The Damned Flood

   
  
  
  
Remember your childhood backyard?  You knew where every tree was – the guava in the corner, the macopa near the poso, three kaimito dominating the center.  The dwarf lived under the culvert, and the sweetest aratilis grew over the neighbor’s wall.
  
  
  
  
Carlo and I learned to fly over Central Luzon.  In the lazy summer [...]

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2009 Philippine Blog Awards

Our blog is a Finalist in the 2009 Philippine Blog Awards!  Carlo and I are immensely PROUD!
  
  
We would have celebrated this with a dozen stories by now.
Except that Carlo’s home was devastated by typhoon Ondoy, which flooded great swathes of Manila last September 26. 
The whole house was completely submerged in floodwater and mud, above the roof line.  In four [...]

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The Cup Runneth Over

I’ve often wondered how magical it would have been to take my Dad flying.  Pay him back for all the airplane stories he told me when I was a boy.  Sons secretly crave their fathers’ pride.  He is long gone, so I will never find out.
Or so I thought.
  
  
  
  
I’m am only son, third in a line of eldest sons.  [...]

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Besieged at Baler

Even today, Baler remains besieged … by weather, mountains, the biggest ocean in the world.  But with weather wisdom, terrain awareness and the patience to turn back and try again another day, you can break the siege.
And remember, the Crispy Buntot is delicious.
 
  
  
  
   
There are three routes across the Sierra Madre mountains to Baler.
 
Short and Fast
Through the Bongabon-Baler pass.  Short [...]

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Isabela

The mountains, weather and routes at Baler were learning opportunities for us.  They stretched our wings, our decision-making and our experience base. 
More important, the Crispy Buntot is great!
 
  
  
  
Fast-forward seven months.  December, just after Christmas.  Carlo and I vegetated on the beach at Vigan, wondering where to fly next on our Yuletide flying holiday.

 
As a rippled sunset glowed over the South China Sea, we got a text [...]

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Baler!

The pilot who crosses the Sierra Madre range into the coastal plain at Baler Bay is well-rewarded with a stunning vista.  Baler is a beautiful place.  Sheltered by mountains, it is competitive and contemporary without losing its refreshingly rural identity.
  
   
   
  
  
  
  
    
    
                                
                       
      

  
  
  
  
 
 
  
        
    
   
     
   
   
  
    
  
Carlo and I made it to Baler for the first time in May, 2008.  I can’t recall how we crossed the mountains, but it must [...]

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The Continuing Perils of Flying with Mom

I first learned of Baler from the former General Manager at Omni Aviation, Aljess, now a big jet pilot for Philippine Airlines.
He had pictures of a rugged coastline and a small inland airport.  And stories of crab, seafood and surfers.
   
   
     
     
You would think that my Mom, in her 80s, would be fearful of flying.  But she has [...]

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Paoay, Pinakbet, Pipian, Poki-Poki

Vigan isn’t the end of the earth.  The scenery doesn’t go south as the airplane flies north.  Ilocos Norte, home province of former President Ferdinand Marcos, is barely within our fuel radius.  Enough for a quick but unforgettable aerial survey.
It’s a wonder that WordPress didn’t censor this title.
  
  
  
  
Vigan is as pretty on [...]

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Voyages to Vigan

I flew to Vigan four times during the Easter Holidays.  Enough for honorary citizenship in Diego Silang’s Yloko Libre.
We found a charming boutique hotel.  Ate the best dishes Ilocos has to offer.  Sat quietly in the 18th century Cathedral.  Prowled the flea market on Maundy Thursday, fasting on balut and twin popsies.  A real Holy Week hardship.
Explored a bookstore full of quaint old editions — Isak Dinesen essays, [...]

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Ilocos

For two years now, Carlo and I have had a tradition of Flying North during long vacations — Christmas, Holy Week, Thailand’s Songkran.
This year we crisscrossed Luzon – Pampanga, Zambales, Pangasinan, Benguet, La Union, Ilocos, Nueva Ecija, Aurora.  Always looking for the best food, the friendliest people, the most spectacular views.
The verdict?
  
  
  
I first discovered [...]

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And We Haven’t Even Started Maneuvering Yet!

Carlo continues his story of flying with Meynard for the first time. 
In two days he learns more about aerodynamics than most pilots do in years.  He is in a fabric-covered aerobatic airplane, yet his best lessons have nothing to do with maneuvering flight.
  
  
  
  
There was a large, yellow, thing in the hangar.  It was a spindly, [...]

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And The Wall Came Tumbling Down

Most city walls keep intruders out.  In 1961, the German Democratic Republic built a wall to keep people in.
                       

There was no wall, at first.  The western half of the city was administered by the British, French and Americans.  The eastern half lay within the communist world. 
  
The western half of the city — West Berlin – became a safety valve, deep in the middle [...]

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Sotto Il Sole Della Toscana

  
Cortona, Tuscany.  Home to Frances Mayes’ Bramasole.  I arrived the night before, had the best tartufo ever for dinner, and was set to explore this romantic town by day, under the Tuscan sun.
  

 
  
  
  
I stayed at Il Sole del Sodo, a Bread and Breakfast a kilometer downhill from Cortona. 
Despite an air of casual carelessness, the B&B is clearly run with taste [...]

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Cortona

The movie Under the Tuscan Sun enamored me with the thought of buying a villa and vineyard in Tuscany, on a whim and the spur of a moment.  I felt the same about Peter Mayle’s books — A Good Year, Hotel Pastis, etc.  At my age it’s easy to get enamored with “happy ever after” early retirement stories.
   [...]

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Under The Tuscan Sun

I told Carlo I would give up flying to retire in this place.  That says a lot. 
(Carlo knows my childhood dream had always been to be an airplane pilot.  My teenage dream was to become a rock star in Led Zeppelin, but that was just hormones.)
It only took 46 years, but I did become a pilot.  [...]

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A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

Last March Tonet took a Supply Chain Management course at IMD, the executive school in Lausanne.  Carlo went to Switzerland too.  Graduation gift.
Carlo took his Dad to school every morning.  He then toured everywhere, even taking a train all the way to Zurich, at the other end of Switzerland.
  
  
No matter where he went — Geneva, Zurich, Bern — Carlo was back [...]

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Julio Rescued at Sea!

The three survivors float in the open sea in waterlogged life jackets, wilting under the brutal sun, weak, despairing, losing hope.  No drinking water, no food, no land in sight, no chance of survival.
Then a Britten-Norman Islander spotter airplane roars overhead.  The Coast Guard!  Salvation! 
Just 50 meters away, the audience cheers.
  
  
Audience?  Cheers??
Well, yes.  This was a Search and [...]

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Canopy Cacophony

Like the balloon bursting event, skydiving was a crowd pleaser at the Fiesta.  Sixty-six skydivers from the Philippine Air Force, Army, Marines, and National Police jumped out of 28 aircraft sorties by five aircraft.  They were joined by six civilian skydivers from three countries, 215 jumps in all.

 
 
 

Impressive statistics.  Yet the best number here is zero.  Zero accidents and zero reserve parachute [...]

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Close Your Eyes And Let The Force Be With You

I could only watch the aerobatic displays with envy.  But Carlo and I did actually fly an aerial dogfight, against the Navy, Malaysia and SEAir!  Well, sort of.
  
  
  
  
The balloon bursting boondoggle – airplanes prowling above the crowd and hunting down helium-fattened prey.
Most pilots quail at colliding with an object in an airplane! 
But there we were, chasing drifting [...]

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Real Men Do It Upside Down!

 So there we were, behind schedule. 
The gusting winds had grounded the hot air balloons, skydivers and paragliders.  
The crazed windsock threatened to rip itself off its pole and blow away altogether.
The morose crowd packed the ramp.  
Buddy Lopa, our untiring “Voice of the Fiesta” Program Director, kept apologizing for the wind.
We were stressed!  The airshow was dying.
     
That’s when [...]

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The 12th Philippine International Hot Air Balloon Fiesta

Over 90 aircraft sorties, not counting hot air balloons.  STOL airplanes, helicopters, microlights, paragliders, S-211 jets… .
Brass bands and silent drill teams.  Rocketeers.  Six volunteers winched from the audience into rescue helicopters.  Three lost parents found and returned to their worried children.
Thirteen aerobatic flights.  Plus two Air Force training jets doing chandelle rolls low over the show. 
Zero accidents.  Zero incidents.  Four UPS cargo flights delayed.
Balloon-bursting – 11 airplanes vs. [...]

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Our Flying Date With Two Sisters in Zambales

Carlo continues his narration of the flight around Zambales.  We explore two exquisite islands and the site of a WWII sea battle.  Carlo reflects on our journey from 60 feet under the sea to 2,000 feet above it.
  
  
After Pinatubo, we fly over the jagged lahar ridges and chasms in the Bucao river valley,  and nose west to the South [...]

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Mount Pinatubo, Zambales

Every year at Christmas, Carlo and Tonet fly an aerial odyssey.  From December 23 to January 4  they did 1,600 nautical miles in 9 days, logging over 20 flight hours.  Not bad for a Cessna 152. 
They took hundreds of pictures.  Thumbnails are click-able.  Photos are copyrighted.
On December 27 Carlo and Tonet sat in the airplane, ready for engine start, flight planned for Baguio, in the [...]

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Anak Krakatau

We have a new guest writer!  John has a passion for cryptic crosswords and sharp humor.   Both qualities show up in his writing.  He celebrated his birthday by flying over one of the legendary volcanos of the world in a homebuilt kit plane.

  
  

      Friday  Dec. 2007.   A real Sagittarian’s day.
      There is in Jakarta an authority which evaluates volcanic [...]

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Aerobatic Pilot

  

                                                                                   Photo by Jaime Unson
 
I‘ve always dreamed of doing this.  Fly like a fighter pilot.  Not in a simulator, nor a demo flight.  I wanted hours and hours, multiple missions.  In a REAL MAN’s airplane.
And I chose to learn from the best aerobatic pilot in the country.
  
  
Meynard Halili, who celebrated his birthday yesterday, is one of those people [...]

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Bad Flights, Big Profits

   
   
    
Excerpt from a Newsweek article, August 20, 2007
For frequent fliers, it’s clearly the worst of times.  In June, just 68% of U.S. airline flights arrived on time, and in July, 16,986 flights were canceled.
And yet for airline companies, these are the best of times.  The CEO of American Airlines crowed about “the largest quarterly [...]

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Flying in the US

   
    
“It’s Third World.  It’s just disgraceful.” 
– Caroline O’Rourke, an Irish tourist stranded along with 20,000 other travelers at Los Angeles International Airport on Aug 12 because of a computer glitch.  Passengers on  more than 40 planes spent several hours stuck on the runways. (TIME magazine, Aug 27)
  
    
What is it about domestic airline ’service’ [...]

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Above Central Luzon in a Flying Soda Can

Last June 6th we wrote about touring Nueva Ecija in a flying soda can – a mysterious lake and a World War II airstrip.  Earlier, we shared pictures and stories flying over northern Pangasinan — Lingayen Gulf, the Hundred Islands, and the power plant attacked by the killer salabay.
We now tour Central Luzon, best seen low and slow.  Our ‘backyard’ is big enough to play in, small enough so that [...]

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07 07 07

We did promise some guest writers… .
Let me introduce Capt C.  A true friend, concert pianist, Marketing professional, President of our Indonesian subsidiary, and fellow aviator. 
She learned to fly because I wouldn’t let her.  When I got my private pilot license, she wanted to be my first passenger, on December 17, 2003 — the Centennial of Flight, 100 years [...]

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Copilot Blues

Whenever Carlo and I flew, I saddled him with the dreary, non-flying chores — filing flight plans, climbing onto the wing to dipstick the fuel, filling up logbooks, securing the airplane.  Because he was still a student pilot, and I’m not an instructor, he never got the pleasure of landing the airplane.
He has been obsessive compulsive since he was [...]

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Private Pilot

    
   
Carlo took flying lessons for a year. 
    
He first flew an airplane on April 15, 2006 — his “orientation” flight at Omni Aviation.  (The goal of an orientation flight is to see if the student throws up  :-)  If he does not have the stomach for it, he can save his money and can stagger away from a flying [...]

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It’s DONE, baybee!!!

How auspicious that the endless paperwork for my license should finish on the first year anniversary of my Father’s Day solo!  I finally got to fulfill my dream of taking Tonet flying, with me in the left seat!  (Pictures coming with his post – he’s the one with Picasa!)
 My new lucky number is 07P181.  I’m a Private [...]

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The Great Raid

In January 1945 a company of 120 American Rangers and Alamo Scouts sneaked across the Central Luzon plain and slipped behind enemy lines for 48 hours.  
They attacked the Cabanatuan prison camp and liberated 511 American prisoners of war.  The prisoners were survivors of the Bataan and Corregidor siege in 1942, and had been beaten and starved for 3 years.
Only [...]

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Aerial Voyeurism

Our last Adventure article introduced a visual treat — touring Central Luzon in a flying soda can. We continue our aerial Backyard Tour.  An emergency airstrip, and a mysterious lake. 
  
  
East of Lingayen Gulf are the Cordilleras, and the Cordillera Autonomous Region.  Baguio, Sagada, and Banaue all lie in that direction, as does the highest peak in Luzon, Mt. Pulog. 
The Bued [...]

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Visual Therapy — Touring Our Backyard in a Flying Soda Can

No, there are no more flying pictures of Angelina Jolie in this article!  But we’ve had three pieces now on instrument flying.  We do need some visual relief.
    
   
In May, Carlo and I flew VFR around Central Luzon.  Carlo calls this area, “Our backyard.”  Carlo and I have flown over the great plain so often, on the way to Baguio, La Union, [...]

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Flying Into a Volcano

I once had a dreadful, almost revolting, bias against volcanos.  Leprous open sores in the earth, disgorging the planet’s revolting wastes, the disgusting stink of rotten eggs completing the horrid scene….
Is your skin crawling yet?  Well, imagine flying over a volcano crater. 
It’s like getting out of bed at midnight to stand in front of an open window, trying not to [...]

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