Best Gift Ever

This is Mark writing on a lovely Friday morning when I don't have rehearsal. A few weeks ago, Katherine offered up an amazing gift to me - take a few days and go wherever you want to do whatever you want. It's one of those things that, a few years ago, I would have thought that was nice but not a big deal. But it's so rare now to take a true break for a few days totally uninterrupted. It really was an amazing gift. Perhaps the title of this post was a little exaggerated, as Katherine didn't donate a kidney or anything. But it really was a very special treat - I had a fantastic time, rested a lot, and felt totally rechared afterward.

I know you're just dying to know what I did, right? As I've told folks in person, there have been two responses. 1. "Oh wow, that just sounds amazing! I wish I could do something like that." These are the introverts like me. 2. "Okay Mark, that sounds fun. Have a good time." These folks are saying in their heads, "That doesn't sound fun at all. Why would you choose to do that?" These are the extroverts. I drove about three hours to a college town in east Texas called Nacogdoches. I really wanted to go to east Texas because it's full of awesome trees - very pretty drive. Once there, I got a hotel room and spent two days building a radio controlled airplane. You may know one of my great dreams in life is to build a real airplane (http://www.vansaircraft.com/public/rv-10int.htm). Katherine's father gave this model as a gift to me a number of years ago. It's a model of another of Van's Aircraft planes - the RV4. It's a pretty serious model - complete with all the moving parts necessary for flight and a real internal combustion engine. I loved working on it and made great progress when we were living in Florida. I completed the airframe, installed the engine and the radios. It was almost finished. Then when we moved to Houston, the plane went to the back burner and has stayed there pretty much since then. But I've really been wanting to finish it. So while in Nacogdoches, I filled all the holes and imperfections in the airframe, sanded the whole thing, tweaked a few things, painted the cockpit, and covered the fuselage and tail. The covering is this iron on stuff that was totally new to me, so it took a long time to learn to work with it. I didn't get the wing done, the cockpit canopy needs to be installed, and there are a number of small little details yet to be completed. But it was some serious progress and hopefully this thing will fly in the near future.

While working on this, I really got lost in time. I slept in until about 9:30 one day, worked for a while then went to lunch. And before I knew it, it was 11pm and time to pack everything up to leave. I had the Rockets basketball game on at one point in the background. I looked over thinking it would be early 2nd quarter. To my surprise, the game was almost over. Wow, time flies when you're having fun!

Thank you Katherine. It was a remarkable gift and you're a wonderful wife!!

Here's a couple pictures. They're not great, but the best I could do with a camera phone.

Here's the plane assembled. It's been sanded smooth and is ready for covering at this point. There's really no reason to assemble the parts at this stage except to look at it and make airplane noises.


Here's the fuselage with the tail attached all covered and pretty. Color will come later.