Story Telling Time
 

:popcorn: Tell us a story. I love stories. It can be about anything, but not politics. :welcome:

This particular story is about boats and dinner. My wife and I started with a stink pot (name given to gasoline powered boats), and then we went to a Rag (name given to sail boaters). This story is about an adventure on our Rag. But first a little side story. Before we owned a boat, we rented one. When the dockmaster asked if I had experience boating, I said, "Oh yea, I've been boating for a while now. (OK, so I lied). My wife just shook her head. When we got to the destination the dockmaster there tried to direct me, and I kept hitting the piling. The dockmaster kept saying, "That's OK Captain, straight in now." After 4 tries, my wife shouted out, "Please stop calling him Captain!" Now to the matinee story. :popcorn:

We docked our Rag on the Sassafras River, which emptied into the Chesapeake Bay. It was only a 27 footer, but it was all we needed. One weekend, we took my sister and bro-in-law with us, to sail down to St. Michael's for dinner and stay overnight. During our sail, I let my bro-in-law take the wheel, while I enjoyed a cold one.

Everything was going fine, until our Rag started to slow down, even though the wind did not. I asked my bro-in-law if he noticed anything, while he was at the wheel. He said he did not.

Our trip took much longer than expected, due to the sluggishness of our boat. As he docked, a couple, unknown to us, and who had already been docked, helped us tie up. As the husband tied our stern line, he said, "did you know you're dragging a crab trap?" I did not, but now I knew what made us sluggish.

We pulled up the trap and there were at least two dozen crabs in the trap (according to my memory). Needless to say, we had dinner aboard the Rag that night. I left the crab trap with the dockmaster.

But the story doesn't end there. The next morning I woke up at the crack of dawn, thanks to some ducks tapping against the boat, looking for food. Our new dock friends, who helped us tie up, were dressed, and about to head out, when I asked them where they were headed so early. The husband replied, that they were headed to Boston to watch the Red Sox play. Every Saturday, they would fly to a different city to watch different teams play. He told me he worked for the airlines and only had to pay a minimal amount to fly. Now, I thought that was great!

Share your story :popcorn:

I love "it's-a-small-world" stories and I have more than one, but I'll only saddle you with my best.

Many years ago, I was staying at the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Waikiki. I was having a drink by the pool when two young ladies approached the bar. I got up and offered my seat. We talked and discovered that we all came from New York. We were familiar with the same establishments on Long Island and so on. At one point, I mentioned that I rent the upstairs of my two-family house to a buddy who is going through a divorce. The one girl asks what his name is and I tell her. She says, "I've been in your house."

I was on a old steam train back in the 50's, and coming home on leave.
I decided to go for a cup of tea and a smoke in the restaurant car.
Corridor ights were poor and when I got to the internal carriage door to pass through into the next carriage, someone else was coming the other way.
I stepped aside as a gentleman should, and so did the other person, we did this about three times, before I said "For ****'s sake, I'll go first then!" and walked smack into the shiny wooden door.
I was losing my rag at my own reflection!:ohdear:

I like those "It's a small world" stories too. I met my neighbors here in Florida, when I was in Sedona, but never knew them here, until that day.

Haha, good one. Thanks for sharing.

You really don't want to get me started, but since you asked, I'll tell you my most hair-raising flying story.

I was flying along in my 1973 Piper Cherokee to the Sun-N-Fun fly-in in Lakeland, from my home field in Tulsa. I had about 100 hours flying time in my logbook. For some strange reason, none of my buddies wanted to ride along on a 900 mile flight with a low-time pilot, just to sleep under a wing for three nights and ogle airplanes. I was flying alone.

So there I was, cruising along at 6,500 feet, on top of a broken layer of clouds, somewhere over south Arkansas. The holes were becoming fewer and fewer, so I picked a great big hole, bigger than a football field, and banked hard to the left to start a spiral down underneath the cloud layer. On the third rotation, it dawned on me that it might have been a good idea to drop the flaps, now that my airspeed was 10 miles over the speed at which the flaps would depart the plane if I tried to deploy them to slow down. And since I couldn't slow down, there was no way to avoid entering that cloud in a 45 degree bank at 120 mph.

As I entered the cloud, my flight instructor's words popped into my head: "The average lifespan of a VFR (amateur) pilot in IFR conditions (inside a cloud) is 2 minutes". This was exactly the way JFK Junior had managed to kill himself the previous year.

Well, somehow, I overcame my blind panic, and my 2 hours of FAA-required instrument training kicked in. I used the artifical horizon to right the plane, pulled up to level flight, slowed to about 80 -- and considered my situation. According to the altimeter and the map in my lap, my situation was: I was cruising along blind, at 2500 ft, on my way to a rendevous with a 3500 ft mountain at some point, and if I didn't find a way out of this mess in a couple of minutes, they would be sponging my remains from the side of some big hill in Arkansas.

Everything outside the plane was just a featureless grey -- exactly the same in every direction. And, once again, my instructor's words popped into my brain: "With nothing to focus on, the eye focuses on infinity". So I tried focusing on the compass, and then quickly looked outside. Amazing! For just a second, I could see faint differences in the grey. I kept doing this, and discovered that the grey was much lighter behind me, over my left shoulder. Maybe that was the hole! I carefully turned in that direction, using just the tips of the yoke (steering wheel) to nudge the plane slowly around (as I'd been taught), without risking an out-of-control spiral, like the one that killed Kennedy. And then I waited and prayed.

When I broke out of the side of that cloud, I swear I heard angels singing the Hallelujah Chorus!

It was like magic. I remember the sunlight and whisps of cloud suddenly appearing from the gloom, and I turned my head to see the vapor swirls in the cloud wall as I emerged. Beautiful! And straight ahead was the other side of the hole. I quickly DROPPED THE FLAPS and continued a CONTROLLED spiral to the bottom of the cloud. A couple of turns later, I was out, in barely VFR (Visual Flight Rules) conditions, at 1500 ft. Half hour later, the ceiling lifted, and the rest of the flight was uneventful (except for the crazy traffic at Lakeland).

And I learned my lesson about VFR-on-top so well that I managed to pull the same stupid stunt coming back from the Oshkosh fly-in five years later, with my best flying buddy, in a much faster plane. At least that time, I remembered the flaps, so no cloud time. But the haze was so bad below that I got some IFR time ("I Fly Roads"), creeping to the nearest airport at 500 ft over the middle of some backwoods state highway, to avoid the hitting a cellphone tower.

I guess some people are so dumb it takes two miracle escapes to learn the same lesson.

Serpent On A Roll
 

The new pastor of our Western New York country church elected to reside in the old parsonage not used by the retiring pastor. We hoped mortaring the fieldstone foundation would keep out the resident grass snakes. The pastor’s proud Mom was a special out of town guest attending her son's first service. During the post service parsonage luncheon with church elders, Mom used the bathroom. Reaching for the t-paper, she found a snake wrapped around the roll. The door burst open, after two steps, girdle around ankles, she faceplanted on the living room floor. Construction of the new parsonage began the next day.

Here's one but I'm not using my real name I'm using an assumed name Tony Knotek. Knotek is an unusual last name and where I come from in New England it's rare to find someone with that last name. We were traveling from Florida to New England and we had reservations in a pet friendly hotel. When I walked up to the front desk a man in front of me seemed to be taking a very long time to register. He finally wrapped up his check in process. I spoke to the clerk and told her I was Tony Knotek and wanted to check in, with that she said hold on and called the man who had been in line in front of me. The man turned around and came back. She said to me tell this man your name. I said I'm Tony Knotek, the man replied my name is Tony Knotek too. Amazing the chances of meeting someone with the same name especially since the last name is not a common one. Some of the reason the other Tony was taking so long is because he called in his reservation about 30 minutes before arriving at the hotel. I had called mine in about 3 weeks before so with 2 reservations he and the clerk were going back in forth why he had 2 reservations when in fact one was mine. Anyway when we walked out to the parking lot we introduced our wives to each other and the wives took photos of the 2 Tony Knoteks.

Here's a local story. My husband took me to Katie Bell's (remember that place?) for my birthday. We had a very nice dinner, and after he paid the bill, we walked towards the exit. We were going to go down to the square and listen to the music, when he said he wanted to go to the men's room. While he was gone, I stood at the corner of the bar for a few minutes, when this painted lady came over to me, gave me a hip check, and said out loud that "this was her corner and I better leave." Needless to say, she was on the hunt.

"JFK Jr. 10 Years After" by Dr. Douglas Lonnstrom
 

A good friend in Albany here, Dr. Doug Lonnstrom, wrote a book about the crash that killed JFK Jr. A terrifying read, and yes he managed to kill himself, his wife and sister-in-law. Every decision JFK Jr. made that day was bad and one step after another to death.

Stolen Jeep
 

When we lived in Miami Florida our jeep was stolen in an RV campground. We thought that jeep was gone forever so we went out and bought a convertible car. Two days later my husband said let’s jump in the car ride around and see if we see our jeep. I said sweetie that jeep is probably in Michigan by now broken down into parts. We did jump in the convertible with the top back, and our 2 Schnauzers in the backseat. As we are driving out of the campground my husband hands me his cell phone and said call 911 that’s our jeep coming toward us! We jump in behind the jeep and pretend that we are not following him while talking to 911. The tag had been changed and I kept the 911 operator up-to-date on which streets we were passing and we could see that he caught on and he sped up and so did we. The operator said ma’am you need to pull over if anything happens it will be your fault. I said I am not taking my eyes off this jeep so we ran stop signs worrying that he would take us into a subdivision with a bunch of friends waiting. We went through several counties came to a red light and my husband said I have to stop it’s red, and I said keep going as I stood up in the car and waved all the cars to stop. We saw a police car coming toward us and I told the operator the police car coming toward us is coming toward our jeep. He turned around behind him and cars came from everywhere pulled him over into the ditch and gave us thumbs up saying we needed to change careers. It was a 16-year-old boy and he smiled at me. The police called a drug enforcer to come and check out the jeep and after that they returned it to us happy story!!!

Thanks for sharing. Question. I can see why you would need a hole in the clouds for descending, but couldn't you just head upwards, without a hole in the clouds?

All good stories. Thanks for sharing, everyone.

When I was stationed at my 1st duty station in Germany, I was certifying on a certain truck for my government driver's license. The policy was to refuel the vehicle when bringing it back to park in the compound. As I approached the fuel pumps I asked my supervisor which type of fuel we needed, regular or unleaded. He replied "Mo gas." I responded, "Yes, I know, but which one? Regular or unleaded?", to which he repeated " Mo gas." We repeated ourselves a couple of times before I reached the pumps and was totally embarrassed to see the pumps labeled "DEISEL" and "MOGAS"!

That's what makes learning to fly so "interesting". It seems so easy once you master the art of being able to reuse the aircraft after landing it. But you don't know what you don't know, yet. Most of the crashes come around the 100 hour mark, and then there is another grouping around the 1,000 mark, when you start to feel like an old hand.

It's not an especially dangerous hobby, but the penalty for dumb mistakes is high, and you might not even realize you're making a dumb mistake at the time. It had never occurred to me before that incident that the flaps were useful beyond landing. And I'd been warned that VFR on top was dangerous, but I just assumed it was because you might get stuck there. Nobody ever mentioned that getting back under the clouds might be dangerous even when there's a great big opening, or that the conditions under the clouds when I got there might be nearly un-flyable.

I hope my story didn't scare people off from flying. It's the most rewarding thing I ever learned to do. But big rewards usually come with risks.