Gerry’s funeral

Some of Gerry's many friends

When I was making up my list of Highlights of 2009 at the end of last year, one of my runner-up items was that none of my friends or family had died all year. The death of Gerry Reid on March 1st changed all that, of course. While I didn’t specifically blog about the healthy year, I did allude to it by calling it dull.

Saturday morning, Kelly and I put the kids in the able hands of good friends and rushed out the door to the service at Asbury United Methodist Church. The stated attire was casual, befitting Gerry, so with my jacket and collared shirt I wore socks and sandals. Kelly had socks and sandals with her but opted not to wear them with her dress. We grabbed lunch at the nearby Harris Teeter and ate it in the church parking lot while we watched other guests make their way into the church. Once our lunch was done we also made our way into the church, joining the parade of friends who knew Gerry. There were plenty of socks and sandals present as well as hockey jerseys, kilts, and other Gerry-style attire.
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Supersonic aerodynamics

I was checking my feed for the BBC’s news stories today when I came across a story about an experimental car designed to go 1,000 MPH called the Bloodhound SSC. The article mentioned the car that set the current the world-record speed of 763 MPH in 1997, known the Thrust SuperSonic Car.

I searched for this car but didn’t find an entry for it on Wikipedia. However, I did find a fascinating article on the topic of supersonic. I know a little about aerodynamics from the pilot ground school I took 15 years ago but I had no idea how much different supersonic flight is from subsonic flight.

For instance, from the Wikipedia page:
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