Welcome

Well, as we have promised on our TV Show, At Your Leisure, here is our new blog. We have just returned from a shooting trip in Southern Utah and Southern Nevada.

We shot one show just outside of St. George at the future sight of their new airport. Currently there is a dirt strip on private land that is used by a group of powered parachute pilots. We joined them for a day of flying. Powered parachutes look like a big acrobatic parachute attached to a three wheeled go cart with an airplane propeller on the back.

The chutes puff up when you hit the throttle and they can take off in as little as 150 feet. They travel at about 25 miles per hour and have a glide ratio of 3 to 1. now that doesn't sound like much of a glide path until you do the math. At a full loss of power, if your craft glides out of the sky, your vertical speed is only 8 miles per hour, about the same speed as jumping off the hood of a car.

We felt that the craft were safe enough to let our kids take a ride. Of course, our dog, Smudge gave the plane his seal of approval. He immediately went over the the chute lying on the ground and peed on it! That dog is a complete embarrassment. It is a good thing he is so cute!

The ride was a blast. Because you are in the open air, and because the craft moves so slow, the sensation is like those flying or floating dreams you have where you just lift up off the earth light as air and float around. You can see for miles. It is something we recommend.

During the flight, the pilot did a "corkscrew" decent and both Corby and Maggie let out a "roller coaster" scream. We could hear it from a thousand feet. Kira, our 15 year old, was far to cool for that and she said it wasn't scary enough for her. She tends to be an adrenaline junkie.

Of course, the craft are only built for one pilot and one passenger, so we had to take turns. As you will discover about our daughters, it doesn't take much to keep them occupied while waiting on our television shoots. Kira and Maggie quickly found some abandoned irrigation equipment and made their own amusement ride while we were shooting. One girl would climb in the center of the spoked wheel and bend over the center shaft hooking feet around spokes and holding on with their hands. The other one would roll the wheel around in circles. It was hilarious.

Our second shoot was an ATV ride with the Kokopeli ATV club in Mesquite Nevada. This was quite a ride as we went up on Mormon Mesa, rode through a forest of Joshua Trees and arrived at the gateway trail to the Mormon Mountains. It is a pretty easy ride, and good for beginners until you drop off the mesa and head to the mountains. The club rides together often, and does quite a bit of clean up in the area. It was a pretty ride. This club is very safety conscious. And if you travel with them they will always stop and help those with less experience get over the rough spots.

Not to be outdone by our dog, one of the member's dog waited till we were shooting a take for the show and pooped right in plain sight of the camera. That will be one for the next blooper show... or should we say pooper show.

We didn't tell the group this, but after we had gone about 1/3 of the way... Corby brought to my attention that only one of our two Polaris ATV's had been filled up with gas, and we had less than a quarter tank. Fortunately we had a Can Am "two up" with us that had been loaned by High Adventure Motorsports. So we had an extra seat. We had to leave the Polaris and pick it back up on the way back to town.

At the same time we discovered the one ATV was low on gas, our other Polaris developed a flat tire. So with the help of the club members, we took a tire off of the low gas machine and moved it to the full machine. Such is the challenge you will not see when this show hits the air this weekend, but now you know.... the rest of the story.