So...where's the pizza?

Shortly after coming home from shopping on Tuesday, I received a phone call from Tom announcing that he's going to Seattle on Wednesday. "Okay, why?" I asked. Turns out Tom's brother entered his girlfriend in a radio contest to fly in a Red Baron Pizza biplane without letting her know, and she won. It also turns out that she's not crazy about flying so they've offered the flight to Tom because Dave exceeds the weight limit for the flight.

"Where are you now?" I wondered. I can hear through the phone that he's practically bouncing off the walls with excitement.

"I'm at the store weighing myself. I'll be home in a few minutes." Because he was a few pounds over the weight limit himself, he felt compelled to bring that instrument of the devil home with him, thus ending my streak of refusing to have a scale in the house. I may have to put my foot down about having it as a permanent houseguest and insist that it goes back to the store [hell] where it belongs. Forty minutes on the treadmill takes care of the extra weight and the skies are clear for the next morning's adventure.

The part of this trip that he fails to mention until later that evening is the ridiculously early hour at which we'll have to wake to get to Seattle on time. I've never been a morning person, so 4:45 a.m. is not a time I see very often, unless I'm still up from the night before. Actually being dressed and in a car instead of my warm bed at that hour, well...I just don't want to talk about it.

The only thing to really hope for at that hour is that you'll have the road to yourself. Our particular stretch of Hwy 101 is host to numerous fatality accidents every year, so any sign of erratic driving makes me nervous. On this fine morning, we were fortunate enough to follow a car that appeared to have a magnetic attraction to the lines on either side of the road, and a driver that seemed to have no fine muscle control when attempting to redirect the car. Luckily for my nerves, they turned the opposite direction after crossing the Hood Canal Bridge, and left us to drive the last fifteen minutes in peace.

After a sprint up the walk-on passenger ferry loading ramp (why are those things so long?) we settled in for a relaxing ride across Puget Sound. Dave, his girlfriend and her daughter picked us up on the other side and we all drove to the airport which turned out to be nearly to Idaho.

Fog delayed the takeoff for nearly three hours, which gave us plenty of time to inspect the planes carefully. The planes are fully restored Stearman biplanes, all built between 1941 and 1943. They travel North America performing at airshows and giving rides at promotional events. Their next stop is Abbotsford, B.C. and then onto Chicago.

Once the fog cleared, the planes took off and headed out to clear airspace to perform their aerobatics. They were out of sight of the airport, so we missed out on the manuevers, but when they got back Tom was grinning from ear to ear. The stunts were replayed with much hand flapping and arm waving and I'm thinking, "Well, I'm glad he had so much fun, but where's the pizza?"