It is that time of year on the Texas Gulf Coast when you can wake up, feel the cool, dry air that the atmosphere has imported from Canada and know that the sky will be clear and smooth for a morning flight! Having nothing pressing in the office for a few hours, I walked the dogs, then slid the hangar doors open to the brilliant blue sky and a wind sock hanging limp as a dishrag. The takeoff roll a few minutes later proved that the promising signs weren?t lying - the air was as smooth as silk, and the EFIS could find no winds to display - it was a perfect moment in the RV, cool and climbing at 2500 fpm?.
I pointed the nose across Galveston Bay towards the little municipal field at Anahuac. Closed for quite awhile after the devastation of Hurricane Ike, it has bounced back to its status of having the lowest fuel price in the area, and having nothing better to do, I figured it?s always better to have full tanks in case an interesting opportunity to go someplace presents itself. Of course, no local flight is complete unless the airplane spends some time upside down, and once I was out from under our Class B restrictions, I hauled back, did some inverted low-G parabolas, and fooled around with knife edge flight. A couple of loops, and some split-S?s finished off the routine that only a few shrimpers might have seen.
Approaching Anahuac, I looked for the windsock, and saw that I could land pretty much any way I wished, so I set up for a downwind to Runway 12. Looking to the northwest after I was established, I noticed an interesting sight in the lake that sits just beyond the town - an island of white that I had never noticed before. In fact, just the other day, I had been doing some Acro right over the lake, the ?breadcrumbs? still visible on my GPS, and I hadn?t noticed anything like it. It was almost like the dredge dumps that they build out in the bay, a containment berm that they fill with mud - but this was very white, and?.holy smokes, it?s MOVING!! The ring surrounding the inner core dissolved and waivered, the ?island? suddenly flared in brightness as individual pixels of white expanded to fill in the water between them and I realized that I was seeing a mass ascension - a great flock of white geese taking wing, probably at the sound and shadow of my own great wings. The island lifted off, shape-shifting like an amoeba, and headed north to the other side of the lake, bending into a crescent shape is it approached the shoreline ? and I turned base towards my own landing. I have seen entire fields turn white before - thousands of birds taking wing below me on the salt-grass prairies of the coast - it is a marvelous sight this time of year, and something that most people will never see, save on a nature documentary.
The glorious day for RV?ing paid off with a chirp and the sound of wheels spinning up as I touched down for fuel. I knew the smooth air wouldn?t last beyond noon, but I didn?t care, because by then, I?d be back in the world of man, worrying about other things - and thinking about how my friends the geese were doing, out there in the lake and the surrounding fields. The beauty of the natural world is transient - gone like the island of white, preserved only in my memory, along with so many other wonders I have seen through the canopy of the RV?.
Paul
I pointed the nose across Galveston Bay towards the little municipal field at Anahuac. Closed for quite awhile after the devastation of Hurricane Ike, it has bounced back to its status of having the lowest fuel price in the area, and having nothing better to do, I figured it?s always better to have full tanks in case an interesting opportunity to go someplace presents itself. Of course, no local flight is complete unless the airplane spends some time upside down, and once I was out from under our Class B restrictions, I hauled back, did some inverted low-G parabolas, and fooled around with knife edge flight. A couple of loops, and some split-S?s finished off the routine that only a few shrimpers might have seen.
Approaching Anahuac, I looked for the windsock, and saw that I could land pretty much any way I wished, so I set up for a downwind to Runway 12. Looking to the northwest after I was established, I noticed an interesting sight in the lake that sits just beyond the town - an island of white that I had never noticed before. In fact, just the other day, I had been doing some Acro right over the lake, the ?breadcrumbs? still visible on my GPS, and I hadn?t noticed anything like it. It was almost like the dredge dumps that they build out in the bay, a containment berm that they fill with mud - but this was very white, and?.holy smokes, it?s MOVING!! The ring surrounding the inner core dissolved and waivered, the ?island? suddenly flared in brightness as individual pixels of white expanded to fill in the water between them and I realized that I was seeing a mass ascension - a great flock of white geese taking wing, probably at the sound and shadow of my own great wings. The island lifted off, shape-shifting like an amoeba, and headed north to the other side of the lake, bending into a crescent shape is it approached the shoreline ? and I turned base towards my own landing. I have seen entire fields turn white before - thousands of birds taking wing below me on the salt-grass prairies of the coast - it is a marvelous sight this time of year, and something that most people will never see, save on a nature documentary.
The glorious day for RV?ing paid off with a chirp and the sound of wheels spinning up as I touched down for fuel. I knew the smooth air wouldn?t last beyond noon, but I didn?t care, because by then, I?d be back in the world of man, worrying about other things - and thinking about how my friends the geese were doing, out there in the lake and the surrounding fields. The beauty of the natural world is transient - gone like the island of white, preserved only in my memory, along with so many other wonders I have seen through the canopy of the RV?.
Paul
