By Ben |

This morning Dave drove me into Brooklyn so I could see the Jewish wedding chapel that used to be the family hardware store.  After a bite of lunch we continued to Far Rockaway to see his childhood home, where my sister and I had visited our grandparents.  Aside from the house itself, I wouldn't have recognized most of Far Rockaway ... I can't say whether it's gotten better or worse, just different.

This evening he took me to his workplace and let me fly the two jet simulators he uses.  I got to land four times at JFK airport, once with no visibility and once with no instruments.  The newer simulator's graphics are so detailed that we could easily recognize the places we had been that morning!

Between the fancy avionics that tell you what to do, the autopilot that does what you tell it, and the fact that you rarely need to use the rudder pedals, I found the jets to be much easier to fly than the propeller plane I flew years ago in Bartlesville.  It's a good thing I didn't have to land that plane; I had enough trouble keeping it going in a straight line!