Hummingbirds

We put out the hummingbird feeder yesterday, to assist in their fall migration south, and like a new restaurant the customers were slow to come...today, however, the words out (good reviews I guess) and they are swarming, eight or more at a time! Note that the feeder is now half empty...and that is just since yesterday afternoon!

Trying to take pictures of hummingbirds requires almost the speed of their wings, which is around 54 beats per second! One second they are swarming around the feeder, fighting for space and a prime table at the restaurant...then the next, by some unheard warning they all fly off in a flurry of beating wings.

This arrival and departure occurs often, no pattern, just often...which leads you to wonder why? Where do they go, perhaps another feeder? Or, perhaps to rest, we have seen them just sitting in our bougainvillea baskets and up in the tree down by the lake.

Trying to identify them is another issue, there are several types...Ruby Throated, Green Violet-ear, Anna’s, and more that we’ve not identified. They move so fast and the time on the feeder is so chaotic that identification is difficult.

We sit on the rockers, just a few feet away with our binoculars and camera, and enjoy these beautiful little creatures.

Great fun to watch.

Ok...let’s try a book review...I haven’t tried that yet.

Riders of the Wind was written by Robert F DeBurgh. He has written an engaging book about early aviation, from 1920’s to 1940. The book was given to me by a close friend and it languished in the guest bedroom up at the lake house for over a year. At a recent family reunion he asked me how I enjoyed the book. With some degree of embarrassment I had to admit that I hadn’t read it yet...”but I will before next year’s reunion!”

And I have.

With summer’s heat slowly breaking, replaced by a low pressure area off the Texas coast, bringing low ceilings (the clouds hanging in the tree tops) and gentle rains that dripped off the boat house dock, I finally picked up the book.

While historically a blend of fact and fiction it had potential, however, started off ever so slowly. Charlie Cross is our main character, who taught himself to fly on his father’s farm in New Jersey. Now as a lifelong pilot I found that a little hard to believe (remembering my early experiences...with an instructor no less!). Anyway he did (in the book) and the story goes on through his career, marriage and starting an airline that somehow survived the Depression and ends as WWII erupts.

Flying a dizzying array of aircraft I was constantly “Googling” them to get a better feel for what he was flying.

Mixing real and imaginary people (he marries a cousin of Anne Morrow...Charles Lindberg’s wife), the book explores the early airmail and airline days. Charlie and Doretta emerge as early pioneers in aviation, he starting the airline, she an early pilot starting a flight school and rising to Captain in Charlie’s airline. As if this wasn’t enough they are enticed to do early route exploration work in Brazil...this is one of the best parts!

All is going well, Charlie and Doretta’s businesses grow, she constantly pushing the boundaries of women in aviation until the depression hits...their survivors and they gather all their employees around them into an extended family and suffer the pains and joys of an extended family.

And then the war arrives!

Winds of Fire is the sequel, and I’ve ordered it, and it will cover the war years up into the 1960’s.

Give it a try (especially if you like aviation) you’ll enjoy it!

Retired....really?

I am beginning to think that consulting is like a windstorm. For a while the skies are clear and the wind calm...then off in the distance you see the dust starting to kick up. Before you know it swirls around you blowing everything around and you’re scurrying around trying to keep everything together.

Well that’s the way it’s been lately. I had been busy earlier in the year, then the summer doldrums set in, no rain and record setting temperatures. Suddenly my lazy days disappeared like little “dust devils” announcing the coming storm.

And so it blew...for three weeks I flew around this country like a leaf in the storm...here then there, back and forth until I finally came to rest...home again.

Actually it was great fun.

The grand finale was working on a spill response drill offshore San Diego, using a C-130. The goal was to simulate spraying a dispersant over an oil spill, using water.

Simple you say?

Well to get permission we had to get approval from the Coast Guard, U.S. Navy, California Fish and Game and the Federal Aviation Authority. All agencies were very supportive so it wasn’t really all that bad...the two days of flying went very smoothly.

If you’ve read any of the “Rambling of a Retiree” you will notice this blogger has had a diverse year...”oh yea!!”