"Hi Mom!"

Date	Aircraft	Route of Flight	Time (hrs)	Total (hrs)
11 May 2014	N21481	SDC (Sodus, NY) - FZY (Fulton, NY) - SDC	1.2	1270.3

"Hi Mom!"

A child's high pitched voice from the ether with a Mother's Day message slipped between congested pattern calls on 122.80 MHz. From within the cockpit of Warrior 481, we smiled, unsure if the intended recipient heard the message directed at her. If so, she remained silent.

The Bear and I started the day early, before Kristy rose, with an errand to Wegman's. We woke Kristy with a tray containing a hot, yummy beverage; a sampling of small pastries; and a just-germinated flower from school in a Bear-painted pot.

This early morning run actually solved a conundrum.  The Bear desperately wanted to present Kristy with breakfast in bed (as we had done the previous year), but also desperately wanted to attend the Mother's Day EAA Fly-In breakfast at the Oswego County Airport.  With a light first breakfast leisurely completed by the day's Woman of Honor, there was time for a flight to Oswego as well.

Once we climbed to altitude, the GPS indicated a 15 minute flight time to Oswego County, a significantly shorter flight time than the 45 minutes required to fly there from Le Roy. The cool northwesterly wind off of Lake Ontario had its way with us as we waited in a long line for breakfast at the EAA hangar.

The Civil Air Patrol and EAA Chapter 486 were serving up pancakes, eggs to order, French toast (which we failed to convince The Bear was NOT finger food like regular toast), ham, potatoes, sausage, and homemade doughnuts.

Shown here are what remained of The Bear's two pancakes, one slice of French toast, and two sausages. Ok, in full disclosure, I ate The Bear's second sausage (which might be why she stuck her tongue out at me).

The Bear demands a high price for a nice photo.  Her currency: she insists on taking a silly one first.

In the end, everyone got what they wanted.

On the way back out to the ramp, we encountered Gustavo, whom I knew from the Piper Forum, but had never met in person.  Gustavo flies what has to be the nicest Cherokee 140 I have ever laid eyes on.  "He looked at airplanes for three years!" his wife exclaimed. That search completely paid-off; his is a beautiful aircraft.

We loaded back into the Warrior to complete our first family flight together since going to the Outer Banks last fall.

I let The Bear demonstrate her prowess on the controls to Kristy. When Kristy's complexion began to skew toward "David Clark Green", I resumed control.

It was a truly beautiful spring day. The flight to Oswego County and back was largely flown hands-off as we surfed through the smooth air.

Silt from river and bay effluents endowed the water of Lake Ontario with a ghostly appearance.

I found it deeply satisfying to find Sodus Bay no longer entombed beneath ice and a definitive shade of green creeping across the landscape.

Putting the airplane away is always a bit of a production. Despite her status as Woman of Honor, Kristy assisted The Bear in cleaning up the airplane. She is a most humble Woman of Honor.

Remember what I said about requiring a goofy picture in order to get a good one?

Yeah...there it is.

Happy Mother's Day to my wonderful wife and mother of our little Flying Bear.