Category: Travel Stories

Mostly these are written for friends and family.

A light airplane route out of Florida to the Great Smoky Mountains

by philg

For Floridians hoping to cool off, the nearest mountains are the Appalachians in TN/NC, i.e., the Great Smoky Mountains. It’s an 11-hour drive from Palm Beach County to Cherokee, NC, the southern gateway to Great Smoky Mountains National Park and a 12-hour drive to Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge, TN, the northern gateway and home to Dollywood. In a small airplane, however, the trip can be done in approximately 3.5 hours to KGKT (550 nm). A 3.5-hour flight in a vibrating noisy bathroom-free piston-powered airplane is too much for most pilots and nearly all passengers. Where to stop, then?

The simplest route from flat Florida to mostly-flat eastern Tennessee bends around the west of the Appalachian Mountains via Chattanooga. Why go over these mountains, which generate all kinds of clouds and bumps, when you can instead relax on windward side, entirely free of turbulence and with a much wider range of altitudes to choose from? (as shown below, the FAA considers any altitude lower than 6,600′ to be risky with respect to terrain)

On our way to Oshkosh, however, we enjoyed a rare day on which thunderstorms were not forecast, except on both coasts of Florida (see Garmin Pilot app screen shot from halfway through our first leg). The winds aloft were forecast to be light and therefore there was no risk of powerful downdrafts on the lee side of the mountains. So we planned a scenic crossing of the Appalachians with a first stop in Lake City, Florida (KLCQ). The kids learned to appreciate our pool table by playing on a table with trashed felt using cues with no tips.

Our next stop was KDNL, the “downtown” airport for Augusta, Georgia. There is a flight school on the field and the learning continues even in the men’s room, however Ketanji’s panel of biologists might define the term “men”:

We hopped in the courtesy car and headed downtown to the Morris Museum of Art, “the oldest museum in the country that is specifically devoted to the art and artists of the American South.” It is situated on an attractive river walk and right next to a good restaurant, Augustino’s, within the Marriott hotel.

One of the paintings above is John Steuart Curry’s Hoover and the Flood, celebrating the heroics of America’s only engineer-turned-President, the most skilled technocrat ever to attempt technocratic management of the U.S. economy, in the context of the Climate Change-induced Great Mississippi Flood of 1927.

The final leg required a climb to 10,500′ and weaving to stay out of the clouds and bumps. The forecast was accurate regarding the lack of thunderstorms, but there was still some pop-up convection that made an indirect route seem wiser.

A Cirrus about 15 miles north of us apparently went into one of the above small rain showers and reported “severe turbulence” to Air Traffic Control (“large and abrupt changes in altitude and/or attitude and, usually, large variations in indicated airspeed. The airplane may momentarily be out of control. Occupants of the airplane will be forced violently against their seat belts.”). A combination of NEXRAD and ATC kept us out of anything upsetting. Upon landing, we found that our Enterprise Cadillac(!) sedan had been pulled up next to our airplane by the alert line staff at KGKT.

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Pride Month in Denver

by philg

Working through my backlog of summer photos, I stopped off in Denver during Pride Month. In traveling from California to Colorado, both states in which people say that they Follow Science, hardly anyone was wearing a mask:

I stayed in Arvada, which is 90 percent white and 0.9 percent African American according to Wikipedia. Nonetheless, a sign downtown informed me that this was a “Community of Color”

Someone with a commitment to social justice and an air rifle may have developed this sign starting from “Community Banks of Colorado”. Hanging a rainbow flag was popular in a variety of locations around Denver (also the rugged Toyota just for fun!):

Considering that half of the nation says it wants to stop the spread of COVID-19, the airport seemed to be at or beyond its design capacity:

As United Airlines was rapidly consuming Jet A, the company reminded me that we should all travel by sailboat as Greta Thunberg does:

Following a mask-free flight between the Science strongholds of Denver and Atlanta, I learned that some people are concerned enough about aerosol COVID-19 to wear a surgical mask, but not concerned enough to avoid the crowded airport or the Chick fil-A line:

Having the Garmin Pilot app running while on a commercial airliner yields some unsettling messages:

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San Diego trip report

by philg

Digging through the summer photo backlog, a report on a June trip to San Diego where I slaved away as an expert witness on a software case in federal court (the jury stuck around to be interviewed by the attorneys after the trial and said that they understood and enjoyed my testimony!).

The local public library sends travelers off from FLL with free music and movies:

If you don’t download these on the airport WiFi, JetBlue will prepare you for California’s state religion on the flight out with movies classified as “Pride Picks”:

I saw more homeless people, pit bulls, homeless people with pit bulls, pit bull poop, and trash in the street in my first two days in San Diego than during nearly a year in the West Palm-FLL-Miami area. Here are a couple of sidewalk-dwellers just steps from where the laptop class enjoys $50/person meals:

San Diego presents a huge challenge to those who believe that a market economy is efficient. There are gleaming new skyscrapers next to lots used for surface parking or other low-value activities. If the land isn’t valuable, why would people build up 15 or 20 stories? If the land is valuable, why is so much of it still not developed in any significant way?

Whatever the real estate values might be, one great thing about California is the Chinese food. While waiting for a table at the San Diego outpost of Din Tai Fung, we learned that Lucid has dog mode:

The shopping mall reminded us to observe Rainbow Flagism:

Back downtown, the official city art shows Mexican-Americans taking the bus while rich white people yacht in the background:

My favorite images from the trip depict a debate between saving Mother Earth via light rail or via battery-electric vehicles that turned violent:

I suspect that the Tesla 3 in the image was rented to the driver for $390 per week by Uber, as was a Tesla 3 in which I rode (“horrifyingly bumpy and uncomfortable compared to the Hyundai Sonata I was in yesterday,” I wrote to a friend at the time). The drive says that he must do 30 trips per week in order to keep the car and that this corresponds to 1.5 days of Ubering. I posted about this on Facebook, which helpfully added some editorial content of its own: “Explore Climate Science Info”. In the same vein, Google ran a big animation for Juneteenth:

Californians did manage to steal some great land from the Native Americans and Mexicans. Here’s some topiary:

Old Town featured a CDC reference work on how to prevent an aerosol respiratory virus with a cloth mask:

Compared to southeast Florida, it was much more common to see fully covered women:

Aside from observant Muslims, it was rare to see someone following the Science by wearing a mask, despite a raging COVID-19 epidemic at the time. A jammed street fair, with no masks:

It was outdoors, though, right? In my courthouse experience, only one juror and one chubby clerk wore masks. The guards in the lobby were unmasked. The judge was unmasked. More or less everyone in the building was unmasked. These folks will say that they’re preventing COVID-19 from spreading by behaving in a more scientific manner than residents of Florida, but I couldn’t figure out what they were doing differently.

Circling back to the observant Muslims depicted above… they were just a few steps from an official city-flown rainbow flag:

If they were to need to transact some business at the bank they would have to walk under the sacred symbol of Rainbow Flagism:

I recommend the Japanese Friendship Garden in Balboa Park:

But of course my favorite tourist attractive was the USS Midway, an aircraft carrier launched just as World War II was over. The ship is now a museum and Navy veterans, including aircrew, give fascinating lectures on how everything works.

San Diego is a great place to spend 7-10 days as a tourist, hitting all of the museums and parks while enjoying great weather and great food. If one were to live there, however, the contradictions would eventually begin to rankle. Why are there so many unhoused people if rich Californians say that they want to provide housing to the unhoused? Why isn’t there enough civic spirit and agreement that people will get organized to pick up trash and dog poop in their city? (Florida has almost no litter by comparison and dog pick-up bag dispensers are common anywhere that people want dog owners to clean up.) If California wants to welcome millions of migrants from conservative societies, which Californians say that they do, how does it make sense to have Rainbow Flagism as the state religion?

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One day in Green Bay, Wisconsin

by philg

If your mind and feet are burned out during a week of EAA AirVenture, one idea is to take a day off in Green Bay, Wisconsin, which is 45 minutes northeast. The Green Bay Packers have an interesting museum and do tours of their stadium:

Right next door is Titletown, a paradise for kids with a steep hill covered in real grass, live music, epic playgrounds, etc. All free. There is a great 5th floor restaurant with an outdoor terrace overlooking the stadium. Taverne in the Sky, part of the LodgeKohler hotel.

The National Railroad Museum is a few minutes away by car and has roughly 80 locomotives and cars to look at, plus a diesel-powered train to ride.

Finally, there is Cabela’s on the way home:

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Report on some masketology in Washington, D.C. and Bethesda, Maryland

by philg

This is a report on the coronapanic level during a late April trip to Washington, D.C. and Bethesda, Maryland (see previous post regarding the flight itself).

First, if coronapanic ever does end, the government invites you to think about all of the other bad things that could happen and “Make an Emergency Plan”:

But coronapanic hasn’t ended. In Northeast D.C., where shootings are a daily occurrence, faith in masks remains strong (nobody has read “Correlation Between Mask Compliance and COVID-19 Outcomes in Europe”?):

Here’s an establishment serving healthful beer, wine, and mixed drinks in an environment that is perfect for spreading SARS-CoV-2 variants. They explain that they enjoyed checking vaccine papers so much that they’re going to continue doing it (“Gotta give the Freedom Fighting Anti Vaxxers Something to Whine About”) even though it is no longer required by mayoral order.

Folks in DC and suburban Maryland have so many masks that they had trouble keeping track of them. Masks were some of the most common street litter in various locales.

What about in Northwest D.C.? Here are some photos from the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood (houses: $1-3 million). First, a street dining venue that is technically “outdoors” but also reminded customers that masks are required (between bites?):

The typical shop front door had signs in both English and Spanish, often referring to a government order from July 31, 2021. Here a worker cleaning the front door wears a mask in the outdoor heat (over 80 degrees):

Some miscellaneous images from the same neighborhood.

Despite the love of mask-wearing, COVID-19 seems to be raging among the Followers of Science right now. A cousin who is a clinical psychologist in D.C. restricted her practice to Zoom more than two years ago and has barely left her house. She explained that she couldn’t meet us because… she has COVID-19 right now. Her symptoms are similar in nature and severity to what unvaccinated friends suffered in 2020, but she attributes her survival to having been vaccinated. She would share the mystification of the following tweet:

https://twitter.com/SamPogono/status/1517986960786309122

My mom (nearly 88) and I attended what was supposed to be a 100-person Bat Mitzvah celebration. The hostesses put “vaccination required” prominently on the invitation. Nonetheless, multiple D.C.-area people guests failed to show up at the last minute because they were sick with COVID. Masks were not required at the gathering, but roughly half of the invulnerable teenagers attending wore masks (for four hours straight, while dancing, etc.) while only one or two of the older people, all enthusiastic Democrats (and therefore voters for politicians who order mask-wearing), wore masks. For privacy’s sake, I don’t want to show the kids, but here’s an adult with a rainbow mask:

My favorite photo from the trip is this Toyota Sienna with a “MINIVAN” vanity plate:

Related:

  • now that everyone in D.C. has COVID-19, the public health experts who live there are willing to think the unthinkable: “What Sweden Got Right About COVID” (Washington Monthly, 4/19/2022)
  • from the same date, “Correlation Between Mask Compliance and COVID-19 Outcomes in Europe”: Surprisingly, weak positive correlations were observed when mask compliance was plotted against morbidity (cases/million) or mortality (deaths/million) in each country (Figure 3). … While no cause-effect conclusions could be inferred from this observational analysis, the lack of negative correlations between mask usage and COVID-19 cases and deaths suggest that the widespread use of masks at a time when an effective intervention was most needed, i.e., during the strong 2020-2021 autumn-winter peak, was not able to reduce COVID-19 transmission. Moreover, the moderate positive correlation between mask usage and deaths in Western Europe also suggests that the universal use of masks may have had harmful unintended consequences.

D.C.’s most powerful politician says “everyone encouraged to wear a mask all the time”:

#MissionAccomplished! (at least in D.C./MD)

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Commercial air travel in the Mizelle Age

by philg

This is a report on a trip from PBI-DCA-PBI, April 21-24. Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle struck down the Biden Administration’s mask order on April 18. (Friends on Facebook have been continuously posting reminders that Judge Mizelle is “not qualified.” In other words, a confused 80-year-old is well qualified to be President of the U.S., but a sharp-minded 35-year-old cannot be a judge.)

The PBI airport still had a few “masks required signs”:

Most of the advertising at PBI was geared toward selling real estate to those fleeing the Lands of Lockdown:

I estimate that 15 percent of the waiting passengers were masked here in majority-Democrat Palm Beach County. Contrast to a friend who was simultaneously flying SFO to EWR (he’s been a righteous supporter of masks, Biden, lockdowns, etc., but somehow is still participating in COVID-19-spreading activities such as travel) who reported 85-90 percent voluntary mask compliance at SFO and only 10 percent masked in Newark. Being in the airport was, despite the lack of audio announcements and signs regarding masks, not as relaxing as it might have been. The PA system was freed up for frequent reminders regarding unattended baggage and TSA liquid policies.

We were welcomed onto the plane by an unmasked flight attendant. The Followers of Science row was directly behind me, but even though were going from mostly-Democrat Palm Beach County to all-Democrat Washington, D.C., only a small minority of passengers chose to wear masks. (In other words, they voted for politicians promising to impose mask orders, but when given the choice won’t wear a mask themselves.)

The flight was on time and passengers, except maybe for the two behind me and their brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters in Science, cheered when the flight attendant announced that masks were optional. I witnessed no air rage.

I don’t remember any real estate ads in the D.C. airport. Here’s one for the central planners, though. All that they have to do to beat inflation is picture themselves winning:

The percentage of masked passengers and workers at DCA was no higher than at PBI, despite DCA being located right next to the twin hearts of Science (Anthony Fauci’s office at NIH and Dr. Jill Biden’s office).

On the return trip, I noticed a legacy “face coverings required” sign at DCA as well as a depressing Chick-fil-A (closed due to it being a Sunday):

Once again, JetBlue was on time and everyone was in a good mood. The lady sitting next to me had moved from Bethesda to Florida two months ago “for the freedom”. She and her husband (in “wealth management”) had returned for a wedding. They were not wearing masks.

We’re still left with a big question regarding each masked traveler. If he/she/ze/they is concerned enough about COVID-19 to wear a mask voluntarily, why isn’t he/she/ze/they concerned enough to stay home? Nobody held a gun to his/her/zir/their head and forced him/her/zir/them to travel by commercial airline or, indeed, to travel at all. The answer can’t be “an N95 mask protects against all viral attacks” because (1) not all of the masked travelers are wearing N95 masks, and (2) countries that imposed forced N95 masking, e.g., Germany, still had exponential plagues (i.e., two-way N95 masking failed to stop COVID-19 so what hope is there for one-way masking?).

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The Disney World cathedral: perfect for astronomers

by philg

One of my favorite stops on a central Florida trip earlier this month was the Basilica of Mary, Queen of the Universe (see also Wikipedia). It is tough to conceive of a more dramatic contrast with the theme parks. For starters, it’s free and you don’t have to wait in line,

For folks who love astronomy, this is the ultimate chapel:

The approach from the parking lot….

Once inside,

The stained glass covers the good old days when everyone got along:

Life was simpler before the Covidocracy. Moses stopped at 10 rules and didn’t revise them every week. And, although these rules were downloaded from the cloud, Moses did not claim that they were determined by Science.

Reviewing these windows makes me wonder if churches in the Northeast, California, and Illinois should be updated with stained glass panels depicting the lives of the modern saints, i.e., public health officials and governors who kept people safe via lockdown, mask, and school closure orders.

When you’re done with the cathedral, there is another church next door devoted to the god that most Americans worship, i.e., an outlet mall.

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Report on a Southern Secession (Buckhead City)

by philg

On our return from Denver, we stopped overnight in Buckhead, the rich area of Atlanta that was annexed by the city in 1952 and that soon hopes to vote on seceding into “Buckhead City.” Our local host explained that the secession wouldn’t starve Atlanta of significant tax revenue, e.g., for schools. The big difference would be that Buckhead could fund and run its own police force (see “In Atlanta’s Buckhead Neighborhood, Rising Crime Fuels Move to Secede” (WSJ): “Potential loss of the city’s wealthiest and whitest area spurs debate as officials move to address homicides and property crime”).

From what I observed, Buckhead already essentially does fund and run its own police force. The restaurant where we dined and the hotel where I stayed both had hired off-duty police officers, clad in bulletproof vests and wearing guns, to make sure that roving thugs didn’t rob all of the customers. Immigrants from Caracas, Venezuela will feel right at home.

Here’s one from the only part of Umi, our inland sushi destination, that wasn’t too dark to photograph:

Faith in cloth masks is alive and well in Atlanta. Here are a couple of signs encountered on 1/29/2022:

Atlanta adheres to the proven-by-Science principle that if restaurant customers are wearing masks when walking in the door, it doesn’t matter how close together unrelated parties sit once unmasked and talking, drinking, or eating (we saw some counter-serve places with long communal tables that were completely jammed). The FBO where we parked had the obligatory signs reminding pilots and passengers that Uncle Joe’s 1/21/2021 order regarding masks at airports applied even to the world of private planes. Nobody inside was wearing a mask, however.

Our local host was in favor of secession. In his opinion, the city government was incompetent and plagued by nepotism.

(I am not sure how Georgia can compete with neighbors Florida and Tennessee in the long run. The state income tax rate is 5.75 percent (compare to 0% in FL and TN).)

Related:

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New Orleans update

by philg

The Cirrus Vision Jet is a great machine, but one thing that it can’t do is go non-stop from South Florida to Denver against a winter headwind. We decided to stop at Flightline KNEW for fuel, muffulettas, and beignets in “The City That Care Forgot”.

After a 15-minute drive over falling-apart roads, we hit Cochon Butcher for the muffulettas and they were everything we dreamed they would be. It is counter service like Panera, but the staff check up on tables periodically, e.g., to make sure that water glasses are full and to see who wants more booze (not us!). This seems like a good system for a country where labor is scarce/expensive.

How about the vaccine papers check that resulted in a family trip cancellation? (see Karen orders two dozen beignets and a three-gallon Hurricane and “Children as Young as 5 Now Under New Orleans Vaccine Mandate” (U.S. News, 12/17/2021) and “New Orleans residents prepare for school vaccine mandate for kids as young as 5” (NBC, 1/22/2022)) It was done with a similar degree of precision as refugee screening during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. My friend was ordering while I was parking the crew car. Prior to ordering, he was asked to show a photo of a vaccine card, but not a photo ID. So the restaurant had no way to know whether the card had any relationship to the customer. I walked in from the street directly to the table and never went to the counter, so my vaccine status was never investigated.

We proceeded to the French Quarter to walk off the sandwiches and build up our beignet appetite. “Most of these people look like they’re on meth and haven’t bathed,” said my companion. The buildings and infrastructure in general seemed to be in rough shape. It was a Monday, admittedly, but the streets did not seem busy enough to sustain the shops and restaurants. Café du Monde is operating in a degraded COVID-19-safe fashion. There are no waiters. You order and pick up beignets and coffee from some ladies working behind a counter, then carry them to a table.

Nearly every shop had a significant amount of signage regarding masks. Following CDC guidance, virtually any piece of fabric qualifies as PPE. An official city poster for businesses, downloaded 1/27/2022:

A saliva-soaked bandana not only qualifies as PPE, but is officially recommended. Alternatively, if you’re visiting from New England, pack a scarf to block aerosol Omicron.

Here’s an example of some disrepair and, if you click to enlarge then zoom in, you’ll see that all of the people walking on the sidewalk are wearing masks of various types:

Voodoo is powerful enough to heal or kill people, but its magic isn’t effective against SARS-CoV-2 without cloth masks:

Hot sauce was powerful enough to propel Hillary Clinton to the forefront of American politics (BBC), but it is also insufficient in the fight against Omicron:

The physical shop behind https://www.themaskstore.com/:

How well have these orders from Covidcrats worked? From the NYT, 1/27/2022:

Cases have decreased recently but are still extremely high. The numbers of hospitalized Covid patients and deaths in the Orleans Parish area have risen. The test positivity rate in Orleans Parish is very high, suggesting that cases are being significantly undercounted.

How does this compare to our home of Palm Beach County, Florida, which is not under any vaccine or mask orders?

#CurveFlattened? Our impression was that “The City that All Recent Economic Booms Forgot” would be a better sobriquet for New Orleans than its trademark “Care Forgot.” Yet median household income does not seem to explain the mournful condition of the city:

(Is the Broken Windows Fallacy actually a fallacy? Katrina (2005) seems to have resulted in an income boost.)

Income in the New Orleans metro area is lower than in the U.S. overall, but higher than in Louisiana overall and it should still be sufficient to keep public infrastructure, such as roads, in decent condition.

Our take-away from the visit: “Covid is the least of this city’s problems.”

See also, OpenTable data from 1/26/2022 back to 1/6/2022:

The tourism-dependent cities of Miami Beach, Naples, and Orlando are much more active, relative to 2019, than New Orleans.

Related:

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