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"What really disturbs me" she said, "Its traveling so far in such a tiny plane." [ was talking to a friend who had to fly from Kingston to Toronto and then on to Sudbury. "How big is the plane" I asked. "Eighteen seats" she replied. I was about to enter into a long dissertation on flying in small air planes but the subject changed and we went on to other things. Later in the week as I sat in my son's backyard in Richmond Hill I watched, and heard the rush of planes landing at Pearson around 4.00 p.m. and thought briefly of the flight we'll be taking to Athens next week. Her Nibs and I chatted with my son about his experiences on airlines since he literally travels around the world, his next trip is San Francisco, Korea, China, Japan, Singapore, France, England and Germany. I didn't think much more about planes 'til I returned home and young Kyle , our next door neighbour, called to collect information for his school project. The project asked for the number of times we had flown in an aeroplane and Her * Nibs and I gave him our estimated number (which on second thought was a little low) which he dutifully entered and completed a graph. Well, this seemed too much of a coincidence not to spend some time telling you about flight experiences - restricted to small planes only, since transatlantic and transcontinental flights in large aircraft are quite a different experience. My earliest recollection is flying out of Tweed in a Natural Resources Beaver aircraft to inspect Crown lots that the Ministry hoped to sell as cottage lots. These flights took me to a number of small lakes where we would land and trudge along the shore assessing the suitability of the lots for sewage disposal facilitates. This experience which was later repeated many times, over southern and northern Ontario introduced me to two major concerns. One the clarity of the lake water which when the lake was calm made it almost impossible to see the surface so the pilot had to fly low back and forth to nopefilly stir up the water or as a last resort drop in arock to cause a ripple. The other concern was that some lakes were on the small side and takeoffs were sometimes a scary thing. During the fire season staff and equipment from across Ontario are transferred to the fire areas often north western Ontario with huge 'fire centres' at Thunder Bay and Dryden. One year with particularly bad fires many staff including managers from across southern Ontario were transferred to Thunder Bay and Dryden. I was working in the Civil Service Commission at the time and the ministry appealed to us for special consideration since many staff were working 18 - 20 hour days, seven days a week and since thay were managers were not entitled to overtime. 1 took a staff member and we flew with Bill....... , the Assistant Deputy Minister of Natural Resources up to the fire scene in a leased King Air - a small executive aircraft used by many companies, since all the Ministries' aircraft were in use. We wanted to get close to the fire line so Bill kept after the non- ministry pilots to get lower and lower. Of course the air currents above the fire caused the plane to be buffeted about to the extent that my employee demonstrated the use of the little bag in the seat pocket and the pilots got paler and paler until the "lets go home" from Bill let them escape. By the way we did come up with an innovative way to compensate the managers for overtime, I traveled a number of times in the government's King Air which depending on the circumstances was more__ Continued on page 11 Country Shears Bamaty Hairstyling 2058 COUNTY ROAD 17 1/2 Ki. FROM MILFORD By appointment only. Coll Linda at 476-2770 CLOSED TUESDAY & SUNDAY