The Tyranny Of Mundane Petty Things

 As I have related in past writings, I learned to fly about 10 years ago, and it has been one of my weekend passions. I will try to fly just about some time on every weekend that the weather makes it flyable. I have taken some pretty long trips in the airplane. One trip to "First Flight" Kitty Hawk N.C. which was three hours, and then on to Wilmington NC and back the next day. I also flew someone to Augusta Maine as a favor on one clear December day near Christmas. As well as a couple of flights to Ohio near Dayton.

This year, during the third week in Sept. we planned a vacation week to go to the annual conference held in Berkeley Springs WV, and it was canceled because of Covid, for the 2nd year in a row. Then we booked a cruise up the east coast into Canada for that same week, and it was our 3rd canceled cruise, so then we planned our second flight to South Haven MI, to visit Cindi's dad and Mary. And that is what we did. We left on a Sunday morning, and the weather did not permit us to return until Friday, but with a 35kt tailwind knocking off an hour of flight time returning.

As providence would have it, the worst weather was on Thurs. our planned return day, and since we had to wait until Friday, it turned out that Wayne Jacobsen was flying into Grand Rapids Michigan from California on Thursday evening, which was an hour's drive from South Haven. Wayne, I have mentioned in the past has a podcast called The God Journey which I have followed since the beginning of the year, as well as catching up to past episodes, and also hosts a life changing series called My Friend Luis 

After contacting Wayne, and trying to see if he had time to meet us on Thurs, since we could not stay for any meetings he was having, we made arrangements to pick him up at the airport, and drove him to the restaurant where he was meeting some other people later, and we could have that time in between, which turned out to be over an hour's visit. There was not any specific topic to discuss, but just hoping for a time of fellowship with what until then was only a voice on the internet.

As a follow up to the previous post, about the BEMA podcast, we were contacted by the co host, Brent Billings who requested a Zoom call to discuss how we came to hear about the podcast, which was a great time. Turns out they are going to be conducting a tour in Israel at the same time as we are going to be going there next year on tour with Brian Zahnd, from the Word of Life Church in St. Johns Missouri. Perhaps we will get to meet in person? Can Divine Providence permit such a thing again? 

Speaking of the BEMA podcast, I have only a few more episodes to hear to finish off the book of Revelation and then end of their journey through the whole Bible. Of course that does not end the podcast, since the next few after that deal with church history... one of my favorite subjects. 

As always there is much more to be said than a brief post will allow, this does some catching up, except to fill in an update begun at the start to do with flying, which is that at this point the club airplane I fly is grounded for what might be the next couple of months or more to get an engine rebuild done. Airplane engines have a TBO or Time Between Overhauls listed as about 2.000 hours, and we have some 2500 hours on the plane, and so it is time to get that done.

Since I have been a pilot flying for as many weekends as I can, I am at least fortunate enough to have access to a Piper Cherokee from a pilot instructor friend, who checked me out in it before, so that I do not have to be grounded the same months as the club Piper Archer. Since those that know me well would agree if I was to tell you that I am addicted to flying! Which is in part best described by the whole quote of which the title of this post is the last part, and it goes as follows: "I fly because it releases my mind from The Tyranny Of Mundane  Petty Things.