Staggerwing and Radial Reunion 2019

This weekend is the third annual Staggerwing and Radial Reunion.  It is more of a concept than an event but it has lots of food.  It is an event centered around the Beech Staggerwing and other planes that still use radial engines but they are fully inclusive.  That means my horizontally opposed engine was welcome too.

We missed the dinner last nigh but were off late morning to a fly out at Jekyll Island.  Longtime readers will remember this is the home of the cool red electric golf carts.  The organizers had arranged for Red Bug Pizza to open so the group could do a lunch.  Then we could fly back to home for a Dinner. See the common themes here, planes and food or possibly food and planes.  The pizza was quite good and the service was fast and friendly.  This is often hard with so many people arriving together but they pulled it off.

We arrived 15 minutes after the scheduled meet up time so we were 45 minutes early.    This was fun as we enjoyed the great late morning weather on Jekyll and took a walk.  By the time we returned the group was assembled.  The airport provided vans to take us to pizza and even brought us back.  As the afternoon wore on we watched the storms approaching from the West.   

The clear skies started to become overcast so we decided it was time to head home.  Tonight is a BBQ to close out the festivities.  Many of the pilots will continue South to Sun and Fun which is a big annual airshow.  For me, work is calling.  I have had a blast the last two weekend with the extra days off getting in some great flying but now back to reality.

Young Eagles

Sofar this has been a pretty good month for flying.  While I have not had time to take any long trips, CC and I have gotten around and I have put in some good training time.  The month started with the plane in annual inspection so it was a short flying month but I have made the most of it.

Friday and Saturday I headed to Suwanee Florida to give Young Eagle rides.  Young Eagles is a program through the EAA (Experimental Aircraft Association) to introduce youth to aviation.  Pilots offer free airplane rides and there is age appropriate educational information provided as well.  For some it may just be a fun ride but for others it may be the start of a career or hobby.

When I saw the flyer for Wings Over Suwanee which was the Fly In, it rang a bell but I didn't remember why.  Today while walking around the festival part between flights I remembered.  In August 2007, Samantha, a friend and I had flown in for a EAA fly in and BBQ.  My friend had snapped the picture of the two of us taking pictures. 

We ended up having great weather for the program.  Warm but not hot and mostly clear skies.  Heading back Friday the clouds had formed at my preferred altitude but ATC hooked me up and let me air file.  I spent the 20 minutes of cruise popping in and out of the clouds.  Today I filed on the ground and we spent a total of 3 seconds in a cloud.

Friday morning before the festivities began there were two guys out flying powered parachutes.  Unfortunately they had chosen right by the Young Eagles area to launch and recover.  as they practiced they came a bit close for comfort for me but luckily they were done and gone before we started flying the kids.  I ended up adding 12 Young Eagles to my total.  This is also the start of the Radial Reunion weekend so we have more activities lined up for Sunday.

Selma to Montgomery

March 7, 1965 a group of people peacefully walked across a bridge and were met by clubs and gas. Their refusal to succumb to the the evil they met managed to profoundly change our country.  While that day the marchers were forced back, on March 21 they began again from Selma Alabama and reached Montgomery on March 25th.  This was a pivotal moment in the struggle for civil rights.

I have been wanting to visit Selma and The National Memorial for Peace and Justice but the weather had not been cooperating.  Yesterday when I noticed that we would have blue skies, I arranged a rental car and filed some flight plans.  Logistically we flipped the order a bit.  Arriving in Montgomery, we drove to the memorial first.  

The memorial is "dedicated to the legacy of enslaved black people, people terrorized by lynching, African Americans humiliated by racial segregation and Jim Crow, and people of color burdened with contemporary presumptions of guilt and police violence"

The memorial is quite powerful.  While it touches on many aspects of the African American experience, it focuses heavily on the acts of domestic terrorism against African Americans.

The states and counties where people were murdered (lynched) are represented by large metal boxes.  The people's names and the dates of the murders cut in the steel.

Interspersed among the memorials are several powerful sculptures that capture the horror of the atrocities experienced by these people.

The memorial garden continues cataloging the acts of violence with rows of memorials arranged by state and county (Parish).  I think it drives home the point that these activities were neither rare nor isolated to certain locations.

One particular sculpture captured the contribution of the men and women who literally walked for freedom.  It commemorated the bus strike that began in 1955 and lasted just over a year.  Those early footsteps paved the way for future progress.

After the memorial we drove to Selma to walk on the bridge.  I have seen it in countless pictures.  There is a sense of history standing there looking down the highway.  Today was a beautiful sunny day.   I can't imagine what it was like to crest the rise and see a mob of people with clubs, some mounted on horseback about to attack.

After soaking in the history we drove through Selma and stopped for a bite at the "Coffee Shoppe" in Selma.  CC had found it and little did we know we would get a bonus history lesson.  We arrived and ordered lunch.  Most of the tables had been reserved for a tour group of Harvard Alumnus so we ate at the side bar.

We were quietly eating when they arrived.  The Shoppe's owner, Jackie Smith,  came out and spoke for a bit.  She had grown up in Selma, been the first to graduate college in her family at 42 and after retiring from city government had opened the restaurant.  She was quite hopeful.  She noted that the place was originally a diner where African Americans could not enter.  They could only buy food through a back window.  Now she was the owner.

It has become locally famous and now people of note drop by for her food and a photo op or two.  Among the names mentioned were David Letterman and a few weeks ago, Elizabeth Warren.

The drive back was down the same highway where the marchers traveled 64 years ago.  There are markers showing the camping sites along the routes as the people journeyed 54 miles to demand that they be treated as human beings.

The National Park service has an Interpretive center just short of campsite 2.  We stopped by and watched an excellent movie about the march and looked at many artifacts from the period.  Then it was down the highway to return home.

The flight home was uneventful.  The plane was happy to wait for us at Montgomery airport.  We had taxied in past all 4 gates.  While I did see a flight arriving after we came, I never did see a plane at a gate.