WHERE DO MY PHOTOS COME FROM?

So...........I'm finally showing you a shot of ME taking some photos (in St. Maarten of course), for not only my blog, but my website too. I get told a LOT, that my photos must be fakes.........but, after watching me take a few, people change their minds. My girlfriend Maria thought it was easy to take an airplane picture........until she tried to do it. She now lets me take the airplane shots.......LOL. By the way, Maria took this photo of me, and since I wasn't moving 160 miles per hour like a plane, it turned out pretty good. :-)

BEAUTIFUL SUNSETS

While flying to Houston (IAH) last week, we had two sunsets that caught my eye. I've downloaded them so you can enjoy them too. The "duller" one was taken as we were passing through the "snow clouds" that had just visited Houston, and the other was the next day. Hard to believe something so far away can generate such a beautiful site for us. Enjoy!!

NEAT CLOUD FORMATIONS

Finally home for a few days.........whew!!! The good thing is I have a week of vacation. The bad thing is that we're trying to move into our new home and I'm laying hardwood floors and cleaning up, so I'm not getting a vacation. :-) Anyway, here's a couple of shots of some incredible cloud formations that we saw flying from Miami (MIA), to Houston (IAH) last week. It was strange that this was the only small area of high winds which creates this "wind blown" look. My first officer and I couldn't get our cameras out quick enough. Luckily, mine is super fast and here's the result. Hard to believe the winds were almost 130 miles per hour at this altitude!

FLYING THROUGH A CONTRAIL

Here's a neat shot of what it looks like to fly through another planes contrail several minutes after the plane has passed by. Usually a contrail will fall approximately 3-500 feet or so, but this contrail held its altitude pretty well. We were flying at FL370 (flight level 370 or roughly 37,000 feet above the earth's surface) when I snapped this shot. Every now and then while flying through a contrail like this, we'll experience a nice "bump" or jolt in the ride. Ahhhh......all in a days work! Well, tomorrow I'm off to work for four days. I'll be back on the 6th........so see you then!

SANDBLASTED IN ST MAARTEN

While Maria and I were having lunch in St. Maarten last week (SXM), the daily KLM B747-400 was getting ready to depart. As you can see through the trees, our hotel (the Sonesta Maho) is VERY close to the end of the runway. That's one of the neat things about this place........location, location and location (the famous real estate saying). A minute after taxiing into position for takeoff, the throttles come up and the windstorm starts. Check out all those "daring" tourists getting the sandblasting of their life...................(we've all done it once just to experience it). And once is all they'll ever do it.....because it hurts like the dickens, and you'll be cleaning sand out of every crevice and cranny on your body for the next month. LOL Click on the photo to get the "big picture".