lots of noise & vibrations, just like you'd imagine in a plane as "historical" as this one (kind way of saying "old"...)
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| Saturday, 3-Apr-2004 00:00 |
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Biking near Sandberg
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Initial climb up the fireroad
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Our group coming up the fireroad
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One of the oak forest areas
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Five of us took Saturday morning to go mountain biking near Sandberg (west of Lancaster about 30 minutes). Rip, Anchor, Scandal, Scandal's wife Kathleen, & myself put in about 16 miles of riding on both fire roads & singletrack. We started at an old abandoned resort in Sandberg, climbed the road for a while, & then found trails to come back down the mountain. Found ourselves on some loose, sandy trails in places (quite a challenge to bike through!). Also found some tight trails running through some very narrow (& sharp!) thickets - riding a couple inches off-center led to a plethera of scrapes & scratches on arms & legs! Great ride, though - saw conditions from desert to "grassy fields" to oak forest to "thicket forest". Another big 'plus' - everyone survived!
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| Saturday, 20-Mar-2004 00:00 |
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Mountain biking near Wrightwood
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View from Pinyon Ridge
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Fire road portion of the trail
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Devil's Punchbowl in the background
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Rip & I taking a "quick" ride near Wrightwood / Jackson Lake / Devil's Punchbowl area. Put in about 16 miles of fairly strenuous riding (2500' feet of climbing!) Beautiful day, perfect temperature, & just a great time riding. Climbed into the snow level (had to push through multiple snow drifts), so was forced to walk part of the route. We'll definitely have to come back & try this one again once all the snow has melted!
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| Saturday, 13-Mar-2004 00:00 |
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"Casino construction" in the Seniors' room
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Starting 'demolition'
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Ugly green paint for the walls
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Forms for the concrete poker chips
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As per Test Pilot School tradition, our junior class 'transformed' the seniors' classroom while they were on their 2-week field trip to some other flight test centers. Going with our class theme (poker, mainly), we went with a "Honey, I blew up the casino" type of theme. (Complete with 1200# concrete poker chips, 12-foot roulette wheel, and two 500# dice). The name of the game is to also make things as difficult as possible for the seniors to tear down (hence the large amounts of concrete!) Lots of work on top of our regular classwork, but lots of fun, too.
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| Saturday, 6-Mar-2004 00:00 |
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Hiking South Fork trail with Mom
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Switchbacks of the trail in the distance
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Another view of the trail coming down the hill
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"Mom the mountaineer"
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Mom flew in to visit for the weekend. We took Saturday afternoon to go hiking from the South Fork campground to Devil's Chair (overlooking the punchbowl). Perfect day for a hike!
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| Tuesday, 24-Feb-2004 00:00 |
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Supersonic
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A couple views from the backseat of an F-16B going Mach ~1.2. Tried to capture some visual discontinuities caused by the shockwaves, but they didn't show up in the pictures.
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| Saturday, 21-Feb-2004 00:00 |
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Last minute visit to Downtown Disney
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no ticket, no visit
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fearless climber
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