Our good friend, Sampaguita Dizon died this morning.

Please say a prayer for a wonderful friend who died this morning. Sampaguita Dizon was a friend of my wife's before we were married. Minda was living at her home when we met. She always had a friendly, glowing smile for everyone. Her husband and children are all wonderful, good people. She passed on this morning just after 5am I understand.

She and her husband, Manny, have treated us like family for all of these years. Our hearts go out to all of them now.

Guinness, my furry buddy.

My dog, Guinness, is quite the character. This evening we went on about a 1/2 mile walk. It was close to dinner time and he knows the word, "dinner" quite well. About a city block from home I was getting tired of him stopping relentlessly to sniff or mark this bush, that spot in a lawn or on a tree, .... Finally I asked him if he wanted "dinner". He literally stopped in the middle of raising his leg near a small tree and headed for home as directly as possible. There wasn't a single pause for the rest of the walk home. He took me straight home and then kept a steady stare on me until his dinner was served. Guinness is no dummy.

Last night I flew my powered paraglider & Guinness came along. After flying, some beers were shared. I put out a bowl of water for Guinness just after starting my beer. He sniffed it, and let us know that he would rather have some beer too. A good portion of his water was poured out to make room for a healthy amount of beer. He promptly drank all of it. A little later I learned that while I was packing my aircraft after my flight that one of my friends had shared quite a bit of beer with him too. Guinness is quite the begging lush it seems. What a great dog he is!

He goes with me quite regularly when I fly my powered paraglider. I refer to him as my, "ground crew."

Photos from RAGBRAI. All is well.

These links allow you to view photos take on the RAGBRAI biking/flying trip across Iowa.

http://picasaweb.google.com/davidmcw3/2010RAGBRAIFromTheAirSiouxCityStormLake#

http://picasaweb.google.com/davidmcw3/2010RAGBRAIFromTheAirSiouxCityStormLake#

[Please copy and paste the above links into your browser to view my photos.]

Dave Mote [my long time friend powered paraglider pilot] and I met 2 other PPG pilots while flying on Friday evening and they landed with us. We had never met before so it was nice to meet a couple of other pilots. One of them came back on Saturday morning to fly with us again.

We had heavy rain on Friday morning as we left Waterloo on our way to Manchester. The rain let up after 40 miles and the last 25 were dry and allowed us to dry out. It was good to wear a jacket because it was not too hot that day at all. That evening we were fortunate to have the winds die down and the rain to pretty much dissipate.

We had a relatively cool ride while traveling across Iowa this year, camping and riding our bicycles. The nights in our tents were comfortable for sleeping thanks to being cooler than in past years.

It was a great trip!