Liberty is an inherently offensive lifestyle. Living in a free society guarantees that each one of us will see our most cherished principles and beliefs questioned and in some cases mocked. That psychic discomfort is the price we pay for basic civic peace. It's worth it. It's a pragmatic principle. Defend everyone else's rights, because if you don't there is no one to defend yours. -- MaxedOutMama

I don't just want gun rights... I want individual liberty, a culture of self-reliance....I want the whole bloody thing. -- Kim du Toit

The most glaring example of the cognitive dissonance on the left is the concept that human beings are inherently good, yet at the same time cannot be trusted with any kind of weapon, unless the magic fairy dust of government authority gets sprinkled upon them.-- Moshe Ben-David

The cult of the left believes that it is engaged in a great apocalyptic battle with corporations and industrialists for the ownership of the unthinking masses. Its acolytes see themselves as the individuals who have been "liberated" to think for themselves. They make choices. You however are just a member of the unthinking masses. You are not really a person, but only respond to the agendas of your corporate overlords. If you eat too much, it's because corporations make you eat. If you kill, it's because corporations encourage you to buy guns. You are not an individual. You are a social problem. -- Sultan Knish

All politics in this country now is just dress rehearsal for civil war. -- Billy Beck

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

SandCastle Air

For the first six Gun Blogger Rendezvous, I drove from Tucson to Reno.  It's about 15 hours each way, if you average 55MPH over the trip including stops for food and fuel.  I can do that in one shot, but that's about my limit.  This year I got an interesting offer.  Danno from Sandcastle Scrolls was going for the first time - and Dan owns a plane.  A plane that cruises at 200MPH.  Specifically, this plane:




Pretty, isn't it?  It's a 1967 Cessna 310, with two Continental fuel-injected 471 cubic-inch six-cylinder boxer engines rated at about 260Hp each.  At 200MPH, they burn about 25GPH for an average fuel economy of 8MPG - not bad at that speed.  As Dan reported on his blog,
We fired up the #1 engine at 10:27 local and shut them down 3:26 later on the ramp at Carson City.  (note flight time is not the same as engine time.  Engine time includes taxi time at each end while flight time is from take off to landing.)
Beats the hell out of 15 hours.  Including idling, run-up, takeoff and landing, we burned about 91 gallons each way.  At well over $5/gal.  Ouch.  Still, the scenery from 8500 to 10,000 ft ASL is a lot nicer than it is at ground level over Nevada:






Trust me, the desert is MUCH prettier from the air.  And you don't get to do this - our approach and landing at Carson City:


Dan's been flying about 25 years.  He greased the landing at Carson, and did it even better on our return to Chandler.  Not a bad way to travel!  And without blogging, I'd never have gotten this chance.

Oh, and the speed?  Here's the proof:


That's from the GPS on my Blackberry.

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