The Sky Beckons

Since completing Round the World 2019 and stepping off the wing, down onto Taupo tarmac, the days have morphed into longer segments of time and when assembled in a lineal line, weeks too quickly become months. Like a conga line of ants, time is relentless. It marches on, waits for no one, not even Bazflyer bloggers! 

 

Perhaps it has a lot to do with time that the sky continues to beckon day and night. Somewhere in a recent past Bazflyers harboured a faint thought that perhaps six months on the wing circumnavigating our wonderful planet, might at least for a while, mute the sky’s calling. Alas, their epic on the wing journey has only increased the volume. The sky beckons even louder.

 

Sometimes overcast, sometimes bright, morning, noon, or night, the sky beckons. Look at the sky anytime, any season, to physically see time going by. Then as if to attract attention the sky’s special spectrum of colours, intensity and mood uniquely emboldens that motion of time.

 

Getting up there in the sky is what all aviators love to do. There is nothing like a perfect blue-sky day to ignite that passion. Open the hangar door, roll Comanche ZK-BAZ outside, fire up the lusty Lycoming engine and get some air under those wings. This week Bazflyer1 did just that.

 

It was only a short one hour flight from Taupo (NZAP) south to Masterton (NZMS) but what a magnificent day it was to be in the sky. Not a cloud in sight. There was a purpose for going to Masterton and lunch with a friend was as good as the day was perfect. 

 

Masterton is a rural town, these days surrounded by expanding vineyards and home to many boutique businesses. Vastly changed from when New Zealand’s first official refugees arrived there 75 years ago. A total of 733 Polish children  most of them orphans escaping the atrocities of World War Two. All of them had been evacuated from Poland to places in Siberia and Kazakhstan from where they endured further hardship travelling overland to Iran. Some never made it. In the aftermath of the war and Poland’s redrawn boundaries, home for these children ceased to exist. Most grew up in their adopted land of New Zealand. Now in their eighties hundreds returned to Masterton earlier this month to commemorate their new life that began there 75 years ago…and the sky shone benevolently upon them.  

 

In the absence of imposed limits, time is continuous. Not so for an aviator in the sky. What goes up must eventually come down and for Bazflyer1 that reality bought him back to Taupo…to once again contemplate the beckoning sky.      

 

Wow...a blue-sky day and Masterton is down there to the left of those mountains.

Outside the hangar ready to start.

 

Flight plan via airways 145 NM from Taupo (NZAP) at 8000 feet to Masterton (NZMS).

Hill country farming (sheep & Beef) on the way to Masterton

 

What goes up, must come down. Tandem skydiver landing beside the Baz Base.

 

Evening at the Baz Base contemplating the beckoning sky emboldened by smoke effects from by the devastating bush fires in Australia over 2000 kilometres away.