The Gathering of Mustangs and Legends

A couple weekends ago, my brothers and I met up in Columbus to experience the Gathering of Mustangs and Legends. This was a truly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see dozens upon dozens of P-51 Mustangs that had flown in for the event, plus sevaral other WWII-era fighters and bombers. They called this one "The Final Roundup" because the living Legends in attendance are well into their 80's, and sadly but inevitably shrinking in number every day.

The weather was incredible, and the planes and the flying were beyond exceptional. I didn't have the opportunity to meet any of the Legends on hand myself, but my brother Lee was standing near a B-17 and an old, weathered veteran standing nearby. He'd flown in these things in the war, and somebody asked him if he'd like to hop back in one again. He said "you know, I'm getting old enough I'll probably never get the chance again, but I'm not young like you folks, I can't climb up there anymore". And without hesitation another bystander said "how about a couple of us lift you up in there, and then you can show us around and tell us all about your time in these things". And so they did. And that's a lot of what the Gathering was about.

It was a great time and a good chance to spend some manly-man time with my brothers.

I've uploaded some pictures, and here are some picture/video compilations I put together. Part of the magic of the experience for gearheads like me is the sound, so if you're like-minded, be sure to crank up the speakers. The end of Part 3 shows a truly historic flyover by 20 Mustangs in a special formation, it's not to be missed.

As the blog title suggests, I'll tend to write about high performance driving and the kinds of car setup and modifications and techno-babble that help accomplish that kind of thing. I read a popular opinion about braking performance and I just had to correct it .

A friend of mine at work runs a blog called Risley Ranch, and aside from being incredibly well-versed in all things Social Media, he's an all around good guy who's taken on the challenge of bringing the rest of us up to speed in what we're calling Digital Ninja training. I've been following his blog from time to time and recently he posted an entry that mentioned the world's largest underground water source, the ogalalla aquifer. Many fans of ethanol-based fuels like to say we could be energy self-reliant if we only grew the corn to turn into ethanol to replace the petroleum we buy from offshore.

But too many people forget that it takes water to grow that corn to turn into ethanol (not to mention the energy it takes to convert corn to ethanol but that's another story), but the effect that ethanol-mania might have on that critical aquifer starting to come to the forefront more and more.

Now, as this blog develops, you'll see I'm not shy of burning fuel in the reckless pursuit of happiness, but I try to be at least a little responsible about it in the balance. No, I don't drive a Prius to work, but do little things here and there to reduce my family's impact on the environment. Most importantly, I realize there is no free lunch, that I do not have a God-given right to $1.75 gallons of gasoline to fill a Hummer 3x a week to drive myself and only myself to work, and that until we get real about that kind of thing, we are kidding ourselves about energy independence and ethanol's ability to solve it.

Alrighty...green flag!

OK then, as part of a project for work, I've been asked to start a blog. I've decided to make it more than a requirement, why, I'll leave my mark on the world, I'll be asked to appear on Speed Channel, I'll be called upon for expert testimony, I'll be one of those guys who always shows up with a juicy stat in USA Today, I'll be famous!

Well, maybe not so much, but at least I'll have fun and hopefully my readers will too, and both of them will shower me with adoring congratulations on my wit and wisdom about cars, driving, driving cars well (that would be "with aplomb" for you Automobile readers), and random things that tickle my fancy that I think might tickle yours.