After the Parastar Convention, I drove with Bruce Brown to New Smyrna Beach where we flew with Richard Good and Eric Dufour.
The next day we drove to Crescent Beach where we met with Christiane Moisan (CC) and her group from Canada.
Bruce and Rich decided to fly a cross country and visit John Madgic and his guests. They all flew back to Crescent Beach and we flew a few miles North and visited the Inlet.
After flying half a day we decided to take a break. To our surprise the Police arrived and convinced us that it was "better" for all if we quit flying on a public beach. And we quit!
Quit? Well, not exactly! We decided to move to Winter Heaven, South of Crescent Beach and fly out off a private property on the beach. This was John Madgic and Terry Cohen's "heaven".
Off we drove and after 10 minutes, there we were on an eroded road, leading to the famous Paradome with no one in sight. John's truck was there so we waited.....
After John and Terry arrived, we were quickly instructed that we had to take off from a private property adjacent to the beach but under no circumstances our feet could touch the public beach on take off or landing.
The local police were watching us almost all the time, just waiting for us to step on the forbidden strip. (see picture below)
It was a lot of fun to see the police waiting a few yards from us for the smallest mistake. Well, all of us operated with "Zero" mistakes. The police were helpless but at the end of the day, they got us anyway!
Most of us were handed parking tickets for.... parking on the wrong side of the road! The tickets were only $7.
While the officer was writing the tickets, I "stole" a cold Coke from Bruce Brown's cooler, walked up to him and asked if he wanted a cold drink. He was shocked and probably thought that I was trying to bribe him. He looked at me in confusion but finally accepted.He was hot and sweating. The policeman handed us the tickets and was ready to leave. I told him: "Sir, thank you for giving us only 7 dollar tickets. You are a wonderful man. I am sure God watched you and put a big plus sign next to your name in his big book."
The officer was all mixed up. He left only to return after a few minutes. He drove up to me and with an official tone said: "I talked with my supervisor and he told me to cancel the parking tickets and give you a warning. You can leave your cars parked on the wrong side of the street until dark. But remember! Your feet must not touch the public beach when you take off and land. Otherwise....you know, you will be in big trouble!"
So we went flying again! Meanwhile, Wally Shilts and his girl friend Gayle arrived and our group became bigger.
We flew two full days in a row.
Here are a few pictures to illustrate our fun:
Terry Cohen's truck was packed up with all kind of paramotors and other interesting toys.
He even had a pair of self propelled.... roller blades!
After two days of flying at the beach, it was time to leave.
I decided to continue my adventure and I drove across Florida to Cedar Key. This is a remote fishing village on the Gulf side.
It reminds the Florida Keys and even has a small airfield with very little traffic. I stayed another three days and had one of my best flying ever. This time, there was no police or...parking tickets!
The only thing I was missing were my flying buddies.
Finally, one thing remained unanswered, did the Coke cause the policeman to change his mind or was he a real nice man?
I will let you to guess........
