The Rio Grande

I grew up in a river town – Cincinnati – then moved to a lake town – Chicago – and then to an ocean town – Encinitas, CA just north of San Diego. I just started listening to David McCullough’s new book The Pioneers and was happy to...

Don’t Give Up Your Day Gig

These days it’s call throwing shade. When I came up, good jazz musicians had a nice-but-direct way of telling wanna be jazz musicians that they weren’t up to the task – “don’t give up your day gig.” Dr. Graeme Smart has a day gig...

Unable to Replicate

I have been flying my Bellanca Viking for 29 years now. I have had two unexplained events – one electrical and one combustion – both in day VMC. I was alone for both. The electrical event was on approach to a central California airport with a tower. I had...

No Regerts

Phoebe Snow’s recording of “No Regrets” is on one of my playlists, and I can’t hear the song without thinking of the Milky Way ad where the distracted tattoo artist gives her customer something to – uh, regert. Sometimes engine data will...

Worst. Distribution. Ever.

They say what goes around comes around. As the new year arrived and I began my 5th year of writing these Puzzlers, I wondered what I could do to keep things interesting and informative. You the reader and I, acting as your agent scrubbing the uploaded data for good...