A Good Flight To See Mr. B.

The weather was forecast to be rather nice today, and a plane was available.

So I gave Mr. B. a call and we arranged to meet.

I got N914P all pre-flighted and ready to go and after a weather brief filed IFR to see him in nothern Indiana. 

Got my clearance, got the run up done,and took off flying runway heading climbing to 3,000 feet.

Pontiac was MVFR with a layer at 2500.

 So I climbed up into it and Detroit Approach soon gave me a clearance to climb to my filed 6,000 feet.

I let them know the cloud tops was 4,400 feet over Pontiac as I made it through the layer. 

Above the layer all was calm and serene.

 Nice and smooth above the layer it was rather perfect flying weather.  The layer started breaking up and you could see the ground beneath.

I got a nice overhead shot of Three Rivers Airport:

I got passed of to Great Lakes Approach and went through all their sectors through Kalamazoo until I got passed off to South Bend.

South Bend was busy.  So much so they told did a broadcast to everyone who was VFR to not call them and stay out of their airspace until they had things under control.

Luckily I was IFR, so I went right over their airport at 6,000 feet. 

South Bend then started getting me lower as I got close to Mr. B's Airport.

 Back in the layer I went, until I then got permission to go lower, and got vectored to his airport for a visual approach.

Got on the CTAF to announce my arrival and two dingbats were having a long, involved, conversation about airplane radio wiring on the frequency  while people were trying to coordinate in the pattern, not helpful.

I did a decent if somewhat long landing as I hadn't quite been lowered enough altitude-wise in time, but all was well.

Met up with Mr. B., and we headed to his local Mexican restaurant which was very tasty. After that we got some local ice cream.  We had a good time catching up, and then we headed back to the airport.

I got a weather brief, did the preflight and filed IFR home. 

Mr. B. got a good shot of my takeoff.

 

It was a pretty uneventful ride home, more turbulent than the way outbound, and I was in a layer quite a bit as I was at 5,000 feet and the clouds decided they wanted to be there too.

I got out of the layer as Detroit Approach descended me to 4,000 feet, and I overflew Brighton Airport and the shooting range I go to is right near it.

Landing at Pontiac was fun with variable winds gusting to 20 typically from 300 degrees.  I landed on 27L and did a good landing, with a lot of crosswind control, and then headed to the hangar.  

I cleaned and refueled the plane and that was that.

It was the proverbial $200 Mexican and Ice Cream Flight (as opposed to the standard $100 Hamburger flight), and totally worth it to get to spend some time catching up with a friend.

That's 1.8 there with 1 good landing, and 1.9 back with another good landing and a smattering of actual IFR time.

Indiana Nice Is Apparently A Thing

So this weekend I traveled to Marion, Indiana for a Modern Samurai Project class.

Leaving at 3pm on Friday traffic was ridiculous near 696 but opened up on 275 until hitting near Ann Arbor when it again slowed to a standstill for no known reason, and then opened right back up.

Made it to Marion in decent time and checked into the Hampton Inn there with no issues and rather nice and friendly staff.

I unloaded the car and then got some gas and went to get some dinner.  

I saw that Brooks Upper Crust Pizza was highly recommended and so I went there to get some pizza.

It turns out they were carry out only so I placed an order for a small pizza and they got to making it while I waited.

Quite a few people were coming in for pickup of pizza orders while I waited, and I then had a nice chat with the owner.  He explained they weren't doing dining in now as the wait staff did not want to come back to work.  This is a recurring problem and a lot of places are having as people are still being paid as much or more to stay home on UI than go to work.  He's thinking of converting it to quick-order dining to deal with the lack of wait staff as he misses having people and families in his restaurant.

So he showed me around the restaurant which is in a historic building on the river and very eclectically and nicely decorated with a lot of neat items and memorabilia, with much of it dating back to the late 1800s.  Kinda neat, and it would have been nice to dine in as it has a nice view of the river and a very nice ambiance.

Super friendly people there and the pizza was excellent. 

A thin crust round, but not so thin that it tasted like cardboard, and not too chewy either but just right and rather addictive.  Different from Detroit-style pizza but good in its own way.  Curiously Indiana apparently serves nacho cheese with bread-sticks in pizza joints, which is totally different from the Michigan style of marina/tomato sauce for dipping bread-sticks.   Local customs and all that. 

So I took the pizza back to my hotel room, enjoyed it immensely, and then did a bit of work, and I then prepared for class on Saturday.  A good start to the weekend.

This Is Why You Don't Shoot Fleeing Property Thieves

In every carry class I teach or act as an attorney for another instructor, I make a very deliberate point to go over Michigan's use of force laws and cover the question of the use of deadly force to defend property.

Quick short answer - you can't.

Nor can you do so in most states, including, Indiana where today's lesson is located.

Simply put, you may not use deadly force against someone merely committing a property offense, and most especially not when they are running away without posing a threat.

When you try to do so, this happens: Burglar sues homeowner who shot him

Yes, it is rather crazy that a burglar can sue a homeowner for shooting him, and in a perfect world criminal activity should cancel out any right to sue for injuries incurred in the commission of a crime, but look at the rather bad facts here:

1. The burglar was not in the premises when the homeowner shot at him but was running down an alley.

2. The homeowner was chasing the fleeing burglar.

3. Add on top of this that the burglar claims his name is Dindunuffin, and that while he had plead guilty to a "related" burglary charge he is pure as the driven snow and didn't break into the garage, and you're looking at a lawsuit, not to mention potential criminal charges as happened to the homeowner in this case.

Quick and easy lesson - do not shoot at, nor apply any other lethal force upon, fleeing persons not posing an imminent deadly threat to you.

Now don't do that, ok?

It's Three Hundred And Ten Miles To Indianapolis, We've Got A Full Tank Of Gas, Half A Pack Of Chips, It's Daytime, And We're Wearing Sunglasses.

Hit It.

Murphy's Law and I are off on the road to Indy.

We'll hopefully see you (if you're there) at the NRA Convention. Looking forward to meeting up with blogger friends and make some new ones.

Will blog from the convention as opportunities arise.

Happy Independence Day

For this Independence Day Weekend, the family and I went down to northern Indiana to visit Amish country and allow Tash to do some serious quilt supply shopping and for the rest of us to have a short break.

We visited Shipshewana, where we stayed for a couple nights at a hotel with a water park, which the kids loved, We also did some day trips to Nappanee and Elkhart. Northern Indiana is a very beautiful pastoral area - lots of farms, and horses galore and the locals are friendly.

Since Leah at 4 seems to have every young girls love of horses, we couldn't go more than 5 feet down the road before a joyous cry of "horse!" arose from the back seat.

This meant that we had to do a buggy ride in Shipshewana, which was a lot of fun.

An Amish man ran the buggy and told us quite a bit about Amish culture during the ride. He amazed both kids with the news that Amish children as young as grade 2 could take their own horse and buggy to school if they were responsible enough to do so.

Lots of horses and buggies on the roads and of course, Amish-style food is out of this world good - the broasted chicken is awesome, as are the many amazing ways they can prepare egg noodles. Not to mention the desserts.

Then on July 3 we went to Elkhart for a three hour tour on the River Queen, a 150 passenger stern-wheeler, on the St. Joseph River.

The River Queen was leading the annual flotilla of 4th of July boats, many of them extensively decorated:

But, this idyllic riparian cruise was not to last.

While leading the boats, there was a sudden clang and the River Queen came to a sudden and complete halt.

So sudden was the stop and so loud was the noise, I was going to ask if there was an extra charge for the unplanned wreck dive.

The boat had struck an underwater stump on its keel and was well and truly stuck.

We were stuck on a stump for about an hour with two police boats and a jet boat with volunteer river patrol members all with ropes attached trying to tow the vessel off the stump:

They finally succeeded in their efforts and we continued on our way.

The grounding of the River Queen was such a rare event that it made the local news.


So today we woke in Shipshewana and went to both the Shipshewana flea market and Yoders. The flea market was huge, with a tpical vareity of flea market wares from used books to beautiful woodworking to chinese junk trinkets and everything else you could think of at a flea market.

Yoders Meats and Cheeses however was the highlight of the day and the place to go for incredible food to take home.

We bought excellent Amish made cheeses, especially after the kids loved the samples, and a 1.5 lb grass-fed sirloin steak. Then we drove home.

We BBQ'd the steak tonight and it was big enough for the four of us with an unbeatable taste - only a slight bit a kosher salt and a couple grinds of pepper were used and it was fantastic.

A great vacation.

Now the kids are asleep, I'm going to walk outside and see the fireworks.

Happy Independence Day!