Thanks Dad

Tom Stormcrowe pm'd this to me in the Bike Forums awhile back. It is indeed an unerving picture from high in the clouds of my business location. My building is just to the left of the red drop with the letter "A" in it. My front door is directly across from the 3rd parking spot .

The image conjures up all kinds of secret agent 007 NSA black helicopter scenarios. I wait anxiously for Gene Hackman to come into my bikeshop soon and tell me to stop using my cell phone. They know where I am. Of course having my street address on file with the IRS would probably do without all this eye in the sky type fussing about. But we all know the secret black ops folks have serious budgets to use up.

I expect the smart bomb to hit any moment now. I am sure General "at the moment in charge" Beefneck has signed off on the mission and Delta Force type dudes wearing black are camped out on the bank roof next door aiming a targeting laser at my front window. Tomorrow I will come to work and find a 40 foot deep crater where my shop used to be. Per usual for this type of surgical strike, the target was not in the building but 3 dogs, a cat and a family of four were.

Since yesterday was my dad's birthday, there was some residual memory left over today when I started with this picture from orbit. Early in his Air Force career, my dad was assigned to aerial recon. Flying around in open cockpit planes, I imagine him with a pad of cheap grade school paper and some crayons. But the reality was his group were the first to develope effective camera shots of the ground below. But contrary to my dad's wishes, his natural managerial abilities bumped him up and out of the nuts and bolts part after only a couple of years. He always regretted that. Yeah, he was promoted. But the aerial photography was the one thing he really loved about his 31 years in the Air Force.

Anyway Dad, I hope wherever you are, or even that if you are, you can appreciate what has evolved from your early efforts taking pictures from a bi-plane with a Brownie. Back in the days when you not only lived by the words "Dead Reckoning" but could also die by them. I loved your tales of being lost and using telephone lines to find a town, any town. Or the several plane crashes you walked away from. Landing on roads, fields, anywhere flat enough to plop a troubled plane.

After Note - Before I punch the publish button and forever have to live with what I have written, I always do an edit read. And no matter how well I dissect the drivel, I always miss something. I guess my posts are akin to those fancy Persian rugs. Perfect except for one flaw left in to indicate no one or thing is perfect. Sounds good to me. I think I'll go with that.