After we had finished registering voters in El Paso, we headed east along Interstate 10. Here we are parked on the “pad of shame” at Fort Stockton:
(As with self-checkout, self-service aircraft fueling is where I learn that there are no jobs with required skill levels lower than my own.) Nobody was around mid-day Saturday so we proceeded to Sonora, Texas (KSOA) where there was also nobody around, but we were able to take the crew car to some superb barbecue:
(Not worthy of inclusion in Austin and Lockhart, Texas: 10 barbecue restaurants in 72 hours, but still great compared to what’s available in 95 percent of the U.S.)
At T82 (Fredericksburg, Texas), which has an on-field restaurant and an on-field hotel, we discovered that Bidenflation has pinched the economy so badly that almost everyone was forced to drive a small two-seat imported car, some that were decades-old:
I was unwise enough to contact Austin Approach and the controller vectored us halfway to Mexico despite our low altitude. We did enjoy seeing the Radha Madhav Dham, however:
Radha Madhav Dham is one of the largest Hindu Temple and Ashram in the U.S. and is widely known for welcoming hundreds of visitors every day, regardless of their backgrounds, to its religious services, family festivals, and devotional retreats. Located in the rolling hills southwest of Austin, Radha Madhav Dham is an integral member of the local interfaith community, working with other faith-based institutions to provide charitable works and strengthen the common bonds between all religions.
In addition to the spiritual development of human souls, Radha Madhav Dham actively supports the charitable activities of its parent organization JKP Worldwide which is deeply involved in improving the material welfare of the underprivileged in society.
It would have been great to land the helicopter in the grass and see if they could explain the “common bonds” between Hinduism and Islam as interpreted by Jaish-e-Mohammed and also to ask for donations to help the material welfare of underprivileged followers of Lashkar-e-Taiba. However, we wanted to be on time for dinner at Casa Medina (“city of the Prophet”) near the Conroe, Texas airport (KCXO) and The Woodlands (see Atlas Shrugged in Houston (The Woodlands)). Conroe is also near where Mexican national Francisco Oropeza shot his Honduran neighbors. We’d previously flown over what looks like it might eventually be Mr. Oropeza’s taxpayer-funded home in the U.S.:
Despite our humble piston background, we were received like royalty at Galaxy FBO:
We returned for breakfast at the FBO’s upstairs restaurant and discovered a shocking scene of inequality:
Our emergency phone call to Elizabeth Warren was not returned.
When I lived in Texas, I flew into Conroe a number of times on dog-rescue flights. Always treated wonderfully. Somewhere, I have a pic of my Jabiru light sport dwarfed in the hangar next to all the jets!
What exactly happens if you on flight following, outside of B/C/D air space and refuse the controllers instructions? Sometimes I get “2176X advise 20 degrees left for traffic” and sometimes I get just a straight command, “2176X fly heading 270.” I’m VFR so as long as I am outside of B, C, or D airspace, it’s all advisory?
I think there is a rule somewhere that says you are supposed to comply with ATC. If there is a reason you can’t comply you can just say unable. If you don’t feel like complying most likely the controller will get frustrated with you and he will say squawk vfr frequency change approved. Flight following is voluntary from Atc’s perspective too!
Do ALL of your posts need include snarky useless political rants…? How far you’ve declined Phil since I knew you at MIT. #sad
I haven’t been reading this blog for that long, so I’d really appreciate if one of the frequent critics could point me to posts made during the halcyon days when everything was better.
Whenever I select a random post from, say, 2005 or 2008, they aren’t that different.
We live in political times of unparalleled stupidity and incompetence. Inserting political opinions keeps you fluent and able to contradict the madness when confronted by it.
This is especially important for apolitical people. I had been one of them and largely unable to respond to certain woke events in 2020 in a software org because I didn’t know the language and the rules by which the game was played.
Consider yourself lucky if you can stay always apolitical.
@Hal, where is political content here? Joke about “decades – old small imported cars”? Stop male chauvinistic habits and join your wife’s or a significant others grocery shopping for few months, you’ll see inflation. I think this is Dr. Freud’s moment on your part, accusing others of politicizing while evaluating everything from political point of view.
Hal you are a dumb dumb!
@Hal, when was the last time you listened to NPR or watched CNN? They inject politics and Woke ideologies in every-single-segment they air. Even worse, they deliver the topic without giving any view or perspective of the opposite side.
As one simple example, they will talk over and over about how “poor” immigrants from South America are taking risks crossing the border and having to pay smugglers all their life saving to make it to the USA, and that those are human beings in need of help and better future. OK, fair enough, but aren’t there other human beings from other poor countries that deserve a better future too? Why don’t NPR and CNN and the woke demand of our government fly over folks from Sudan and other African countries? What about folks from Guam or Puerto Rico? Should those have a higher priority over folks from South America?
NPR, CNN, and The Woke insult my master’s degree in computer science from a no-name university, I’m puzzled that they are not insulting your education from MIT, but Philip’s blog is.
I’m wondering what version of me Hal met at MIT! If memory serves, in the 1990s I was best known as a fanatic (Winston Churchill: “Someone who won’t change his mind and who won’t change the subject”) regarding the World Wide Web. Starting in 1993 I told everyone who would listen (and many who wouldn’t) that the browser would replace all desktop applications. You’d be collaborating on word processing documents… IN YOUR BROWSER. (One thing I got wrong: I didn’t envision video editing in the browser! That was my canonical example of something that would stay as a desktop app.)
I was politically out of step with the Righteous (who weren’t quite as righteous) then as well. I was against Affirmative Action, for example, clinging to the discredited 1970s philosophy of Equal Opportunity.
The first thing I read that Phil wrote was “Phil and Alex’s Guide to Web Publishing” maybe 25 years ago. Chapter 1 is titled “Envisioning a Site that Won’t Be Featured at suck.com”. The acerbic wit may have come after college, but even if so, it is not exactly new.