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Our friend Marc bought an airplane and offered to take us flying. It was a gorgeous day for it. We flew out to a little town called Brenham and had a hamburger. This is what you do when you have an airplane - fly to other small airports and eat. When I'm in California, I often do this with Joshua. It's very similar to motorcycling. You have this fun machine that sets you free and makes you feel like a guy, and you use it, then take breaks to eat. You're not a real man if at some point in your life you don't own a plane or a motorcycle.

Here's Lorin all excited to hit the road, errr, I mean sky.

Here is Marc, his daughter Kelly, and his plane.

He was busy doing preflight, and we watched Kelly. He would walk around to the other side and yell, "WINGS?" and then pause and reply to himself with, "CHECK!"

"PROPELLER?"

"CHECK!"

"WINGS?"

"CHECK!"

While Marc made sure the requisite number of rivets were present and accounted for (in all seriousness, good pilots do a good job of inspecting their aircraft prior to a flight, and Marc was no exception.) a B-17 flew over! Wow!

Then landed and pulled up. They were giving rides for $400.

Here is the trailer. I guess they fold the plane up and then drive it to the next airport?

These planes are neat.

Kelly liked all the pretty colors that the planes come in.

We were all set and ready to go. Our pilot.

Here we go!

Looking back at the airport.

Kelly enjoying the ride.

The runway at Brenham.

See the other planes holding short?

On the ground in Brenham.

They had a weird halloween dude in the lobby. He would moan and groan when you got near him.

As you can see, kids love that stuff.

Ok, we ate, now it's time to fly back to the Georgetown airport.

That's us.

East Texas farms and a church.

Near the center of the photo is a huge aluminum processing center. This is at the head of a huge aluminum strip mine.

If you hold your mouse over the above image, part of the mine will be highlighted. It stretches much much further to the south.

Here is where they are working currently.

In this photo is a gigantic crane that scoops up the earth. For comparison, look at the buildings to the lower right! Click this picture and it should load the full resolution version and you can really see the detail. It's pretty cool.

Here it is zoomed in.

Here we are directly over the Austin airport. You can see a jet landing.

Downtown Austin.

UT Austin. (See the tower and the football stadium?) The round drum-looking building is where the basketball team plays.

Looking north over downtown.

My office.

Roll your mouse over this one. It might take a second or two to load.

Looking down on Raghav and Bindu's house. I think I can see Gundu out on the back porch sunning his big belly!

There is Lake Travis. It's really low - we need rain.

Here we are over Darbin's house. (I think.)

That big building down there is Michael Dell's horse riding stable/arena. He also owns just about all of that land that you can see in this photo.

Mansfield dam.

Marc's office.

Ok, now we are on final approach.

Right about here we had a hell of a crosswind blow the plane.

Marc was steady on the controls, and we had a perfectly smooth landing. He is an excellent pilot. We didn't have to use our parachutes at all!

Here we taxi back to the hangar area.

Marc's plane doesn't have a horn, so we had to wait.

Tail machine guns.

Tail gunner view.

The tail.

Belly gunner. The worst job in the war - if the landing gear malfunctioned, then they'd have to land on the belly of the plane. The guy inside here got crushed to death.