My partner Kerry's sister Jen has MS. Her mobility is severely compromised. A mile is a HUGE walk for her. She just about managed it in 2023 having not managed it at all in 2022. This year - with the help of her support team - she is hoping to "do the mile" at the West Orange NJ MS walk on the 21st April - walk starts 10:00 at Clipper Pavillion, 9 Cherry Lane, West Orange, NJ 07052

After the April walk - my own contribution will be the 100 mile ride as part of Bike MS: Ride the Rhode 2024 on June 8th. If I have anything left after the Saturday - I'll try the 35 mile on the Sunday.

Content migrating from old site.  Expect a mixture of old and new while it does!

There was nothing really wrong with my old road bike - except it started to develop a crack in the carbon seat tube.......  And by the time I looked at finding another frame - which would have to be used as technology had moved on from my existing components.....  A diligent three months of watching eBay and Amazon and slowly picking everything up.  I built a 2022/3 Specialized Roubaix - Custom.  Custom because Specialized never actually sold the exact spec I built.  But long and the short I bought the components for 25% of the cost of the built equivalent.

I have a (very distant) relative fought in the Battle of Britain. One of my mother’s cousins. I just put it together from family tree research I do sporadically and from a new book I got about pilots who fought in the battle. I'm a little gob smacked.

Battle of Britain portrait by Cuthbert Julian Orde

In addition to collecting this equipment - I have flown in most of it.  Some in a WWII Spitfire.
 

The Battle of Britain experience offered by Aero Legends is based on the BBC program “Battle of Britain” starring Ewan and Colin McGregor that was made in 2010 to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain.

Up for another three hour session on New Year’s Eve. Soft field and Short Field landings. Soft is pretty obvious – get out the grass and mud as soon as you can. Pop her into the air as soon as you can – then wheelbarrow her down the runway a few feet off the ground in ground effect till she gets up enough airspeed. Short is different. You do a mad amount of math about air pressure prevailing at the altitude you are at in the prevailing temperature and humidity.

I’ve been watching the weather like a hawk all week.  In among the winter fronts and gusts there is possibly going to be a quiet, clear, spot on Saturday for my morning lesson.

I can now fly the plane in an elementary way and am considered “safe”. I can check it over, start up, talk to Clearance, then Ground Control, then Tower, then Departure.  Get it off the ground and put it where it is supposed to be in the sky – without falling out of the sky – and I can do the basic emergency drills to a degree considered OK – though the truth is – they all involve looking for a soft spot to get down on after you have blown out the fire with a dive or tried to start the engine and it has not.

We are going to Minnesota for Thanksgiving. I’ll miss my lesson. I search around on the web and find a flying school at Crystal Airport just north of Minnesota. It is called “The Flying Scotchman”. It is surely fated that I fly here. I email them and a nice CFI called Steve Fischer agrees to take me up for a lesson on the Friday.