Memorial Day Weekend

Memorial Day weekend was pretty quiet for us. We stayed close to home.

Saturday was a beautiful day here. We ran a couple errands and made a visit to the lake part of the Sharon Woods park in the greater Cincinnati area. I wanted to get out and do a little walking. We didn't walk around the whole lake, but my leg is feeling much better and I'm better able to keep pace with Dianne -- compared to my shuffling of last week. This photo, from the top of the boat rental building, shows some people renting paddle boats. The place was packed and there were quite a few boats coming and going. Several folks were fishing and we saw a few catch some sunfish. The water seemed a bit muddy from the rain we had.

Today we went to downtown Blue Ash to watch the Memorial Day parade. It's kind of sad we've been here well over a decade and this is the first time we went to the parade. There were the typical (for me) color guards, bands, National Guard vehicles, etc. A couple F-16s flew over (the speaker for the service at the veteran's memorial was from Wright Patterson AFB) and three of the Cincinnati Warbirds did a fly-by as well. Being an election year, there were LOTS of political candidate groups in the parade. All of them were tossing out candy for attention and the little kids were like vacuum cleaners sucking up the morsels. I don't remember the candy thing going on in Memorial Day parades when I was growing up.

The photo at the right shows the American Legion color guard that led the parade. The first shot below are members of the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office Pipe & Drum corps. The second shot is a Shriner clown car. The car was carefully balanced over the rear axle. It could drive down the street normally, but a slight shift in weight would make the front wheels come up. The car could spin around on the back wheels and the casters below the rumble seat. This is when they were spinning around and waving to the crowd. One of the clowns was riding a bike where the hubs of the wheels were off center. He was bobbing and rocking as he was riding along. That brought back memories of a similar bike my dad made. Too funny.

Busy Weekend

On Saturday morning, I got back in the air flying the Tiger. Tony had completed his annual inspection and I needed my biannual flight review. The flight review was an hour of ground instruction followed by 1.7 hours of flying with an instructor that worked with me for my instrument rating. Although the winds aloft were pretty stiff out of the North, it was a beautiful clear day to fly. We worked through various maneuvers prescribed for the flight review and also flew a couple instrument approaches. Since it was such a nice day, I had to wear glasses that restricted my vision to only the instrument panel. Surprisingly, I did pretty well with the landings even though I hadn't been flying for a couple months.

Saturday afternoon Dianne and I went to the Sharon Woods park. It was the first public park in Hamilton County -- it's quite large and includes a nice lake, a golf course, a heritage museum, and lots of shelters and grilling sites. We walked all the way around the lake (nearly 3 miles) and also rented a paddle boat. Dianne and I never rented a paddle boat before. We pedaled around the lake a bit and then just 'parked' in the middle, put our feet up, and drifted while watching the ducks, fishermen, boaters, and people walking. It was the perfect day to relax on the water.

Sunday we got up early, had a quick breakfast at Marx's Bagels, and then drove to Columbus to see the "Bodies...The Exhibition" display at the Easton Town Center. If you're looking for it there, it's on the West end of the complex near Staples. We saw the Body Worlds exhibit in L.A. a couple years ago and wanted to see this version. Click around on both sites to see an explanation of how the actual human bodies are preserved (plastination) and prepared for the displays. This exhibit wasn't as extensive as the one we saw in L.A. Neverthless, it's an amazing way to see all the various systems in the human body -- both when they're functioning properly and when they aren't.

We also walked around the Easton Town Center area. It was another beautiful, sunny and cool day -- quite a contrast to the humid, 100 degree days were suffered through a few weeks ago. Although a lot of the stores are typical mall material, there are some places we don't have in the Cincinnati area and it's a nice setting with some open areas and green space. The large fountain at the right is one example. The sky was very blue today with the cooler temps and no haze. The photo below shows two girls that were having a great time playing in a fountain. The fountain had many independent water jets that were synchronized to pump water at various pressures for different durations to make the water "dance." You can see the two arching streams, caught in mid-air, that were heading towards them. The kids were enjoying it. I got a photo of a different, similar fountain as well as a sculpture and a model train near the area shown in the photo below.