St. Thomas!

I am at St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. St. Thomas is one the the islands. The town is Charlotte Amalie (I think).

Yesterday I flew to Fort Lauderdale and spent the night. There's quite a bit of hurricane damage, but nothing like Hurricane Andrew. Not as bad as Katrina. But Burger King was still closed, so I had to do without CiniMinis this morning.

It was 3.9 hours from Fort Lauderdale to St. Thomas. I flew on an airway. I figured they wouldn't like it if I file direct like I normally do. Other than flying through one bumpy shower, it was a smooth flight. Most of the time I was within gliding distance of land.

When I landed, I taxied to the FBO. Nobody was there to park me, so I wandered around a bit and finally came to a place I liked. A guy in an official car motioned me around like I was supposed to park the other direction, so I did. Then I stopped the engine, because I couldn't turn around even if I wanted at that point. And, of course, he said I was in the wrong place. So someone came from the FBO with a plane pusher to push the plane back somewhere different. At an angle, so it can't be tied down, because that will make more room for the Thanksgiving crowd of planes. I hope there's no hurricane.

Tonight I was walking around and went to a softball game. It's fast pitch, older that high school, and sponsered by local companies. There was a big crowd. Behind the ball field some people were playing basketball. It reminded me of home, except I was just about the only white person there. Everybody was friendly. The basketball and softball players looked about like they do at home, as far as ability -- a few good, mostly mediocre.

Someone (Tom Ed Moore) emailed me a powerpoint presentation yesterday of some F-22 pictures. It was obvious to me that they were from a computer game. So I told him, nicely. Then he told me he didn't think so. I was wrong, they are real. They look funny because powerpoint (or something before then) changed the resolution and color. So I downloaded most of the originals from the Air Force site and several others of F-22s. They're here:

http://xpda.com/f22