LONG, SKINNY, and DISAPPEARING

Continental is one of the few airlines in the world flying the long, skinny, Boeing B757-300 series aircraft. Slowly we are adding winglets to them to make them more fuel efficient. This plane is so long, that when you're riding in the back and looking up front, whenever you hit a little bit of turbulence, you can actually see the tube bouncing up and down. It certainly gets your attention the first time you see it. The engineers that designed this plane must have been quite good at computing stress points since this plane MUST have a lot of them. A few months ago Continental had the first and ONLY B-757-300 with winglets in the world. Pretty neat, eh?

COMMUTING VIEW

Every now and then, I get to observe a spectacular sunrise/sunset that I have the opportunity of photographing. Here's one of those shots. I took this picture about three weeks ago during a commute from Ft. Lauderdale (FLL) to Newark, NJ (EWR). Although the shot would have been much better from the cockpit, it just goes to show that shots from the passenger window turn out too.

HARD TO SEE IN SXM

During one of my site seeing adventures in St Maarten (SXM), I came across this little fellow staring me down. You have to admit, his camouflage is incredible, and he didn't move an inch for five minutes. Had I put any of the other shots I took of this little critter on here, you'd have been searching for a bit, but I decided to make it easy for you all!!! I think it's neat how nature puts so many things out there for us to see, yet many of us continually walk right past them.

SXM........HOW LOW CAN THEY GO????

Well, I got to go to my most favorite place in the world (my future retirement home!! ;-) ) St. Maarten (SXM), and had a great time as usual. I'm amazed at how low some of these pilots drag their planes in over the beach in order to give the spectators a thrill. This guy was REAL low........... and fast too. Not quite sure how many times he's done this, but every day he does the same thing, and he seems to be pushing the safety envelope with each and every approach. Hopefully he doesn't ruin the "view" for everyone by clipping a fence one day. Supposedly that's already been done by a B747, and they rebuilt the fence to keep spectators a bit further from the runway. In any case, it's the neatest place in the world to watch airplanes and I can't wait to retire there one day.......! Come on retirement!!!!

MEET BRUTUS!!

The other day we had a cookout at our new home and had a few friends over. My girlfriend's sons coach, Chris, brought his teacup chihuahua for the fun and games. This little guy had a blast. He seemed to be in love with my collection of stuffed animals (Steiff's), and was jumping up and down and carrying on like they were real. This little guys name is Brutus, and boy is he a cute one! At ten months old and a whopping three pounds, Chris and Jimmy (Maria's son), have already taught him to stay, sit, and roll over. His favorite food? Carrots! Go figure. Can't get the humans to eat them, but dogs seem to love them. Here's to you Brutus!!!