Muudy road to Zero Gravity

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Gorgeous drive

Hwy 191
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On our way!

After uneventful flights (Craig, Shawn, Houston, Nils, & Patrick from Jackson and Phil from Blacksburg) the Canyon Krewe met at the Salt Lake City baggage claim. We loaded our 600 lbs of gear and headed for the Fox Rental Car shuttle at around 9:45 PM.

We should have seen IT coming...

After waiting 20 mins for the once-every-10 minute shuttle the driver drove right past us (the only other humans in the entire parking garage) and parked 97 feet ahead of us at the small sign on a column. He opened the door...and sat on his ass and watched us move and load our gear.

I'm still incredulous to what happened next and blinded by rage but it went down something like this:

Me: "Hi we are here for our vehicles. Sorry for the duplicate reservations but we'd like two of the four seven passenger SUVs we rented and confirmed (via phone last week) would be available when we got here."

Car Rental Tool: "Sorry we don't have any. I can give you 2 sedans."

"Dude: look out the window at 12 duffel bags and 6 people..."

It was all down hill from there...

Anyway: we huddled and formulated and scrambled and an hour later were divided into 3 vehicles (2 Tahoes and a sedan) and headed to our hotel in Provo/Orem about 45 miles outside of SLC.

Craig and Phil were on Grub Master Duty and hit Super Walmart. The rest of the guys unloaded went to bed around 12:30. AM. C & P finally got to bed at 1:45 and crashed.

6:30 came fast. We enjoyed the hot-breakfast-included buffet and were on the road by 7:15.

We are on our way to Robbers Roost for 3 nights of back-country, off-the-grid car camping and canyons. We're going to try to hit Zero Gravity on the way and will keep you posted.
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Breakfast of champions

Rise and shine after four hours sleep.

First obstacle

Fox rentals has no suburbans even though we reserved them.  Only compacts

Gear loaded for trip

Five people, 10 bags, 50 lbs each, 5 carry on backpacks and a couple of laptops.

In chicago headed to utah

B17 Bomber Flight

By Shawn McKee

Video from the flight here

On Sunday I got to take a ride on a real B-17 bomber. Since my trip to Germany to visit the WW2 crash site where my uncle Raymond's plane crashed during a bombing mission in WWII, I have wanted to see one of these plane close up. Wow, what an experience.  It's a living museum. Completely original in every way except that the engines continue to be overhauled every 1000 hours.  The flight is made possibly by a very crafty group of volunteers and pilots from the Commemorative Air Force organization, or CAF. This group came over from Texas to show the flying relic of world war two.

More info on this particular plane can be found here http://gulfcoastwing.org/trhistory.html

I enjoyed every minute of the experience. With open windows, original equipment on the plane, and wooden seats to strap into, it was amazing. The smooth gracefulness of the take-off at only 110 mph is right in step with impressions of those days in 1945. Hard hand crafted metal mechanical stuff all over the plane display the utilitarian nature of this plane. There were also some very sophisticated bombing sights and electric motor driven gun turrets that would have been state of the art in the day. Still impressive today.

I have to admit it was historic and emotional to see the plane taxi up to the line, but after lifting off and sticking my head out the window like a 2 year-old Labrador Retriever, I was just having fun.  Cruising over New Orleans on a mock bombing run at 1500 feet, so slow you could watch people on the street and see them looking up at you, it's easy to imagine dropping heavy things on buildings from that deck. Not as easy to imagine fighter planes buzzing around though. Every part of that old plane was built for lifting, durability, and viewing the ground. What a classic airship. One that will never be needed again. I can see how the crews became attached to their planes.

"Don't lean too far out the windows. There is a little suction that will steal your cap, sunglasses, toupees." we were told in the pre-flight instruction. We also were warned not to grab the silver cables running through the top of the cabin. "We use these to fly the plane."   Indeed, you could watch the rudders and elevator being controlled by these cables just over your head.

An amazing flying piece of history. And what a great way to see the Crescent City.

Here is the actual flight path as recorded by my run app on my phone.

Shawn