The Liberty Gazette
October 27, 2020
Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely
Linda: Happy birthday to us! We have so much in common, even our birthdays are one right after the other. Since we celebrated early with fly-hike-bike trips, venturing west a few times, we figured it was time to point the nose east.
With the back seats folded down in the Elyminator, we have plenty of room to stack two bike frames, topped by four wheels, with flight bag and backpacks filling the nooks and crannies. Since it’s just us, and the bikes don’t weigh much, we can take on full fuel, which gives us over five hours before we’d use it all up. That’s longer than our sitters can sit anyway.
The flight to Lafayette, Louisiana in our Grumman Cheetah is slightly over an hour, above the I-10 traffic all the way. I often wonder if the people down there in their cars scowl at us for the sign across the bottom of our plane: “STUCK IN TRAFFIC?”
Speaking of slower vehicles, we got a chuckle out of the Citation jet that Lafayette’s tower controller sequenced to land ahead of us. Maybe they were on a maintenance flight, as the controller directed me to fly an extended downwind leg while this jet took so long to reach the airport on final. When I finally turned final, the controller gave the obligatory, “Caution: wake turbulence,” and followed up by advising me that the Citation was only traveling at 100 knots. Laughter burst forth from my co-pilot, who blurted, “Can you imagine what that Citation pilot is thinking right now? Thanks for broadcasting my slower-than-a-single-engine-piston-aircraft-speed.”
Yes, we throttled back for a jet. That’s a first.
On the ramp, we quickly snapped the wheels on our bikes and pedaled toward historic downtown Lafayette. We considered patronizing a restaurant, but we had brought a picnic lunch, so we rolled on, enjoying the sights through downtown, and ending up on the University of Louisiana Lafayette campus. Girard Park was the perfect place to find a picnic table in the shade and be entertained by frisbee throwers, children, and dogs.
After swallowing the last morsels, I texted our dear friends who had recently moved to Lafayette from Houston so they could be close to grandchildren when the husband retired from his dental practice. His wife, Rebecca, is a fellow author and has written several excellent children’s books. “The Dry” is one of them.
They’d weathered Hurricanes Laura and Delta much better than the poor folks in Lake Charles. From the air, Lake Charles is a quilt of blue squares. But our friends didn’t have any damage, and Rebecca picked us up at Girard Park and took us to their new home for coffee and conversation. She has built an enviable hanging fence garden, and they have a puppy named George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart’s character in “It’s a Wonderful Life”). But I’ve run out of space, so I’ll finish this story next week. Till then, blue skies.
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