August brought with it some excellent flying weather and I managed to get a few flights in over the last month. On one of them I took along a friend who is interested in aviation but hadn’t been in a small plane before. We were trying to decide where to go during the drive to the airport and settled on a trip to Drumheller. When we arrived out there, we just flew around admiring the view as it was such a sunny, clear and calm day. We didn’t land at Drumheller so after cruising around for a while we headed for Linden and some much-anticipated food. With our mission accomplished on the food department, we headed out of Linden and went west looking for another destination. We ended up in Sundre and after a couple of circuits we headed back towards Carstairs.

I asked David if he wanted to go somewhere else or if we should head back. Now we had been flying for about 2.5 hours and I usually don’t take people that long as some have a tendency to get bored after an hour or so (go figure!). Well David couldn’t believe that we were gone that long. He said it felt like we just got up here. However, we did decide to call it a day and headed back to Carstairs. Later that night I was thinking of how nice it was to be able to share the thrill of flight with someone who was so excited and grateful for the opportunity to experience it.

The other great flight, of course, was to Linden to help celebrate the removal of the power lines. This was another beautiful morning and judging by the turnout, it was quite a successful event. It was good to see such a good showing by members of our club, although the free food donated by Country Cousins restaurant could have had something to do with that, as we can smell a good deal from miles away!

Don’t forget that the monthly meetings start again September 10th. If you’re interested in helping out your club, think about volunteering for one of the upcoming positions on the board as elections will take place in December.

The positions available are:

• President
• Treasurer
• Director

We are planning a “COPA For Kids Day” in October and will be looking for pilots and planes for this event. If you’ve never done this before I can tell you from experience that there is no better feeling than taking a youngster up for the first time. The smile on their face will be with you forever! More information is available in the newsletter.

Plan on attending the next meeting as it is always interesting hearing about everyone’s summer adventures.

See you soon!