I thought I would try to tease out the Gulf Coast demographic of the PW Forums. I'm a recent transplant to Pensacola, tip-of-the-FL-panhandle from the, Washington DC metro area.

Geographically, Pensacola enjoys closer proximity to southern Alabama and Mississippi, than to the rest of FL. Also, my SO has close ties to New Orleans.

So let's see who else resides in this central Gulf Coast region of the country.

Ed, welcome, thanks for your service. My son is in the Navy (about 6 months). I live in the Houston area. I teach piano and collect pianos as a hobby. Pensacola's not exactly a hop skip and a jump from Houston, so I'm not sure that I am part of the demographic that you are seeking. I did buy a piano from New Orleans though. Flying was always on my list of things to accomplish, but now that I seem to be cranking out kidney stones on a fairly regular basis, I understand that this will prevent me from getting a license or keeping one active. What is even more unfortunate is that I bought a kitplane to build. Sometimes one just can't win.

Hi John,

I hope your son is enjoying his Navy experience. What is his career path?

I think inland of the coast also counts. I hope you weren't too scathed by Ike. Being the huge metropolitan area that Houston is, there should be a healthy piano population there. Piano collecting must be an interesting hobby. Of what interesting pianos does your collection comprise.

Kidney stones can certainly be problematic. On the other hand, if you can figure out how to stop generating them, after a "sufficient" period of time lapses to prove you are at low risk, you could probably return to flying.

What kind of kit did you buy?

Ed, my son's career path seems to be ever-changing. He initially was gung ho for the SEAL program. His legs seemed to have other ideas. The shin splints never managed to "heal", and he realized that if he ever got out to Coronado he'd be in BIG trouble. So, now the plan is OCS. He already has a college degree.

I collect big pianos. I have a Mehlin, Knabe, Weber, Mason& Hamlin and Baldwin. All are concert grands. The Baldwin is non-functional, being a product of hurricane Katrina and is a longshot project of great proportions.

As to the stones, the Doc is getting rich on me but I can tell, really is not much interested in solving the underlying problem. I began the problem in college 30 years ago and it has gotten worse. I got off milk early on because they then said to cut back on calcium and oxalates. Now I read that calcium will not be absorbed if combined with oxalates at mealtime. In other words, if I drink supposedly 3 glasses of milk with meals, the oxalates ant calcium should not be absorbed but rather flushed. Hmmm... sounds promising. It likely wont' work, but it is worth a try. Lithotripsy has proven to not work and I REALLy didn't enjoy the laser surgery and stent last time around. I'll try any logical suggestion. Witch Doctor maybe??

The kit is a Wheeler Express CT which is a 4 place fiberglass kit, that performs supposedly like a Mooney among others. The cruciform tail proved to be a little less than desirable in some regimes, but there are a bunch flying. Low and slow in the pattern is not advised.

Your son is wise.

Must be fun having all those big pianos.

How about crystal therapy... Urologist I am not. Although, I'm frequently paged from the emergency room instead, as in, "Hey, somebody page U (heard as Nu) rology."

I'm not sure why anyone would want to fly an airplane slowly, anyway...

Ed, the speed thing is relative. The kit will fly 220mph, which is a lot faster than the legal limit for cars. As to the flying thing, it's just one of those things I always wanted to do. I can't believe that there have been no more respondents in the gulf-coast area. I would try posting in the other forums, namely the piano and pianist corner forums.

As to the stones, I have a friend that tells me I need to market kidney stone jewelry on Ebay with the newly discovered element "Pelsite". Hmmm......

Ed, I re-posted this in two other forums, "piano" and "pianist corner". Check the responses there. There are about 8 more.