Santa Fe wildlife

Our annual Fly-In was held in Santa Fe, NM. Petra had her first experience with airplanes, which she seemed to enjoy. She loves people watching - and she certainly had enough new faces to gaze at, between the airports and airplane rides, the shuttle from Albuquerque to Santa Fe, and the hundred-plus pilots and spouses, LightHawk staff and board members at the Lorretto Inn. Joe took time off from work so that he could watch her while I was in staff and board meetings Thursday and Friday, before the main event Saturday.

The food was fantastic, as you can imagine. Here I am at a local restaurant for a lunch of enchiladas with green or red sauce, can't remember (whichever is less spicy... I know, I know), with Bev, my coworker with her 6-week old son Rory. He weighs the same as Petra!

This was our only chance to explore Santa Fe before the day-long meetings kicked in. My one regret is we didn't allow for more down time for ourselves, but it was a fun weekend regardless. During the actual Fly-In, we saw talks on fighting California fires from a pilot who flies the big DC-10s to drop fire retardant, on river otters that were translocated in LightHawk planes, and a talk by Joe Engle, who was a test pilot with Chuck Yeagar back in the day, and a Space Shuttle commander. His son is a new board member (and former U-2 pilot). He gave a talk about the X-15, which could fly ridiculously fast, and apparently is still the only plane to fly into space. Really fascinating day, and Joe and I took turns walking Petra for naps so neither of us would miss too much of the fun.

Petra seemed to grow over the weekend - she really started to play with the sounds she can make. On the plane home, she started playing with a sound I can only describe as a shriek - luckily everyone around us was pretty tolerant (or they fell prey to her blue eyes).

More photos here.