Plus One Flyers The flying club that Lisa and I belong to recently held their quarterly membership meeting.  This particular meeting was especially interesting in that Craig Fuller, the President of the Airplane Owners and Pilot’s Association (AOPA) was attending as a guest speaker.  AOPA is one of the most influential aviation advocacy groups in the world and is providing a critical service to the general aviation community.  AOPA works to ensure that our privilege to fly as GA pilot’s is maintained and the freedom’s we sometimes take as granted as American Pilot’s is not threatened.  Mr. Fuller is currently leading the charge at AOPA and fighting the good fight for us little guys.

The meeting was well catered and held in the Crown Air Hanger at Montgomery Field.  The general membership meeting was fairly quick and the session moved on to a talk and Q&A with Mr. Fuller.  He have quite a few interesting things to say about the state of affairs in general aviation.  Interestingly, his number one concern is the shrinking population of pilots, and specifically the poor retention rate of those seeking primary flight training.  Getting people to take the first step and begin their training is hard enough.  The fact that the great number of people do not finish the training is startling.  Mr. Fuller’s point here is that there is strength in numbers.  For our voice to be heard in Washington, we need many voices.  We need to do all we can to help grow our numbers and provide a strong and healthy community for which AOPA can advocate.

During the Q&A session I was able to stand up and ask the final question of the night.  I basically asked Mr. Fuller to comment on my concern that, in the long run I hope that flying is something I can share with my children and grandchildren.  Currently there exists a number of threats to GA.  From funding, to the price of fuel, to regulations stemming from fear or terrorism, to bad press from accidents.  I asked Mr. Fuller to speak to those concerns in light of  Lisa and I are currently a lot of money into flying now in the hopes that it will be a life style our family can have for generations.  His main point was that AOPA will do everything it can to secure that future, and that in the end pilot’s will always find a way to fly.  Looking to Europe where these threats have already materialize, people still fly.  They way they fly might be different but they still do.  Pilot’s are a resourceful bunch and will find a way to stay in the air.

It was a great night.  Just another reason why Plus One Flyers is the best flying club in the country.  After the talk, we got an opportunity to take a picture with Mr. Fuller.

Well, for those who don’t already know, Lisa and I are expecting the birth of our first child this October.  The tentative due date is October 20th, but is subject to change as things progress.

We are very excited and are looking forward to starting a family.  Given the due date, we are just now entering the second trimester so things are still in the early stages.  While we will find out the gender of the baby, we won’t know for several weeks.  At this point we don’t really have a preference.  As long as we have a healthy baby we are fine either way!

In absence of knowing the gender and or picking names, we are referring fondly to our little one simply as “Baby Mac”.

I am sure over the next few days / weeks / month, I will post a lot more on how things are going, updates, and thoughts in general. For now though, I simply wanted to put the announcement out there to share our good news!  Here are a few pictures from our latest ultrasound:

Lisa and I went down to Petco for the Padres 2011 Home Opener against the Giants.  We met up with Rob and some people for a pre-game tailgate.  We went to the park and got our free t-shirts and watched the very tail end of a band playing in the park.  We found our seats to watch some of the opening day fanfare.  For the anthem they had the typical HUGE flag on the field presented by members of the Navy.  There was an F-18 fly over at the end of the anthem.

As a special treat Trevor Hoffman ran out from the Bullpen to through out the first pitch and to signify his official return to the Padres family.

Beyond that the crowd was really amped up.  The giants fans were out in force also, which gave to some great trash talking.  All in all it was a great day.  Padres won!  Here are some pics: