Birthday Wings

I finally got my birthday flight... and it was awesome! Last year, I tried to go for a birthday flight with my dad and my instructor, M, but the plane was over-fueled and we were too heavy. This year, though, Husband was in town and we had a great birthday flight!

Since it was my birthday, Husband let me fly both legs. I've been (as usual) hogging all the flight time recently, so he was sweet to think of that. We just did a simple flight out to Frederick. It was nice to be up in the sky in the middle of the week.

After landing at Frederick, we parked at the FBO and walked out the door to the airport restaurant. It's just a little cafe, and was filled with locals having an early Wednesday night dinner. Husband had a soft shell crab sandwich, and I had a cheese steak... yum. When we finished eating, we decided to walk around a bit to work off some of the food we had just consumed. We walked over and looked at the AOPA building. I have a secret fantasy of working for AOPA... working in the aviation field, for an organization that helps others, with other pilots. Oh-- and getting to fly to work if I wanted! What could be better! Hmmm, I wonder if they need management consultants for anything.

After living in the fantasy for a few minutes, we walked back across to gape at the Goodyear Blimp tied down in the grass. While there, one of the blimp's crew (I think he was the guy that drives the 18 wheeler that accompanies the blimp) came over to talk to us. He was really interesting to talk to. The blimp itself is basically buoyant-- and depending on it's load, travels with +/-200 lbs weight. The blimp travels with it's own tie down-- a big post that gets staked to the ground. The blimp has one big wheel that is turned perpendicular to the tie down so that the blimp rotates around the post freely. While we stood talking, it moved back and forth about 10-15 feet. We also learned that the blimp travels at about 35-50 knots in flight, and usually travels about 8 hours a day when on the go.

After our heads were full of blimp trivia, we walked back over to our non-buoyant, but very fun airplane and loaded up to head back home. We had a nice, uneventful flight home. What a great birthday!