Hola Amigos

Wow, what a trip.  I don’t think I can possibly come up with enough adequate words to explain and describe our trip to Mexico.  Such an amazing country with the most incredibly warm and friendly people I’ve met in a long, long time.  Suffice to say that it took me until Sunday (1 June) to feel normal again and not all dazed and confused!  We got back home at 1am on Thursday morning, and after a few hours sleep it was off to work for me!  No wonder I felt dazed and confused, lol!  Lots of photos here, I’ll try to keep the words to a minimum, and probably do a second post later in the week.

 

[Swimming pool at our little hotel ~ Posada Yum Kin (the sun god)]

[Iguana at Tulum Mayan ruins]

[Part of Tulum ruins.  The only Mayan city to be built on the coast]

[Snorkeling at Grand Cenote.  The Yucatan peninsula is completely limestone, over the years all these caverns and fissures have appeared due to acid rain, erosion and cave roof collapse, they’re a diving mecca, people come from all over the world to dive there as they’re the largest cave system in the entire world, and a lot of it remains unexplored.  We’re not divers but we had a lot of fun snorkeling in one.  You can just see the entry ladder in to the water. This particular cenote was partly open due a to a roof collapse hundreds of years ago.]

[It rained at some point every day during our first five days there, but only for a short time.  The temperature averaged 86F during the day but only dropped to 78F at night and was relatively humid all the time.  A rain storm anywhere usually drops the temperature down but not so in Mexico.  If it rained during the day the temp would stay at 86F but the humidity would go through the roof!!]

[Ooh, that pool again.  I was in the little spa, behind me is the breakfast area and above that is the sun terrace.]

 

[After Rosea, our housekeeper, discovered we were there for our Silver Wedding Anniversary we would return to our room each day to the most amazing towel sculptures on our bed!  I could do a separate post on them as there was a new one every day!]

[A day out to Coba, another Mayan city close to where we stayed. These building are all temples of some kind, the Mayans lived in traditional houses made of wood with a palm or grass roof and all trace of these personal buildings has completely disappeared. ]

[These cities would have been completely cleared of all growth, now though, there are more ruins that have been reclaimed by the jungle than there are available to see and look around.  Andrew is standing next to a banyan tree with it’s amazing roots.  It puts these roots out from branches, if it finds ground it roots, what it’s really looking for is another tree to grow around as it’s parasitic, eventually covering the entire host tree and killing it.]

[There is one very tall temple at Coba that you’re still allowed to climb.  I can’t begin to tell you how steep it is and how hard it is to climb in the heat and humidity.  It’s much worse coming down and you can see that a lot of people choose to sit and bump down each step.  I walked down, a step at a time and had legs like jelly by the time I got to the bottom, plus I couldn’t walk down stairs properly for about three days afterwards!]

[From the left: Andrew, Liz who is the manager of the Posada we stayed at, Rob a cave diver from Alaska who has been coming to the area for over 40 years, me and Claudia, Liz’s best friend who was taking a college course in the are and stayed with Liz for a couple of weeks.  What can I say, I suspect there may have been alcohol involved!!]

[Snorkeling at Akumal Bay with the sea turtles.  Akumal means Turtle Bay in English and this is a normal, open Caribbean bay, not a staged area where they keep turtles.  It’s protected about 1/4 mile offshore by the world’s second largest reef and the turtles come into the bay to breed.  We also saw tons of amazing fish and a few stingrays too.]

[We went into the bay with a guide from the bay’s ecological centre and a small group of people (six).  They make you wear a life jacket for the simple reason that it keeps you horizontal in the water; being in a  vertical position and potentially damaging the reef with your flippers, disturbing the wildlife of stirring up sediment with your flippers is strictly forbidden.]

[Andrew and Liz in the Posada.  The Posada is a large white building with everything arranged around two central courtyards inside.  Apart from some pretty flowers, nice wooden doors and the white washed building you have no idea of the paradise that awaits you when you step inside and close the door.]

I think that’s enough for one day, I’ll do another post later in the week with more pics.  Adios!

When The Tigers Broke Free

Today, at 11am on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the Armistice was signed between the Allies of World War One and Germany that halted The Great War on the Western Front.  It was the day the guns of war finally fell silent for most of Europe, although hostilities continued for a little longer in the former Russian Republic and the old Ottoman Empire.

I’ve recounted mine and Andrew’s personal stories for Remembrance Day on this blog before now so I won’t go over that again, it’s here if you’d like to find it.  What I do want to share with you though is a song, written about the Battle of Anzio which took place in Italy early in 1944.

The Royal Fusiliers Company Z were ordered to hold a bridge against the approaching German Tiger tanks, but when you pit men against machines the outcome is never good for the men.  Company Z lost every man standing that day, among the dead was Eric Fletcher Waters, father of Pink Floyd bassist and lyricist, Roger Waters.  Roger later wrote When The Tigers Broke Free as a tribute to his father and an incredibly passionate and angry tirade on the futility of war.  To this day, he performs this piece at his fathers grave site on the day he died.  It was originally written for Pink Floyd’s 1978 album The Wall, but it never made the final cut as the other band members thought it was just too personal.  It eventually turned up on a compilation album called Echoes: The Best of Pink FLoyd, released in 2001.

I have never in all my life listened to a song so imbued with so much hatred and pain.  Waters kept the music very sombre, most of the background is provided by the mournful, deep tone of a Welsh male voice choir, which is completely at odds with Waters own personal turmoil and almost screamed lyrics.  It makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck every time I hear it.

It was just before dawn
One miserable morning in black forty-four.
When the forward commander
Was told to sit tight
When he asked that his men be withdrawn.
And the Generals gave thanks
As the other ranks held back
The enemy tanks for a while.
And the Anzio bridgehead
Was held for the price
Of a few hundred ordinary lives.

And kind old King George
Sent Mother a note
When he heard that father was gone.
It was, I recall,
In the form of a scroll,
With gold leaf adorned.
And I found it one day
In a drawer of old photographs, hidden away.
And my eyes still grow damp to remember
His Majesty signed
With his own rubber stamp.

It was dark all around.
There was frost in the ground
When the tigers broke free.
And no one survived
From the Royal Fusiliers Company Z.
They were all left behind,
Most of them dead,
The rest of them dying.
And that’s how the High Command
Took my daddy from me.

I really encourage you to listen to this track.  If the You Tube link below is broken, just search for it on You Tube instead.

Vintage Grand Prix At Mid Ohio

I’m a car nut I admit it, a bit of a petrol head to be honest.  I love road racing, proper racing none of that stupid Nascar stuff.  I’m not into F1 either, cause you have to watch that on the telly and I’m not much of a telly person, I prefer to be in the thick of things, to actually be there at an event, to watch the racing live from the track, to see the cars in the paddock and to chat to the drivers and their crews, to really smell the race fumes as it were.

We go to the Vintage Grand Prix at Mid-O quite frequently, last year we entered our 1972 Ginetta G15 in to the British Car Showdown car show and brought home one of 10 blue ribbons handed out that day.  This year, we spent the week before the event watching the weather.  We’ve had a lot of high humidity recently which has given way to some quite spectacular and vicious thunderstorms in the afternoons.  The reason for the indecision was based on the visibility of our tiny, tiny car to other road users.  It’s hair raising stuff on a motorway at the best of times, but put  torrential rain, hail and road spray into the mix and we’d be completely invisible to the other much bigger and heavier, road vehicles.  The second reason for watching the weather so closely is our inability to source 13″ tyres in this country.  The tyres on the car are now very worn, almost slicks.  They’re still ok in the dry, not bad in a bit of rain if you’re careful but potentially lethal in the kind of sudden downpour associated with strong thunderstorms.

Last Thursday afternoon I drove home from work in one of those storms and had to avoid fallen trees and debris on the road and rivers of water.  I could hardly see a thing with my wipers on full speed.  Once home I had to sit on the drive while the thunder crashed directly over head and double and triple fork lightning and hail came down thick and fast.  Once in the house we found a picture on the floor, shaken off the wall by the force of the thunder.  That storm sat over us for one and a half hours, brought down trees and power lines, left almost 100,000 people without power, knocked out a surge protector on my house and left us with no phone or internet until Monday morning when the utility company turned up.  It also drenched us with 3″ of rain in that one and a half hours.  And it made up our minds that the Ginetta wasn’t going to Mid Ohio with us, one storm like that on the way down there and it could have been curtains for us.

As it turned out, Mother Nature played a big part in the weekend.  This photo was taken on the way down, shortly before the weather deteriorated even more and we pulled off the road, parked up under an overpass and waited for it to move on.  There was no one left on the road until this storm was done, everyone had pulled over.  Imagine the M6 in England with no traffic and every single vehicle parked on the hard shoulder.

This was taken with the wipers on full speed too.  You can just about see the shoulder and the lane we’re in, but you can’t see the outside lane, the central reservation or the lanes on the West bound side of the road, and you certainly can’t see all the traffic in front of us, which IS there, people hadn’t pulled over at this point.

Anyway, we made it to the track safely, got registered, paid for the camping and put the tent up… all in the rain, and then wandered into the paddock to do a bit of car spotting as the rain was passing and the sun was coming back out.

[Lola – hate to think how much this beautiful race car is worth]

[Two Austin Healey Frog Eye Sprites, known in America as Bugeyes.  Still one of my favourites classics of all time]

[Lotus Super Seven]

[A very rare 1972 Ferrari 312 brought along for display purposes.  Ex Brian Redmond car, currently for sale for $800,000 if you’re interested!!]

[A stunningly beautiful Porsche.  The number 39 in the background with the rear engine cover up is a Porsche 917, used in the film Le Mans and driven by Steve McQueen]

We managed to see a couple of the practice sessions before the storms returned and racing was abandoned for the day, so we retired gracefully to a nearby bar for a drink and some food, and also tried to dry out as we got soaked to the skin in the second round of storms as we weren’t quick enough to hoof it back to either the car or the tent before the heavens opened!  It did clear up late evening though and we were treated to a pretty sunset and a peaceful night.

[Sunset over the campground, with rather a lot of standing water]

Saturday was lovely and clear and they managed to run almost the entire program until the heavy rain returned around 3:30pm.  We started hearing reports about roads and a couple of bridges washed out locally, flood warnings were now in pace for much of the region and later when we drove through Lexington on our way to dinner we saw the creek had broken and the road was flooded.  The police were redirecting the traffic and the water was pouring into the parking lot of a nearby office building and the cars that had been parked in there were up to their wheel arches in flood water and it was still rising.

But we saw some great racing that day…

[A motley collection of mostly British cars.  I can see a Fiat 148 and at the back is an old “Special” a one off car built in the 30’s for hill climbing, now restored and on the track.]

[Mostly Alfa’s, Datsuns and Porches with a Spitfire and an MG, and the white car just going over the brow of the hill is a Spec Racer Ford]

[Me sitting on the front straight watching the cars being released from grid, behind me, for the next race]

Sunday started damp and drizzly but the racing went ahead.  The track was very slippery and made for some interesting races.  It dried up quickly and we moved back to the grandstand in the esses, one of our favourite places to view from and watched out friends Andrea and Dave Robertson compete in the 1 1/2 hour Enduro in one of their Ford GT’s.  They started their racing career with us at Waterford Hills and we’ve known them for about 12 years now.  A few years ago they moved up to ALMS (American LeMans Series) and eventually formed Robertson Racing with a full crew, huge rig, team manager (“H” from England) and two Ford GT race cars.  Three years ago they entered the real Le Mans 24 hour race in France and beat out all the factory sponsored race teams to finish third in their class.  They became the first husband and wife team to EVER stand on the podium at Le Mans and Andrea was the first women since 1926 to stand on the podium.  Quite a feat for the two “unknowns” and their little race team from Michigan, and a huge source of pride for everyone who knew them from Waterford Hills.  They’re always happy to see us at any track and still come to Waterford Hills when they can to say hello, we spent part of the wet Friday in their garage and trailer dodging the rain.

Here they are in their yellow and silver Ford GT competing in the Enduro, sandwiched between two Lola’s.  They started dead last as their Saturday races were victim to the weather and they had no on track time to set their position on the grid, so that put them at the back of the pack in 21st place.  But they finished a very respectable 8th.

We watched more great racing and then had to leave around 3pm to get home.  The rain was reappearing anyway and as we left the complex it was starting to get heavy again.  We almost had a repeat of the journey on the way down, and that very first photo taken from the car in the rain could easily have been Sunday and not Friday.  We got home much later than planned because of it but it was still a great weekend and very worthwhile to make the effort to attend.  Hopefully next year the Ginetta can go again too.

Sunny Sunday

We had a great weekend, nothing in the way of papercrafting, but a lot of fun all the same.

On Saturday we met up with our friends, Paul and Leah, and they took us out to lunch.  Our Christmas present really, but I had that impacted wisdom tooth removed over Christmas, and they have two kids, so between them, school, family stuff and work we’ve only just been able to get together again.

They took us to a place Andrew and I didn’t know about called Tyme Well Spent, which is a traditional tea room in an old Victorian house in Hartland, Michigan.  This is the only place I’ve ever been to where they give you a tea menu instead of a wine menu, that was four and a half pages long!! We spent longer deciding on our pots of tea than we did on our lunch!  We had their lunch menu with hot tea, followed by cakes and more tea, and in between courses we got up and went upstairs where the bedrooms all contain a plethora of Vintage items to buy, including jewellery, clothes, tea cups and plates, home decor items, books and hats!  Oh the hats!  Leah and I had a very mad 10 minutes trying on as many crazy hats as we could find!  At one point Andrew joined in with us too!  And guess who put the camera ready and then walked out of the house without it!!  Not one of us  had a camera of any kind on them, which is probably just as well!

Afterwards we stopped in Milford, a really quaint town with a lot of vibrant shops and cafes, we needed a stroll around after all that delicious home made food!  I found a knitting shop but unfortunately it had just closed for the day, I heard Andrew breathe a sigh of relief at that though!

Sunday was a cold but sunny day, we never actually got above freezing again and we’d had a light dusting of about an inch of snow on Friday night, so after breakfast we went out for a walk through one of the many parks along Hines Drive.  And I didn’t forget the camera this time.

[This is one of our favourite trees in the area and we always snap a picture of it when we do this walk.  It was struck by lightning many years ago and lost its top. so it now grows out sideways instead of upwards!  We love the shadows that it creates, it’s interesting in any season.]

I spent my Sunday afternoon knitting!  I finished a sock for me, still have to knit the other one of the pair though; and I’m now on the decreases on Andrew’s hat.  I want to get that finished before I cast on for the second sock, as I know I’ll get distracted by it if I do.  With a bit of luck he might be able to wear it this Winter after all!  And finally,  late in the day I worked on a card, so I should have something of the paper crafting variety to show you tomorrow.

Hope everyone had a good weekend!  Can’t believe I now know someone so famous that she’s gone and got her name on Wikipedia!!  Brilliant or what!

What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday 188 – The Birthday Edition

Yes, it’s finally happened, after a few years of taking part in WOYWW the heavens and planets have finally aligned and WOYWW has fallen on the same date as my birthday.  So it’s Happy Birthday to Me, Happy Birthday to Me, Happy Birthday Dear Brendaaaaaaaaaaaaa, Happy Birthday To Me!

So help yourself to a cupcake before you leave and help me celebrate, they’re a bit psychedelic so I better not tell you what I put in the icing!  Actually I nicked the photo off the web so I’ve no idea what’s in them but they look really groovy!!

But on to more important matters, the desk.  A bit abandoned to be honest, I was doing some card making at the weekend as I’ve been practicing colouring images with my new Prisma’s but I was doing the colouring at the kitchen bar top while Andrew was busy in the kitchen.  I then came back upstairs and made a couple of cards with the newly coloured images.  I’ve tried both Odorless Mineral Spirits and Mineral Oil (like baby oil) and I prefer the mineral oil so far, I want to print out some digi images I have from Saturated Canary, I think they’d be good candidates for learning to colour with, and I will try both methods again just to be sure.

There’s some bakers twine on a peg with two more in a packet, some dimensionals, two Stampendous stamps, a few inks, some SU paper that I used on one of my cards.  The tin of pencils is there with a coloured in Penny Black Snowy image on top, the blender sticks are also on top, as is a scalpel.  The stamps I was using are over the back and centre stage is a sock!  I turned the heal and I’m heading down the foot but it’s slow going right now. Last week a few of you mentioned the rolls of ribbon on my desk, they’re been there since the end of November and are American Crafts Bakers Twine, they were on sale when I bought them and I need to figure out a permanent home for them!

We went cross country skiing again last Sunday so here’s a couple of photos, it was a dull day but I don’t mind that as on a sunny day the sun reflects off the snow and it’s incredibly bright.  We’re in danger of losing all the snow though (sorry Lisa’s daughter!) as a January thaw has kicked in, it’ll be between 4C and 9C this week, peaking out at 13C or 14C this Saturday, that almost 60F for those working in Fahrenheit!

That’s the lake where in the summer we spend hours on the water in our kayaks, doesn’t look very inviting at the moment, and here’s Andrew waiting for me to take some photos…

Don’t ask me what I got for my birthday as I won’t be opening cards and presents until I get home this afternoon, so no doubt that’ll be the subject of next week’s post!!  Off you trot to Julia’s for the linky list and I’ll be round for a bit of cake and a cuppa in a while.

An American Four Day Weekend

Otherwise known as Thanksgiving.  We were having beef for dinner on Thursday, eschewing the popular turkey as that’s what we have for Christmas.  We were going to have an early dinner, a lunch really, but we woke up to temperatures 19F higher than normal, blue sky and sunshine, so we hit the park for a wonderful long walk instead.

 

 

 

 

 

Back on the home front we had ourselves a modest Thanksgiving dinner…… the beef, roasted to perfection, served with roast potatoes, roast parsnips, cabbage, carrots, green beans, cauliflower and creamed leeks!  And the red wine and thyme gravy on the side.  Plus of course, the pie.  Pecan in this house.  Homemade.

 

 

 

I made a couple of individual ones this year, along with the larger one.  Like the dinner, just enough for two!

As it turned out, we were very thankful indeed for that lovely warm, sunny day, as we woke to this 0n Friday morning…

 

 

And worse, this on Sunday morning…

 

 

But in between, we managed to put all of the Christmas lights on the front and back of the house and take down all the inside fall decorations and have a good clean and tidy up.  On Saturday we ventured out to the shops for a few things, not busy at all as I did a lot of online shopping on Black Friday!  Won’t catch me getting up at 5am to wait in line, no siree!  We also came back home with a Christmas tree, so that’s now sitting in the nook, in it’s stand, waiting for inspiration to strike.

And I thought if we’re in for a penny then we might as well be in for a pound (or dollar, substitute as necessary!) and go the whole hog…

 

 

But I suppose you were probably expecting that!

Thunder In The Air Pt 2

Ah, the mighty B17.  Introduced in 1938 By Boeing and finally fully retired by The Brazilian Air Force 30 years later in 1968,  although the USAAF rendered the plane obsolete soon after WWII.  Truth be told, there probably wasn’t that many left out of the more than 12,700 built.  Despite the moniker of The Flying Fortress, a name it earned due to the fact that it could take quite a punishing beating and still make it home,  their losses were quite catastrophic when they were first introduced.  Having said that, by the end of the war these planes and their crews were living legends.  The B-17 established itself as a superb weapons system, dropping more bombs than any other U.S. aircraft in World War II.  Of the 1.5 million metric tons of bombs dropped on Germany by US aircraft, 640,000 tons were dropped from B-17s.  But the first 20 B17’s delivered to the RAF in early 1940 completely failed to hit their targets and by September of that year they had lost 8 of the planes in combat or to accidents and there were also many recorded instances of aborts due to mechanical problems.  These early planes were the B17C’s, the B17E started arriving back in the UK in May of 1942 and fitted with a revolutionary new bomb site the true potential of this plane finally became a reality.

[The Liberty Belle, now flies out of Tulsa, Oklahoma]

This next plane is The Thunderbird, now stationed at Galveston in Texas, she came a heck of a long way to participate in our show!  You can see here just how big these mighty beasts are, they’re absolutely huge……. until you get inside them that is!  And then you realise  just how incredibly tiny and cramped they really are.  But then they didn’t have to be huge, the average crew member back in the 40’s was about 5’6″, weighed less than 9 stone and the saddest part of all….. their average age was just 20.

Inside the cockpit, looks a bit more complicated than my Ford Focus I have to say!

I think this shot shows quite emphatically just how narrow the fuselage really is.  That walkway between the bombs is just 5″ wide, it’s almost the same width as my dainty size 5 feet!

Immediately through the bomb chamber is where the two side gunners would be.  The 5″ walkway continues to the left, around the gun cartridges but you also have to stoop and put all your weight over to the right as the side of the plane curve inwards, it was almost impossible for me to navigate and I’m right on the money in terms of height and weight in relation to the crew that this plane was designed for, I’m ah, just not 20 any more!!  The two waist gunner positions are offset as there wasn’t the room for them to stand side by side and operate the guns, it’s quite staggering just how little room there actually is in these planes.

These are the bomb doors from underneath, looking up into the bomb chamber.  You can see the rope walkway that I was just about to cross in the earlier picture.

The “Aluminum Overcast” B17 from Wisconsin.  With bomber squads numbering close to 1,000 planes strong as they set off for enemy territory it must have indeed looked like a huge aluminum overcast in the skies.

This is the second Texas based plane, with a name like The Texas Raiders I don’t suppose she’d be based anywhere else really!  Her first flight was in October 2009 after a full seven and a half year restoration and at a cost of almost $500,000, all completed entirely by volunteers, even the fund raising.  She is currently considered the best fully restored B17 on the flying circuit today.

Hhm, I feel pretty stupid right about now because I forgot to get the name of this one!

EDIT:  Found her, she’s The Sentimental Journey out of Mesa, Arizona!

And finally, the last two photos.  This one I showed you on Wednesday with me and the flight crew of The Memphis Belle from the 1990 movie of the same name, now based in Upper New York State.  I could never resist a guy in uniform I tell ya!

And here’s The Belle herself, she sure is a pretty lady.

Thunder In The Air

I know I’ve harped on about the weather a lot this summer, and especially about the thunderstorms, but before you all run away screaming, let me just say that this isn’t a weather related post!  But it does involve thunder in the air, but of a good kind, the kind of thunder generated by propellers and piston engines as eight, yes eight!, B17 Flying Fortress WWII bombers took to the skies at the same time creating more than a little Thunder Over Michigan.  Yes, this post is all about the fantastic air display we went to last weekend, and I have so much to show you and so much to tell you that it’s going to be a two parter!, and if I can’t pare the photos down any more it might even turn in to a three part post!  I warn you now, this is an incredibly photo heavy post, and I make no excuses or apologies for that.

Andrew and I have been fixtures at this display for quite a number of years, we’ve been to other air displays both here and in England but this one is etched in to our hearts and we hate to miss it, we’ve even cut a holiday a day short so we could make it back to Detroit for one of the days of the show (it’s a two day event), and I already know the dates of next years show too!  The charm of Thunder Over Michigan is really quite simple, it attracts a huge number of piston engined planes and it has a worthy reputation of a “warbird show”.  Sure it has jets too, sometimes some really interesting ones from the 50’s and 60’s and there’s always the modern F16 Fighting Falcon and F18 Hornet to thrill the crowd with their power and speed.  And every other year they also manage to snag the Blue Angels Navy Display team, also flying F18’s, which bolsters the attendance figures quite significantly, but for Andrew and I it’s always about the props and the pistons!

The show is held at Willow Run airport, about 20 minutes South of us, which in itself has a tremendous war time history.  It was a Ford engine production plant given over to the production of the B24 Liberator bomber during WWII, the famous “bomber an hour” plant where for the first time on US soil Japanese production techniques were utilised in the building of the planes.  The most significant of which was Takt Time, which controlled the output depending on the input requirements.  Takt Time dictates that if a customer places an order for an item at a rate of one a day, then your production output has to be one a day to meet demand, or in laymans terms, you can take 8 hours to build that item.  If two customers order the item your production times do not double, they half, so in order to meet demand you now have to produce two items a day, so the items can now take no longer than 4 hours to build, otherwise you won’t meet demand.  The demand placed on the Willow Run plant meant a completed B24 bomber had to roll off the production line every single hour!  They said it couldn’t be done, they said it was impossible, but all the nay sayers were proved wrong in spectacular fashion.  The Liberator has four engines, so that meant each one had to be built in just 15 minutes, two wings at half an hour each and so on!  Quite, quite amazing.  And do you know who built these planes?  America was by this time heavily involved in the war effort, many of her young men had signed up, just as in the UK, and just as in the UK it was the women who manned the factories and the women of America who built the B24, one hour at a time, 8,700 of them in total.

Enough of the history, on to the photos!  I’ve decided that the first post will be all the “other” aircraft present, I’ll save all the B17 shots for the second post.  It’s quite a feat to see the eight of them parked on the runway and eight in the air at the same time as it represents exactly half of all B17’s left flying in the world today!  There are others undergoing restoration by dedicated groups of volunteers, but each plane takes an incredible amount of cash and an amazing 9 years to restore!

So, the cute photo first!  I always try to find a cute angle for at least one of my shots and I found it this year on a 1942 Beechcraft:

Looks a bit startled does it not?  I think I must have caught it napping!

And the fun shot too, this is the highly polished nose cone of a Texan, a two seater training plane used extensively during and after WWII.

These two pictures are of a quite rare DC-7 passenger plane from the 1950’s, one of the first large scale production planes to carry paying passengers around the States, Canada and the Carribbean.  50% of them were bought by Eastern Airlines operating out of Miami, very few of them survive.  This one made two one hour flights each day carrying fare paying show goers, I would have been one of them had I had $300 to spare!  The old engines required “pre-oiling” before firing up properly and I did wonder what those fare paying passengers thought of the torrents of blue smoke belching out of each engine on start up!  Bet there were a fair few wishing they could get off!

Ah, the Harvards and Texans, here are some of my favourite planes.  Two seater trainers built and used extensively during and after WWII by North American Aviation.  Essentially they’re exactly the same planes but they were known by different names by the different countries and military organizations who bought them.  They were known as T6 Texans by the USAF, SNJ’s by the US Navy and Harvards by the British and Commonwealth countries.  The yellow ones here are a Canadian Display Team, hence the RAF insignia on the side, so they’re called Harvards, and the aluminium/multicoloured ones are the Screaming Rebels Display Team from the US so they’re known as Texans!  Got that!

Yep, I bet she does!

Staying with the prop planes I hope you all know what theses are right?  Tell me you do!! Lol.   These are typically Andrew’s favourite planes the P-51 Mustang, also designed and built by North American Aviation in just a staggering 117 days after a frantic plea for a fast, capable, fighter plane and bomber escort from the Ministry of Defence and The Royal Air Force.  The plane utilizes the now legendary Rolls Royce Merlin engine and its sound is like nothing you’ll ever hear, I can pick out an airborne Mustang before I get a good visual  such is the distinctive note of its single engine.  They are an incredible piece of machinery, there’s no doubt about that.

The planes for this event come from far and wide, from all over the US and Canada too, it’s amazing what turns up here!  I have absolutely no idea what this next one is but it’s paint job was interesting to say the least, really gives the game away don’t you think?

And staying with the same general region, there was this one from Poland too, again, I don’t remember what it was but I was rather struck with the paint job!  The metal bracket wouldn’t be there for flight, it was just to keep the tail fin steady.

An Air Force C130 Hercules, an amazing beastie and such an incredible, hard working one too.  There are Hercs on every continent on this earth, from the deserts of Africa to a National Geographic outpost in the Antarctic, they are the unsung heroes of the aviation world, the work horses, and what beautiful heavy horses they are too!  Here’s Andrew modeling one of the four engines on this plane:

Now here’s a jet engined plane we both love, the Russian built MIG, active and quite dominant during both the Korean and Vietnam Wars.  This little baby is super fast with a glowing red afterburner, and it very maneuverable too, it normally flies during the afternoon but for some reason this year it stayed on the ground, at least on the day that we visited.  Last year they did a superb re-enactment of a ‘Vietnam era ground battle including US support from a Huey helicopter, and just when you though that America had won the day again, in came the enemy MIG!  But the US was not done yet and called on an amazing Phantom jet to see off the MIG!  Quite a display!

As much as I love the prop planes I had to laugh when I saw that the MIG now has “Props Are For Boats!” emblazoned down one wing!  As all of these plane are relatively rare I’m sure they all do the show circuits together and I’m pretty sure they’re likely to be all good friends, despite what they write on their planes!

This was rather wild too, an F100, one of the very first jet powered fighter planes.  But it had a very dubious reputation, lots of test pilots and military officials just didn’t like the look of the test and wind tunnel data, in fact some test pilots refused to fly it, their fears becoming reality more than once as the jets proved through violent crashes and loss of life that they were not yet fully airworthy.  This one though did fly for us later in the day, I’m sure they’re all as safe as houses now, those that are left that is:

The flying display kicked off at 12 Noon exactly in typical understated American fashion with the Misty Blues, an all female sky diving team based here in Ann Arbor Michigan.  And as an invited singer started on the first bars of The Star Spangled Banner, the lead diver unfurled a huge American flag while the crowd went nuts.  I can’t imagine the windage dragging against her.  About 10ft from the ground she jettisoned the flag and came in to land perfectly on her mark.

The three Mustangs were up first followed by the F16 Fighting Falcon display.  While the Falcon was still airborne it was joined  by two of the three Mustangs in what is know as The Heritage Flight, a small display of aircraft from WWII to modern times saluting the sacrifices made by many for the freedom and safety of the rest of us.  While these passes are being made you could here a pin drop in the crowd, it’s an incredibly moving moment and there’s more than a few sniffles to be heard.  It doesn’t help that they play a piece of music called We Remember, a very poignant track written especially for this flight.  I’ve linked the song name if you’d like to listen to it, it actually links to a video of one of the very first Heritage Flights and they have it interspersed with real flying footage from WWII, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m one of those folks sniffling away and trying desperately to swallow down the lump in my throat.  Both my brothers served in The Royal Air Force and as a teenager I visited them on base both in the UK and in Germany, I think this is what started my love affair with the skies.

After all the emotion of The Heritage Flight, the Harvards and Texans take to the air with their display of formation flying and multicoloured smoke.  Another one of the reasons that I like these planes is that they fly slow enough to get decent photos, and the smoke just adds to the atmosphere.

And now we have the ground/air battle.  I haven’t told you about this yet but this show also hosts the largest WWII re-enactment seen anywhere in the US and every year they re-stage an allied battle against the Germans with troops, vehicles, tanks, motorbikes, armoured cars, anti aircraft guns and an amazing amount of personnel.  The battle rages with the guns blazing and the troops moving back and for, each trying to push the other line further back.  There are wounded with medics attending to them and shouts and orders and then the German tanks move in and the Allies are now surrounded.  But a distress call has already been placed and while the Germans are busy with their prisoners and their machinery they fail to notice the two incoming Mustangs who attack with a vengeance, scattering the enemy and immobilizing their equipment.

After that it’s all over bar the shouting as the US troops come in from behind to save the day, completely cutting off the German retreat and turning the tables on them.  It’s quite a spectacular show and it got better in the afternoon when the B17’s also took to the skies and under the protection of the Mustangs they flew in low and slow with their bomb doors open simulating a bombing raid over enemy territory.  But I’ll save all of that, and all the other B17 photos for another day.

Have Ski’s, Will Travel

Birthday celebrations continued on Sunday, in the way all good birthdays should as we treated ourselves to a wonderful breakfast buffet at a local restaurant.  I’m fast coming to the realisation that two or three cheaper meals spread over a couple of days is preferably to one big, expensive meal.  It makes the birthday feel longer and more special.

We awoke Sunday morning to find our plans had been thwarted by seriously cold temperatures and cloudy skies, hence the leisurely breakfast out.  We had initially planned to be up early, have a quick bite at home and then head out for a bit of skiing before turning up at the restaurant for the brunch buffet breakfast/lunch thingie, but at  -11C, wind chill and no sun it would not have been pleasant.  It did promise to brighten up later, so we changed the day around a bit.

And it did brighten up too, the sun came out, the blue sky reappeared, the wind diminished and the temperature rose to a manageable -6C, so we put the newly waxed ski’s in the car and drove 2 miles down the road to our local State Park and hit the cross country trails.  Hard work I know, harder than downhill I think , although I do like the exhilaration, a lot.  The reason we do XCountry in the winter is really quite simple, we live in SE Michigan, a region noted for its winter snow, but not for its hills.  In fact, moving here made us realise just how hilly it was in Cambridgeshire, my husbands home county in the UK!  That’s how flat SE Michigan is.  There are places to ski downhill but they are all pretty much “Up North” , and Up North means travelling in potentially bad weather, paying for petrol, food and lodging somewhere, paying lots of money for ski rental and lift passes, and being stuck on the slopes with hundreds of other people of all ages and abilities, not to mention all levels of stupidity too, if you get my drift!!  It’s great once in a while without a shadow of a doubt, and I do love the freedom a pair of ski’s gives you in the winter.

We bought our cross country ski’s almost 15 years ago and have used them most winters ever since.  They’re cheaper to buy than downhills and because you don’t need a hill, it means we can ski virtually anywhere… from our snow covered sub division streets, to the park we walked in on Saturdays post, the park we kayak at locally and our new favourite, Mayberry State Park, which as I’ve mentioned is only two miles away.  There are just so many more opportunities local to us to get out of the house for a few hours with these type of skis than there ever are for downhill.

So it was up hill, down dale, across the meadows and through the woods we went…. twice!  The conditions were perfect and the sun was out, but believe me I paid for it this morning!  Think I’ll still be paying for it tomorrow morning too!

A Blue Sky Birthday

I awoke this morning a whole year older than I was yesterday.  Funny how that happens isn’t it?  Could have sworn the very same thing happened around this time last year too!

Anyway, the day was far too beautiful to pass up, so after breakfast, cards, presents and phone calls we pulled on the warm clothes and hiking boots and had ourselves the most wonderful walk over Northville Downs.  Last Thursday night we had our first proper snow fall this season when six glorious, pure, white inches fell from the sky and turned dull gray into pristine white.  This morning it was cold, but with a stunning blue sky and a warming sun.  Blue skies in January are rather rare in this part of the world, a blue sky on your birthday that also fell on a weekend, well, that was just  rather special.

It was rather chilly (-10C) so we wrapped up well with hats, gloves, scarves, and more layers than you could shake a stick at.  Even the little trail markers were wearing their hats!

Can you see any wrinkles?  Are there any more grey hairs??  Do I look any older!!!?

The snow had arrived without the hint of a breeze and had adhered itself to the trees and branches like little dry puffs of cotton wool.  It was very photogenic so grab a cuppa, you might be here a while!

We usually cross country ski here, and will do again soon, but I really wanted to walk today so we’ll head out tomorrow with the skis instead.  Quite a few of these tracks here have been made by skiers, the snow is perfect for it, wonderful and fluffy, not hard and crusty!

We found the most amazing conifer, a Spruce I think, that was such a perfect Christmas Tree shape, it even came ready decorated with beautiful little crystal icicles hanging off its branches.

Hmm, is she a Hobbit, or are they really tall reeds??

It wasn’t all quiet reflection and birdsong though…. this was the scene just across the road.  A little hill with the snow packed solid and a layer of ice on it from all the sledders, was heaving with people.  We could here the whoops and the screams from the far end of the woods, it sounded like joy, exhilaration and pure fear in equal measure!  But it’s great to see families out together enjoying the snow and the sunny day.

Wind patterns in the snow.  Very beautiful.  Just like my amazing blue sky birthday.