About your correspondent...

First, a little about me...

I'm a 49-year old, ~1,000 hour private pilot, Single Engine Land and Sea, who loves seaplane flying, but has never owned an aircraft before last year. For 30+ years I was able to get along by renting, borrowing or otherwise cadging other peoples' wings, but eventually the urge got too strong.

Turns out, you can hardly rent seaplanes (neither floats nor hulls), at least not around Glenview, IL (a NW Chicago suburb where I live with my favorite person, my wife Barb. More on her in a sec.)

So...I (read "we" meaning Barb and I) finally caved...after a long search and much research, we bought N8012D, Fred Weber's old Buc, a 1981 model, S/N 1066, with about 3,200 hours on it.

Initially a series of logisitics, mechanical glitches, and bad weather prevented me from getting checked out on water (for insurance purposes, that is. I've been a SES since the 90's, but mostly in floats, and Airsure gives Lake pilots a nice discount for training with their approved instructors.)

Eventually winter hit, and all of the water was of the very hard type. When spring rolled around, I tried (and tried) to get some hours in with George Mangel from Galt airport (10C), but we only managed one day with a couple of hours on the Chain of Lakes north of Chicago; nice, but not enough for a full checkout. (It got so bad that you could practically predict bad weather by the days I was planning to fly.)

I'd been planning to fly to Lakeathon anyway (and I've been checked out for land ops since we bought the plane), so I changed the itinerary to leave a number of days early, to get some water instruction with one of the best, Paul Furnee, of Aircraft Innovation in Winter Haven this week.

This required one major sacrifice: Tonight (literally tonight) is Barb and my 21st anniversary, and, because she has to work, we're 1,000 miles apart. Fortunately, she's wonderfully understanding about my obsession with (oops I mean interest in) water flying--she's not a pilot, but a happy and helpful co-pilot. So, we're planning a celebration next week, when she arrives in Miami and I pick her up for a week in the Keys. I love her (and miss her) tremendously!

So, stand by for Phase I of this blog: The story of the Trip from Chicago...