Some memorable flights

Dick flew many thousands of miles with our pilot Ray and pretty well covered the mainland USA. I went on a few of the business trips with them, but we also took advantage of having a seven seater plane (six up front and one on the potty!!), and took some employees on fun trips. I mentioned the one to Montreal in an earlier blog, the one where we had our main supervisor and his wife, our construction supervisor and his wife, together with Ray our pilot. This was the one that we were not allowed to fly around a huge thunderstorm, but made to go through it and we all truly believe that it was only because of Ray's superb calm and handling the plane that we made it. The drops, bangs, shakes were something none of us wanted to experience again. How many of you have seen glasses full of liquid float up into the air? Mine was a bloody Mary that turned upside down and went straight into my purse! Another highlight of this trip - although this was a good one - was flying over Niagara Falls. Talking about flying over - Dick wasn't content with just going over this time - he had to go INTO!. This was a trip where we took our office manager Dee with us and we did fly over the White Sands in New Mexico, the big Crater in Arizona and later over the Salt Lake after an overnight stay in Las Vegas. But Dick wanted to give Dee a special view of the Grand Canyon and actually flew the plane below the rim for quite a distance. This isn't allowed any more. That was quite a trip for Dee, who had never been any further from home (Southern Illinois) than St. Louis Missouri - some 60 miles away. It was summer time when we took this trip and I don't think Dee ever believed me that the big thermometer on the roof of the airport building really did say it was 104 degrees when we landed there around 11pm. Another fun trip - this time two other supervisors with their wives - was to New Orleans. Our secretary June wasn't very impressed with the Eggs Benedict with two olives in the middle of the lightly poached eggs that looked back at her at breakfast - this was after a typical New Orleans night the evening before. Another young girl in our office came with us on a West Coast trip. We also had our engineer/draftsman with us on this one as well as brother Bill. Donna had never really traveled anywhere before and especially delighted in Dick going all the way down the California coast just a short distance off shore at a low elevation. One of the scariest trip I remember was one that Dick, Ray and I took to Washington (State) where we were going to meet Bill to look at a site in Spokane. This was before we had the pressurized plane and it was winter. We ran into bad weather after reflueling in Montana and there was a chance that icing would start to form on our wings. We were in solid clouds and were losing contact with the traffic controllers. They were having to relay messages to us from commercial flights that were flying above us - AND above the clouds and bad weather. The combination of flying 'blind' through the mountains at an elevation which was lower than some of the peaks, relying totally on messages relayed to us, and all the time using the flashlight to check the wings to see if ice was forming - did not lead to a relaxed trip. We arrived safe - and I remember as we were going from the airport to the motel that Bill had reserved, he turned to me and asked if I wanted to go to Church the next morning (Sunday) - I told him it wasn't necessary - I had been praying for the last four hours!! On the commercial traveling, there are a couple that stand out in my mind. One was Dick and I to New York for the annual Motel/Hotel Days Exposition, where Dick was to be a speaker along with the President of Days Inn and Scottish Inns. It was a fascinating and fun-filled three days and we are able to do a little sight-seeing on our own. I think Dick's highlight was going to Madison Square Gardens and seeing the New York team play the San Antonio Spurs. We were invited to a special banquet put on by the New York Hotel/Restaurant Association and were seated at a table with four young people from the local Culinary School and three retired Master Chefs. The entertainment was Lionel Hampton and his band and I had a great time dancing with the three Chefs! The whole meal was impressive. The following year we let Bill and Frances, along with Leroy and Betty go to the Expedition instead of us. We have a ton of stories about some of these flights, but I hope you've enjoyed what I have told.