May 21st a Big Aviation Date

I don't get to do it often but I was home yesterday sitting outside reading my Sunday newspaper and catching up on my weekly magazines and just happened to glance up at the sky to notice all the vapor trails left from airplanes flying above Quincy. I always loved to watch as planes looked like they were going to fly right into each other. Obviously, they were at different altitudes but from the ground you really couldn't tell. Many times, I would speculate on just where that plane might be heading.. Going west, perhaps Kansas City , Denver or Los Angeles. Going north maybe to Chicago, or Minneapolis. Well, it wasn't too much longer and I could hear a small plane flying overhead and I couldn't help but think of my friend, Randy Phillips, who builds experimental aircraft for a hobby. There's a good chance it was him flying overhead, he's been known to do that. I went back to my reading and came across an article about, of all things, aviation pioneers. It turns out that today is the anniversary of Charles A. Lindbergh's landing of the Spirit of St. Louis near Paris in 1927 marking the first solo airplane flight across the Atlantic Ocean. Lindberg covered the distance of 3600 miles in 33 and one-half hours and was awarded $25-thousand for doing do. May 21st also marks the anniversary of Amelia Earhart landing of her plane in Ireland in 1932, five years after Lindbergh's feat, thereby becoming the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She did it in 13 and one half hours. And we complain about a long 4 hour flight from New York to L.A. Imagine being by yourself flying over the ocean for as long as they did praying that they would never have to ditch the plane in the water and become fish bait and never to be found again. For both of these heroic aviators that didn't happen. Unfortunately, for Earhart she took off one day years later and was never seen again. When you read about these to great people it makes you appreciate people like Randy Phillips. Someone who would build his own aircraft and believe in himself so much that he would get in the aircraft and fly it not really knowing if it would fly. Both Earhart and Lindbergh were aviation pioneer's and so is Randy. Perhaps not quite as well known but certainly in the same category when it come to having guts to try something new. I know I couldn't do it.