Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome - June 17

Hartland, Sunday June 17th

When not protesting gas pipelines or the potential 60-year time frame for decommissioning of the local nuclear reactor, she's running for office. Having just turned 70 doesn't slow her down one bit....

Above and below: One the way north, I see this bridge, that like many other places with defunct railroad lines, has being converted to a walking and bicycle path. Sometimes the original bridges are being replaced with lighter ones that are easier to maintain, but here in Poughkeepsie they keep the original one for crossing the Hudson River.

Gardening is Nancy's thing, and definitely not mine, so I borrow our common friend Irwin's red New Beetle convertible and go to The Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome. The place has a collection of early aircraft, many of them flyable copies of WW1 types. Like the Fokker 'Dreidecker' triplane, which - thanks to a certain baron - probably is the most famous plane of that war. There's an airshow every weekend over the summer, where they show off their planes, cars, motorcycles and period clothing.

German fighter planes of The Great War were often painted in highly visible paint schemes, as witnessed by these two types. The 'Albatros' in the background has its round fuselage made of laminated wood, just like the famous 'Mosquito' bomber of the next war.

Replica of 'Spirit of St. Louis', the plane in which Charles Lindbergh flew solo from New York to Paris in 1927.

Above and below: A bit cramped and dusty, with many of the planes in less-than-perfect shape, the place is still very much worth a visit. Admission price doubles on weekends, but then that's when the flying takes place, weather permitting.

Fokker D VII replica doing aerobatics over the airfield, with the commentator telling people when to start filming.

After a Fokker VII has done a bit of aerobatics, I leave for Hartland in Vermont, to rejoin the Nimbus friends I saw last week. The landscape remains as beautiful as ever, with the mountains in a mist so that every one further away is a bit harder to see clearly. Just like I saw the mountains in Japan, except here the trees are so big, that it all looks like as if one flies over cumulus cloud, and it's all green. It must be fantastic during fall, where even in New York Times the front page had small ads telling what the leaves in Vermont looked like.

This was all farmland a century ago, until it became more cost-efficient to use The Midwest as the nation's bread basket. So now instead of cows we have deer wandering all over the place, including into the town of Peekskill, where they eat Nancy's flowers. They're also on the roads, where today I see two of them killed by cars, as well as the large splatches of blood indicating a previous fatal encounter. Still I do 75 mph (120 km/t) all the way, overtaken only twice by the same motorcycle doing wheelies past me.

Forgot to hold the button on the iPhone for a burst of multiple photos, so there's just one shot, where the front wheel is coming down again.