Backyard Aerobats...(and feeder thieves)

Armchair Adventures

for March 25, 2012

by Paul Sullivan

No Dull Days with These Guys Around

            The squirrels in our yard have regular routes through the treetops. They can cross the entire yard without touching the ground.

            In Spring, the males chase each other from tree to tree along these aerial squirrelways at dazzling speeds.

            Their nano-second timing, their olympian atheleticism, make circus trapeze artists seem sluggish by comparison.

            Back by my shed there is a five-foot gap in this jiggling route, at least 60 feet above the ground.

            One day I watched one of these wild chases in progress and the second squirrel came to the gap, leaped…

            And hit the ground so hard I heard a "thud" and thought I saw his little gray body bounce.

            I was 75 feet from this madness and my one-eyed cat, Rusty, headed for the squirrel at the same time I did.

            Now Rusty-may his warrior soul rest in peace-never passed up an easy meal in the yard. But I wanted to be sure the furry gray fellow lying so still was ready to be Rusty's next meal.

            Turns out neither Rusty nor I had the chance to find out.

            Six seconds after that critter hit the ground with a big "whump," he was sprinting toward the woods and the old hickory tree.

            Six seconds more and you'd swear nothing at all had happened.

            My yard is full of squirrels, big trees and birds.

            When twilight fades each night and the gray squirrels retire to a well-deserved rest, their smaller cousins, the flying squirrels, came on for the night shift.

            Chances are, if you have a yard full of squirrels as I do, you almost surely have a contingent of their smaller nocturnal counterparts, Glaucomys volans-the southern flying squirrel.

            A man who once did flying squirrel rescue work in Fairfax told me that not only are these cute little big-eyed squirrels numerous, they probably outnumber their daytime partners, the eastern gray squirrel.

            Everybody has squirrel stories. Even people like me who love and protect their birds often admit to a secret admiration for the clever antics of these feeder-emptying specialists.

            Indeed, I engage in a ceaseless battle to let the birds get at least some of the food I put out for them. That's what I call a winning day in the squirrel wars.

            We won't talk about the other days.

            Long ago, when I had a stately American elm in the front yard, I loved to watch the daylight fade in the western sky. Each night as that 110-foot elm became a silhouette, little creatures emerged on its trunk and raced for the top of the tree.

            Then, one at a time, a 10 to 20 seconds apart, they silently launched themselves into the air, swiftly gliding in all directions to other trees. Their destination-trees were usually darkened and I could neither see nor hear their whereabouts afterward.

            One night was different, though, and I could make out one of these swift gliders coming obliquely toward me, then veering left to land upon the corner of the carport roof.

            Flying squirrels may not be able to gain altitude in their flights, but they can control their flights with pinpoint accuracy.

            I am told that the species we have hereabouts, the southern flying squirrel, has an 8:1 sink ratio, meaning that these feather-light gliders travel eight feet for each foot of height lost.

            Did I mention that they love peanuts and peanut butter? But be warned: if you lure them with the latter, get the organic kind containing nothing but peanuts. That's what the expert said, and I do trust his word. Better yet, get unshelled nuts, if you don't mind cleaning up the shells.

            In return for your feeding, flying squirrels will give you the best show on earth. Okay, the best show in your backyard.

            But be warned if you'd make a pet of a flying squirrel. I know several people who kept squirrels in their jacket pockets.

            "They have teeth like razor blades. And they can take the end off your finger before you know it," said my informant.

           

           

           

           

           

There's History in the Air

 

Armchair Adventures

Charley Kulp, left, and Ken Hyde

for March 18, 2012

by Paul Sullivan

Friends with Wings

            It was an exciting moment; a historical moment-and nobody had to tell

me to take pictures of it.

            There were two legends of aviation-old friends, at that-and they were standing in front of a legendary flying machine spinning tales of things that happened sixty years ago.

            The setting was the hangar at Ken Hyde's, near Warrenton. He had a small Christmas gathering for old friends. Among them was Charley Kulp, a cornerstone of general aviation, Virginia hall-of-famer and maestro of aerial antics.

            Ken Hyde is likewise known the world around, but as a Wrights Brothers authority and the constructor of Wright reproduction aircraft so perfect Wilbur and Orville would claim ownership.

            The two had known one another since at least since the old Manassas Airport in 1950 and were telling stories, their arms waving in animation, as old friends will do.

            Neither is a youngster but their skills as both aircraft builders and flyers is the stuff of legend. How many living pilots have performed for the Queen? How many on this Earth have flown an authentic Wright-powered reproduction airplane? The answers are, in order, Precious Few and None.

            But what added the sizzle to this scene was the Fiz or, to be precise, the Vin Fiz the two men stood in front of as they talked.

            Last year Hyde's company, The Wright Experience, crafted two one-of-a-kind flying machines that Orville and Wilbur had built exactly a century earlier.

            The first attracted scant public notice but marked a key milestone in the history of flight. It was a glider, and it incorporated everything the Brothers had learned since their history-changing first flights of December, 1903. Eight years later Orville returned to the Kitty Hawk dunes to make dozens of glides with it, one of which lasted nearly 10 minutes and set a world record that stood for a decade for motorless aircraft.

            The second craft they constructed in 1911, flew into the history books as the first airplane to cross the continent.

            The pilot was one Calbraith Rodgers, and although the Wrights had designated it a Wright EX, the flamboyant Rodgers had gotten sponsorship from the bottlers of Vin Fiz, a popular grape soda. Forever since, it has been known by that name.

            Rodgers, hoped to pocket a $50,000 prize offered to the first person to fly across the country within a 30 day time span. He took off from Sheepshead Bay, New York, Sept. 17, 1911.

            Rodgers' incredible journey, reported in breathtaking detail by the media of the day, took far longer than the required minimum, involving dozens of landings, five crashes, and many major repairs plus a hospital stay its pilot for injuries in one mishap.

            But Rodgers would not be deterred, and on Dec. 10 he touched down on the sands of Long Beach.

            The original Vin Fiz hangs in the National Air and Space Museum.

            Hyde and his Warrenton team researched the reproduction for several years before beginning construction.

            There is a postscript to the Cal Rodgers story. It is both tragic and funny, in an odd sort of way.

            The following April, Rodgers made an exhibition flight over the ocean. Cavorting with seagulls, he struck one. The collision damaged the frail machine, causing Rodgers to lose control. He crashed, fatally, on the beach, as a crowd of thousands looked on.

            Flash forward to the 1950s.

            A car appears at the airport in Manassas. A woman remains in the car but a man emerges, asking if there is a pilot who will disperse the ashes of human remains over the waters of Long Island.

            Charley Kulp, who coincidentally had to make a flight to New England anyway, offers to perform the service.

            At the prescribed place, he opens the urn and ashes scatter into the 75-mile-an-hour slipstream.

            Fortunately, Kulp is not alone in the two-seat open-cockpit biplane, for a swirl of ashes goes everywhere, including all over the inside of the plane's cockpit.

            Kulp is momentarily blinded and his late wife, Joan, takes the controls.

            There are ashes everywhere, as Kulp tells the story, but he manages to continue

on to his destination-an antique airplane event in New England.

            Later, he learns that the ashes are the remains of Charles Wiggin, mechanic for Cal Rodgers' history-making 1911 flight. And the woman who had asked for the unusual flight was the former Mabel Rodgers, widow of Cal Rodgers. Following her husband's death, she had married his mechanic, Charles Wiggin.

            And for those planning a visit to the Smithsonian's Udvar-Hazy Annex of the National Air and Space Museum near Dulles Airport, here's a little tip. Ask someone to point out the little Kreider-Riesner KR-34 biplane. I think it's hanging from the ceiling.

            That's the plane Charley and Joan Kulp flew to Connecticut that day long ago. And somewhere deep down inside the cockpit of that airplane there are likely a few tiny specks that once belonged to Charles Wiggin, who played a role in the remarkable story of Cal Rodgers.

           

           

           

           

Smart Phones: Not Just for 20-Somethings Anymore

Armchair Adventures

for March 11, 2012

by Paul Sullivan

               

Smart Phone: Smart Choice?

             

            Does the world really need another opinion on smart phones?

            Only if it's from the viewpoint of a senior citizen, and only if

it is written by someone who doesn't take this stuff too seriously.

            It's a phone, after all. Okay, it's a phone and a miniature computer. And no matter how gosh-darned amazing and useful and entertaining it may be, I am in charge of it, and not the other way around.

            By now you may have come to the conclusion that I broke down and got a smart phone.

            Never in my life have I seen one little pocket-size gadget create such a furor. If there is anybody left in these United States who does not have a strong opinion

on these devices, I'd be surprised.

            For the last three years, folks I know who have smart phones have been raving and swooning and telling me about them, how great they are, how much fun they are and how useful they can be. And how could I neglect to say how brilliant and ingenious they are?

            And for the past two years I have been doing my best to take a clear-headed, open-minded look at them.

            I noticed a pattern to the things friends told me and I paid attention to it. They love their little miracle-makers but they told me to beware of several truisms. "These things really eat-up power," they told me. You charge them fully and often.

            They were right-on about that.

            The second thing they cautioned was that using a smart phone requires a whole lot more learning than using a plain-jane cell phone.

            "You'll be making a phone call with it in no time," said my brother. "That's easy.

            "But you'll be a month getting pretty comfortable with it and being able to do a lot of the other things it can do," he added. Right again. Note: Brother Glen is no fool, he is on his second smart phone, and I couldn't help but note that he is still learning about it after several years.

            Another friend, still in the thinking-about-it stage, voiced his annoyance-widely shared, I might add-at people who can't lift their eyes from gazing deeply into that little

electronic screen in their hand.

            He mentioned eating out a few nights ago and seeing other dining couples spending more time voicing sweet nothings into their phones than talking with their companions.

            You can't blame that on smart phones, of course, but it does give us an idea how

many people there are who need to get a life.

            If your smart phone is your best friend, I'm afraid a double-edged sword awaits your falling soul: A) You don't have any real friends, and B) You need help.

            When I thought about getting a smart phone, I didn't fall into the trap of assuming I would get one and allowing the issue to become which one to get. Sure, there are plenty of differences-plenty of things setting one model or one service provider over another.

            The larger question was always, do I really need this and, what can it do that isn't simply amazing and entertaining.

            Let me demystify those two issues lest they become a distraction. I have an iPhone 4S on the Verizon network. There are many other satisfactory choices in both the units and the service providers. I had good reasons for those particular choices, but they

would not necessarily apply to others.

            If you do not have a smart phone, please do not let my musings influence you.

            I remember all too well when cell phones were the newest, coolest thing on Planet Earth. Everybody had to have one!

            Eventually I got one. By the time the smart phone slipped into my pocket last month I had owned five cell phones. And you know what? Having a cell phone was nice; it was a convenience; it provided some sense of security, particularly when alone in distant places.

            What mattered then, and what matters now, and what will matter 10 years from now is my health, a feeling of striving toward some satisfaction attainable only from useful effort…and my family and friends.

            These things, you will notice, are not technological issues. They are eternal human concerns. If a smart phone facilitates any of them, it will earn its keep.

            And if you have none of these techno-miracles, not to fret. I have friends who could have them but choose not to. And they are happy people, too.

           

           

John Minnick: A Man to Remember

Armchair Adventures

for March 4, 2012

by Paul Sullivan

ONCE in a while I come across such an unusual story about such an

exceptional person that I would fail my readers not to pass it along.

Today I’m sharing a column I wrote in May 1993 about John Minnick.

Some may remember his son, Don Minnick of Stafford County, who wrote

an outdoors column for The Free Lance–Star from 1993 to 2002.

The events in the original story occurred when John Minnick was 80 years old.

Don said this week that his dad, who remarried 10 years ago, is 98 now

and both he and wife, Barbara, live at an assisted care facility in Houston.

Words such as “heroism,” “integrity” and “honor” seem inadequate to

describe John Minnick.

The 1993 column follows:

A Most Exceptional Example for All

               John Minnick’s feat is not remarkable and heroic because he’s almost 80, nor because he lost an arm to a Japanese mortar on Iwo Jima in 1945.

               What Minnick and his brother, Bruce, did April 12 [1993] to rescue themselves from a shipwreck at sea would have defeated most men half a century younger.

               I spent a couple of hours with Minnick Tuesday afternoon as he recounted his adventure.

               I left inspired.

               Minnick lives in Spotsylvania County’s Summerlake community

off Harrison Road. His brother Bruce, 76, has lived for 27 years in

Belize, a small Central American country on the Caribbean Sea.

Minnick had never been able to visit Belize because of his wife’s

failing health. Last year Frances, his wife of 49 years, succumbed to

a heart condition.

               Last month John Minnick flew to Belize for a visit.

Natives of Great Neck, Long Island, the brothers grew up sailing.

The day after Easter they set out to fish from Bruce’s sailboat in a

large, remote coastal lagoon.

               They spent an enjoyable afternoon, trolling over the stern of the 12-foot boat, until 4 p.m.

               As Bruce turned little Molly Luv II to a new heading, a puff of wind caught the sail. Instead of letting out sail, he held it tight.

               The boat did what sailboats do when held tight into a burst of wind.

It happened like lightning.

               “I went over backwards. I’ve never been so surprised in my life,” said Minnick. “I saw my feet come up over after me.”

Bruce and John are good swimmers—a good thing as they weren’t wearing

life jackets.

               Coolheaded in a crisis, the two men’s first thoughts were for each other’s safety.

               They survived the capsize, but that was just the beginning.

For the next 17 hours, from 4 in the afternoon, through the long night

until 9 the next morning, the brothers cheered one another, pushed the

overturned sailboat and prayed.

               Once, they spotted a boat sent to search for them.

“But we were too low in the water and they never came close,” said Minnick.

               The boat capsized in a shallow lagoon. At first, they could touch bottom. Taking  advantage of that, they removed the sailboat’s mast and rigging, but that spun the craft entirely upside down.

               With no help on the horizon, they set out for the island where Bruce lives, 4½ miles away. Soon the water deepened and Bruce, shorter  than John, could not touch bottom.

               Soon the bottom fell away beneath John, too.

But he found that by holding his breath, he could go down, touch

bottom, spring up and forward enough to shove the boat ahead …

one foot at a time.

               He did that as the sun sank, as nighttime fell over the lagoon and through the long night into the dawn.

               Early in the night they navigated by the lights of Manatee Lodge. “But those lights went out about midnight, and soon after, all the shore lights went out.

               “I was trying to navigate by the stars but as the night went on, they changed position,” said Minnick.

               “The other light was a dim glow in the sky from Belize City, far off to the northeast. We tried to keep that just off our port bow, but the wind kept blowing us off course.”

               As he sank and rose, sank and rose, Minnick often gulped mouthfuls of saltwater. “Every now and then I’d hear Bruce asking whether I was OK. I’d hear him and have to break my rhythm and tell him I was.”

               As long as they did not stray from the shallow lagoon, sharks and alligators would be no problem.

               Thirst was one of their greatest problems. Immersed in water, they

might as well have been in the desert for what good it did them.

Despite the grinding ordeal, Minnick could take no rest. “There wasn’t any way to take a break. We just kept going,” he said.

               As day broke, they found themselves in shallower water on the opposite side of the island where Bruce lives.

               When the boat rolled, they had lost their bailer, but as they entered shallower water they got lucky.

               “We had no bailer, but the Lord provided for us and we saw a big white bucket in the sand,” said Minnick.

               But their incredible ordeal still wasn't over. Half a mile of water lay between them and their destination.

               And so the Minnicks righted Molly Luv II—named for Bruce’s

daughter—bailed her, then re-rigged the little craft and sailed her home!

               They pulled the boat ashore at 11 a.m.—19 hours after their accident.

               Not only had they survived, they had come through unscathed.

               Minnick was thirsty for days afterward. And when he awoke the next morning, his eyes were stuck shut from the briny water.

               Looking back on it, Minnick said, “I got a little bushed” from the ordeal. “I still can’t believe it.”

               It never occurred to him that they might not make it.

“I knew we would make it,” he said.

               I wasn’t too surprised that this gentle, smart and energetic man

should survive so well a test that would kill many others.

               As he walked me through his life’s story—combat hero, lawyer, judge, husband and father, businessman, writer (with a new book in the works)—I knew I was dealing with a most exceptional man.

               And so I asked if he’d go back to see Bruce again. And I asked if he’d go sailing again in the beautiful coastal waters of Belize.

               And I never doubted his answer.

               “Oh sure,”  he told me with a smile, “Bruce is building  a new boat. It’ll be a lot more seaworthy.”