July 9 was a very pleasant day to fly. Ray and I got off the ground at 6am sharp, so as to get down to Spurwink early, and park close to the food. I was a little high on approach to runway 24, so I had to slip it in, and then there was a long roll out. But other than that, it wasn’t a landing to ashamed of. We swung into place next to a Cessna 180. This an idyllic setting: paddocks with horses and mules on one side, and a pasture with cows on the other.

We got in our blueberry pancakes, then walked down the ever lengthening line of parked airplanes. The shade of the trees on the other side of the runway beckoned, so we went over there to watch the activity. That is until the CAP came along and kicked us out. Well, at that point we figured we’d seen everything, so we decided to leave.

I pulled out, and proceeded to take off from where I was, although I probably should have taxied back to get every bit of runway. Rationalization: There was a steady stream of incoming traffic, so there wasn’t a lot time to maneuver. It was warm and we had two bellies full of pancakes, so we spent a lot of time on the ground. I drifted off to the left. Rationalization: The runway gets narrower, there were airplanes parked a long ways down on the right, and I couldn’t see over the nose, how close I might be getting. On top of that, there was a cross wind from the right that I hadn’t accounted for until I banked away at the last instant. So “WUMP”, we flew through the trees.

Looking out the left side, there was foliage draped over the left wing, but we kept flying normally. The helpful FAA controller on the ground announced over the radio, “Taylorcraft that just took off, do you know you just flew through a tree?” Like we didn’t notice, right? I answered, “No shit.” He came back with, “You might want to take a look at that after you land.” The FAA is always so helpful.

Anyway, the flight back was uneventful. And Ray, being an old motorcycle nut, well nothing fazes him. I already had a dent in my leading edge where I hit the tree. The impact kind of smoothed it out, and it looks better now.