While the getting's good...

I woke up this morning at Dad’s and wandered outside for a smoke.  Somewhere in this oak woods, some trees has decided it’s time. Leaves were falling.

 

On that note, my dog and I are headed south.  If you find yourself run off the road between Michigan and Georgia by a Jeep and a trailer being driven by a black lab…that’s us!

Offloading

In preparation for the next phase of movement, in which I will soon head south out of Michigan, I staged my very own tragic boating accident today.

Okay, so it really wasn't all that dramatic, but I moved all my long guns and associated crap into Dad's basement so they don't have to be sitting in a trailer while I go into the seriously transient, trailer-parked-outside phase of this whole thing.

Wild weekend

Yesterday was Mom's Birthday.  Mom, of course, rocks.  So I was left trying to figure out how best to celebrate such an auspicious occasion.

Why, by jumping out of a perfectly good airplane, of course!

That would be your author, coming in for a landing that, thanks to my tandem jumping buddy, was not a crashing disaster.  Mere seconds later....

Not a bird, or a plane, but Mom.

First time for each of us to do that, and it was a hoot.  We jumped from around 10,000 feet, had just under a minute of freefall, then about 5,000 feet of pleasant drifting to the ground.  We went with the fine folks at Skydive Allegan, who have a dog on their website and so were our first choice.  They were great.

World's Coolest Grandmother was on site (although she did not jump out of an airplane) to take pictures.  And, in a fabulous stroke of good luck, one of Mom's hospital coworkers is a private pilot who flies out of the same airport.  After our jump, he packed all three of us into his plane and took us for a lovely spin around West Michigan.

That, folks, is what it looks like where I'm from.