I knew from watching the cartoon, The Jetsons that when I grew up, commuting would be fun. Surely, by that time all the technology showcased on that cartoon would have arrived. But sadly, much of the Jetsons technology is still missing, especially the flying cars. But lately, I’ve been using George Jetson’s approach to commuting that has made a 108 mile round-trip commute that I do several times a week not just tolerable, but enjoyable.
Here are a few rules I follow to make my commute more enjoyable:
- Ignore roads, travel in a straight line.
- Don’t take a route that has traffic lights, stop signs, or other commuters.
- Travel at twice the maximum speed limit, say, 150 mph or so.
- Stay 2000′ above other commuters.
APRS track of my commute from Greeley to Rocky Mountain Metro Airport
Note speed - 158 MPH
I guess you can tell by the images that I’m talking about commuting using my airplane. This works for me because one of my consulting clients is based at an airport so I don’t need ground transportation after I arrive. One of my colleagues actually lives on an airport, so he has the benefit of commuting door-to-door using his airplane alone. I have to drive 10 miles to the local airport first before I can hop in the plane…. but if I could only figure out how to take off from my back yard….:-)
Hey Lee – this is really cool! I sure would love to see those Jetson cars too! Do you live really close to the airport and do you keep a car on the Greeley side? Sounds like you’ve got this figured out!!! You and Terri should fly into San Diego and visit me – I’m about 15 mins from the Palomar airport!
– Sandy
Hi Sandy, It’s great to hear from you! I live about 10 miles from the Greeley airport (and it’s in the opposite direction from my commute), but it’s an easier drive than going toward Denver so I don’t mind it much, since I get to fly.
We’d love to see you in San Diego sometime. Terri loves to be near the ocean and we don’t get to do that nearly enough.
That’s the way to do it! I got to do that last summer, storing the plane in a WW2 bomber hangar at Ft. Sumner while working at the NASA facility there for a month. It made getting home on the weekends possible.
Headed to the Montana and Idaho woods in the morning for a week. I even saw a Longeze in there the last time I went.
Hi Lee, It’s great to hear from you again. Glad to hear you’re going to Montana and Idaho again. If you spot any LongEZs on one of those back strips, let me know the tail number because I’d like to pick the brain of the guy to see what strips would work for my LongEZ. Sadly, I’ve not been back to one of those strips since our trip in the Colt. In Europe they use EZ’s on grass runways all the time, but it’s not very common in the states. Have fun this week!