Day 122

19 Aug 2013

Big brother is watching

Interesting title ? but wait, there is more… as I could be big brother who is watching. More on that later. The days of traveling are coming to an end, I will be returning home on the 22nd leaving from Schiphol- Amsterdam Airport to fly to Brisbane via Singapore. Unfortunately there are people I have not visited; more a reason to come back and put them on top of the list. So Ron and Hetty, Ienke, Hans W, Eveline, Andreas, Wijnand, Adriaan, Arno, Vince and Hazel, Harry, Michel vdM and other friends in Belgium, Turkey and the UK…all is not lost, until next time.

My friend Rob, who I am staying with, had arranged for us to go flying this afternoon. I took the late, 4 pm, start as an opportunity to visit some other friends in the small picturesque town of Makkum along the Frisian coast off the inland sea called Ijsselmeer which used to be called the Zuiderzee.

I took the coastal road which runs along a series of dikes passing various small fishing villages which used to have a prominent fishing fleet in days gone by. My friends in the town of Makkum I have known since the day that I use top call on them when I sold bicycles for a number of years. Of all the dealers I visited they were one of the very few that made you feel at home when you came around, and I always left with a good feeling. Theo, Yvonne and their son run the business selling a variety of bicycles. Interesting to see they the electrical assisted bikes are growing in popularity, I guess a sign of an aging population. By four o clock I was back at the Lelystad airport where Rob had already started preparing the plane for departure. Just like a car, oil needs to be checked followed by a long list of safety checks. The plane was a Cessna four seater plane. After some instructions about what to do and not to do we were ready for take after which we set course north west to flew straight over Rob's residence and wave the wings to say Hello to Robs partner Susan, as we knew she would be on the lookout for us.

We then started the flight along the long sea dike connecting the eastern and western parts of the Netherlands. Via the towns of Enkhuizen en Medemblik we crossed the Waddenzee near the start of the 30 km long Afluitdijk, which connects the provinces Holland and Friesland.

We headed for the island of Texel for landing at Texel International Airport (ahem) to land on the grass strip and head for the restaurant for and a cup of coffee with apple cake.

After paying the landing fee and refueling we continued the same way back towards the Den Oever and crossed over to Friesland following the earlier named Afsluitdijk. Before we arrived at Makkum where I had been this morning we lowered altitude and circled the town while I took several pictures while trying to locate the bicycle shop of Theo and Yvonne, to take an aerial picture of their shop as I had promised this morning. Not a problem it was clearly visible. Later I sent Yvonne the pictures. She replied that she had seen the plane at the time she was relaxing in a hammock on their back deck. The red hammock is clearly visible in the picture.

Hence… my heading… Big brother is watching. You never know what people in small planes are taken pictures of while flying over populated areas. I imagine with the right camera you could even see what people are reading let alone what they are doing or not doing. Rob had explained the working of the plane to me and I must say that it looked all very familiar as some years ago I used to have Flight Simulator on my computer which shows the instrument panel exactly as I was seeing now. Rob handed over the controls and let me fly the plane for about 15 minutes. Exciting ? You bet ! of course… if you never have flown a real plane.