Breakfast in Fredericksburg

Saturday morning we decided to do a quick flight to Fredericksburg to get some breakfast at the airport diner since the weather was supposed to be so nice. We're now flying out of Boerne, which is just north of San Antonio in the hill country. The Boerne Airport has a really cool atmosphere, a small community type quality about it, and with it being such a nice day there were a lot of people out and about flying.

The field.

The bird, a Piper Archer 181.
A different perspective with the wing being below the windows...
Coming in to land at Fredericksburg.

The diner is right on the ramp and people will walk around and look at everybody's airplanes while they're parked there. Right in front of our window was a 2006 Cirrus SR22 GTS that had obviously been in some kind of accident. We asked the waitress and she said about 3 weeks ago the pilot, who had been inexperienced, had run off the runway and into a fence while attempting to land. It had damage to both wings, the fuselage, the propeller, engine, rudder, and both wheels. Without being experts or anything it appeared to be a total loss because of the structural damage to the fuselage. This particular type of Cirrus was over $500,000 new and is still worth over $300,000 today. We didn't want to be the jerks on the ramp taking pictures of the poor damaged Cirrus but we managed to get this one surreptitiously.

Something different about the Archer is that there's only one door, so the pilot has to get in first and crawl across before the passengers get in.

Taking off from Fredericksburg. It's hard to see the hills from the air but Fredericksburg is also in the hill country and it was a really nice scenic flight.

TAO-Brenham Municipal Airport/Southern Flyer

Scott heard about a '50s style diner at the Brenham Airport with great food, so Saturday night we flew there for dinner. Brenham is about halfway between Austin and Houston. The diner there is called Southern Flyer, and it and the airport are owned and operated by a couple named Jack and Janet Hess. Both are pilots, and seek to provide food and fun at an enjoyable destination. The flight itself was a little rough because Renee had minor cold (nothing major, she was fully functioning and at the top of her game all day) and she didn't listen to Scott when he suggested she may not want to go because head congestion hurts your ears when you fly because they can't pop when you descend. Renee said she'd be fine. By the time we landed in Brenham, Renee's left ear drum felt as if it had burst and was bleeding down the side of her head, there were tears rolling down her face, and she had bright red eyes from crying. Scott wanted to turn around and go back home but Renee really wanted to see the '50s diner, so we persevered. Renee did what she could, but her eyes were still red and Scott felt as though everyone in the restaurant was staring at him like he was a huge jerk for making his wife cry. And Renee could only hear 30% of what anyone said to her the rest of the night. But other than that it was awesome.

Poodle skirts and saddle shoes!
We'll have to go back sometime and take more time to look around and enjoy it!

TAO-Llano with Karla and Devin

Renee's sister Karla was in town this weekend to visit her boyfriend, Devin, who is flight training at Randolph AFB in San Antonio for the next couple of months. Saturday afternoon Scott gave them a quick tour of the hangar and then we headed to Llano for some Cooper's BBQ!

Touring one of the G450s.

From there we drove to New Braunfels. Llano is about a 45 minute flight from there, and would be a little over two hours driving. Devin helping Scott pre-flight.
Taking off from New Braunfels.
Karla and Renee in the back seat.
Devin at the controls briefly after takeoff.

Flying low over a river as we approached Llano at sunset.

A creative sunset shot by Renee.

Landing at Llano.

When we landed, the airport manager came out in a golf cart and told us to be sure to back taxi the runway before taking off later because they had just fenced in the airport with deer fences, and although they had shot nine (!) deer earlier that day, there were still a few to watch out for.

We rode to Cooper's with another group of four who had flown in from Killeen (about a 1/2 hour flight away, where Fort Hood is located), also for BBQ. The pilot of the group was an extremely enthusiastic young gentleman named Franklin. Franklin has been flying about four years and is currently working on his instrument rating. He said he loves flying so much, he'll take a ten-minute flight to the next town over from Killeen just to get a hamburger! Renee wanted to get his picture for the purposes of this blog, but no moment presented itself where that wouldn't have been considered weird. So you'll have to take our word for it, but his face absolutely LIT UP when he talked about flying, he was a very happy and enthusiastic individual. This is us waiting in line outside the BBQ pits at Cooper's, Franklin was nice enough to take the picture.

TAO-Victoria Regional Airport

Scott's flight school moved to New Braunfels about two weeks ago, which is about 40 minutes away, whereas San Antonio International was about 5 minutes away. For now he's making the drive, but we're looking into renting from Boerne instead, which is about 30 minutes away and also has lower rates and different planes.

The New Braunfels Municipal Airport.

En route to Victoria. It was very peaceful, just cruising along in the dark at 5500 feet. Very nice date night!
The moon.

Victoria.

Victoria is a very friendly airport, we had a great experience. Even though we got in pretty late (about 8:30), a very helpful young chap named John marshaled us in, gave us keys to a courtesy car (which was free, a rarity these days), and directions to the Sky Restaurant just down the road. He was super helpful and very friendly.

The General Aviation hangar, very cool old-style hangar.

The Sky Restaurant. Fantastic food, but too much of it!

TAO-Mustang Beach Airport

Scott flew with Brad Friday night to the airport at Mustang Beach and got some awesome pictures of the sunset.

Texas Aerodrome Odyssey-Clark Field Municipal Airport

Scott is now flying weekly to build hours, and to make it fun we decided to set a goal of visiting every public use airport in Texas. We're dubbing it the "Texas Aerodrome Odyssey." We'll visit airfields large and small, meet some interesting people, check out the local eateries, and blog about what we see. Texas is a big state, and there are roughly four hundred public use airports (we're going to formulate a list with an exact number but haven't gotten to it yet). We're long on ambition, short on time, and already suffering weather and aircraft maintenance delays. We wanted to officially start January 1st and had planned a flight to Houston the first Saturday of January as our first adventure, but had to cancel due to weather. We were on vacation the next weekend and this past weekend Scott only had time to go by himself on a quick flight to Llano and back. Ideally, we would go on a "TAO" flight every weekend. That being said, Scott still needs to build hours regardless if we have time to make an adventure of every flight, so last night was actually the first official TAO flight and it involved Scott and his friend Brad flying to Stephenville, TX (just south of Dallas) in the dark to get some BBQ at Hard Eight Pit BBQ. They met no one and saw very little, but had some great BBQ and got quite a long flight in!

Beautiful sunset!

Hard Eight BBQ.

There was a ring around the moon, which Brad later learned from his mom were ice crystals in the stratosphere. ;-) Although Renee couldn't make this one, we're rolling now...watch out Texas, here we come! (Even if it takes 10 years!)

Back in the Bayou

This past weekend we went on a quick mini-vacation to New Orleans and visited our friends Jim and Wendy and their daughter Sophia, whom we hadn't seen since we moved except for dinner with Jim about a year ago when we all happened to be in Dallas. First though, earlier in the week Scott went to New Jersey and got a chance to get some time in the Gulfstream 450/550 simulator. He didn't crash and learned a lot, so the trip was a success!

Jim and Wendy have four small dogs and six exotic birds (which they let out at night to eat). Bridget wasn't even a very noticeable addition :-) Scott and Julius.

Audrey eating some bread.

Wendy feeding Sammy and Gabrielle grits.

They've also moved from Stennis, MS back to Lakefront Airport in New Orleans (where they were based before Katrina), so Mrs. Taylor's jet has a hangar now.

This is a Howard 500 that Mr. Taylor had been having restored. It's been sitting here since the hurricane.

This is an upside-down King Air that has been sitting since the hurricane.

We also went to the shooting range where Jim taught Renee the basics.
Sophia was in her first Irish dancing competition where she won five medals! Renee had never heard of Irish dancing, but it's basically Riverdance where you hold your arms straight at your sides and dance with your feet. Very cool!We stayed away from the French Quarter and downtown because the Saints had a home game and it was crazy down there, but we did get beignets for breakfast, which for some reason we had never tried while we lived there (which is probably a good thing because they seem like they could be addictive and aren't exactly healthy :-). They're a fried donut with powdered sugar piled on top, kind of like a funnel cake. We had an awesome weekend and it was great to be able to spend time with friends!