Paducah, KY

Meet Bruce Lunsford. Candidate for US Senate in Kentucky.

There's a TV and radio commercial here in Kentucky advertising Bruce Lunsford's (D) bid for the senate. He's running against incumbent Mitch McConnell (R).

One of the statements in Lunsford's ads says "He met payroll".

What idiot thought that up?

Doesn't every business owner across the country meet payroll? Does this make every business owner qualified for a position in the US Senate? I think not.

So you met payroll. Big deal! Did you manage to put your shoes on the right feet in the morning as well?

Last Christmas, my wife bought me a ticket for a "Discovery Flight" from Midwest Aviation. This business is located next to the Barkley Regional Airport just west of Paducah. Midwest offers aviation services to the area out of Barkley.

This Discovery Flight was, IMO, cheaply priced at a mere $75 for about a 30 minute plane ride. My 10 year old son and I took our plane ride yesterday. Of course, this plane ride was everything my son talked about for a couple of days beforehand.

We arrived at the airport 10 minutes before our scheduled time. We found the front desk easily using the directions I was given to navigate the building. I handed the ticket to the young lady at the desk and she said I could wait on the couch for a few minutes. A gentleman, probably in his early 20's quickly arrived and introduced hisself. He asked me if I had any interest in flight lessons. The Discovery Flights are intended to give people a first hand introduction to flight which might lead into flight lessons.

After talking briefly about my interest in flight lessons, we headed out to the aircraft. I don't have specs about the aircraft but it was a small, 4 seater 2005 Cessna. He told us how to get in, buckle up and be careful what we touched. I sat in THE pilot's seat and my son sat in the back seat.

To my suprise there were only 3 round gauges on the dash. The rest of the info was on two large Garmin displays. They had tons and tons of information in them. The information I saw had air speed, ground speed in knotts, altitude above sea level, engine RPM, lots of information about the aircrafts direction and such. The other Garmin display had typical map info that was geared toward pilot needs. It even displayed all towers that held radio, tv antennas and such and it had their height. I believe water towers were even displayed.

Before we took off the flight instructor asked if we had any particular direction we wanted to go. I told him what part of town I lived in but if we had enough time I thought we could fly up to Vienna, Illinois. This is where I was raised and my mom and step-dad still live. He said that should be ok. By car this drive is about 30 minutes.

Things I noticed during our ride were

1. the instructor used the pedals to steer the plane on the ground
2. the instructor let me pull the plane off the ground when we hit the proper speed
3. after he got the plane pointed in the proper direction he turned on the auto-pilot
4. we got up to about 2,500 feet and cruised at about 115 knots
5. when we arrived at Vienna we circled my mom's house and turned back toward Paducah
6. our trip took about 10 minutes to get there and 10 minutes back
7. the entire time you could see from Paducah to Vienna if you recognized tall larndmarks

During the flight I talked with the instructor. He told me he was from Kansas and had taken all his flight lessons quickly using a loan. His degree was in some variety of aeronautics. He has been in Paducah since August (about 3 months). My flight at 11am was then 4th flight he had already done that day and he had a total of 8 scheduled this weekend. Wow!

When I was talking with the instructor and another person at the airport, I found out it's not out of the ordinary for someone to take flight lessons over a long period of time. One person he mentioned had been taking lessons for 5 years. The lessons are about $170 each and this covers $140 for the plane and $30 for the instructor. Personally, I thought the $30 / hour for the flight instructor was pretty cheap.

My son didn't say a whole lot after the flight but he really wanted me to take those flight lessons and take him with me. I figure when he talks to his grandparents this coming week he'll have a lot to say about his first plane ride. I told him about how important it was for him to do well in science and math because those were very important when flying planes.

Like anyone, I am always tickled when I get a reply off my website. In the past 2 weeks I've gotten a couple of strange phone calls. But I was glad to have gotten them.

One call was from an insurance agent. She told me a gentleman asked her for an insurance quote on a home he had found on my web site. She called me to obtain some details about the home. Before I learned my web site was involved I told her I didn't have any idea what she was talking about. The home was an hour away from my area of expertise.

I received another call today from a television reporter in the Nashville area. She wanted information about a family that lived in a home in Cadiz, KY. She thought I was the listing agent. She said there was a murder in the home last night, although I can't find anything about it online. I told her it wasn't my listing and she should call the listing agent who was listed right under my name.

I've been working to increase my internet presence over the past few weeks so I hope these calls indicate good progress!

Today my family and I spent most of my time watching TV. While channel surfing we came across a marathon on A&E called "Parking Wars". It's a reality TV show that shows the daily events of the Philadelphia Parking Authority. The show has periods where the camera crew follow "meter maids", tow truck drivers and the staff at the impound lot.

As you might expect, the public that is shown is not in a good mood. Most of the public is either being ticketed for being parked in a no parking zone, next to a fire hydrant or in a rush hour zone. One lady we saw today was double parked. Other vehicles were having a "boot" placed on a tire so they couldn't leave or the vehicle was being towed. These vehicles had an excess in parking tickets.

My wife and I watched this show with interest because we own a business that at one time was on Broadway in downtown Paducah. The parking on Broadway in this part of town is similar to parking in a big city. The city of Paducah actually removed the parking meters long ago but parking in this section of downtown is limited to 2 hour parking. At one time the city's "meter maid" actually marked tires with chalk and ticketing vehicles parked in the same spot for more than 2 hours.

Being a business owner, this two hour parking limitation was very important to us. Western Kentucky residents aren't acustomed to parallel parking nor having to search for a parking space and then walking a couple of blocks to the store. With our business model it's even more detrimental. Many other business' employees or people going to the federal courthouse on 5th Street would park and stay all day. We needed these spaces open for customers.

A couple of years ago we moved our business a couple of blocks to a building that has it's own parking lot. It still has a few parking spaces on the street but we aren't dependent on those.

Paducah's GPS RecycleNow recycling efforts have expanded hours and a new location!

Now, you can bring your recyclables to 1830 North 8th Street during the following hours:

• Thursday 12pm - 6pm
• Friday 7am - 12pm
• Saturday 9am - 1pm

Volunteers are needed to help. Volunteering information can be found at http://www.recyclenowpaducah.com/node/18

An example of acceptable recycables are shown below.