McCain/Palin Visit Cedar Rapids

Today the GOP nominees for president and vice president of the United States of America visited Cedar Rapids.

Their speeches were carried on CNN. If you were watching, you didn't see me there. I would have liked to have been there and I even had a ticket. But I was simply unwilling to put up with the hassle of going.

The event was held in a hangar around which there is very little parking area. Attendees were being shuttle-bussed there from somewhere, probably the main parking area for the terminal. And then there's the security issue, which I won't even get into.

Furthermore, I was told that I could not take my gun, umbrella, or flag pole.

So I stayed home and mowed the lawn. I did watch some of McCain's speech on CNN but did not think to do so early enough to catch Sarah Palin's talk.

From a presentation on her which Allison sent me, I learned that she flies her own plane—probably that neat little sea plane parked in her back yard. If you saw the Charlie Gibson interview, you could see it.

In Alaska, planes are used pretty much like we use pickups here, due to the vast distances and lack of other transportation. Small planes are all over the state, and many of them are sea planes.

Assuming Sarah Palin flies her own seaplane, she can do something I'm not allowed do; I'm only licensed to fly land-based planes.

Which leads me to a little tidbit in my life for this week. Just yesterday, I was in the very hangar where the rally was held today. I met with my student and the examiner prior to the student pilot taking his practical test to become a licensed pilot.

By noon, Jeff held a Private Pilot certificate. (You can check out a web page I made for him here if you wish: http://syntheticsaves.com/jdw/.) Actually, this is the second student to "graduate" in less than a month. http://syntheticsaves.com/bb/

I've done a lot of flying this summer. Having these two graduate with the minimum number of hours required were great accomplishments.

Pat keeps asking, "When are you going to fix "this" or clean up "that"?"