Luke Warm's photos

OnStar routing took us "over the rivers and through the woods, to grandmas house we go." I guess we should have told OnStar to avoid rough dirt roads and areas where Bigfoot likes ti hang out.

A Texan "can't compute" snow in August but "seeing is believing."

Volt trip, 3,000 miles in less than 5 days. My wife and I swapped driving, and we spent only three nights in hotels on this long trip. Please note, my drone footage at at Very Large Array in New Mexico was done on a day when the system was down for maintenance. My nephew works there and gave me the hours of the maintenance schedule. We drove from the middle of Texas up into Utah on this trip, getting "lost" (or a better word is "mislead" using On Star routing in my Volt and On Star took us on a very long "adventure" on dirt roads across parts of the Navajo Nation where only locals were driving in pickups. We were probably the only" tourists" that had been on the dirt roads the entire year. But needless to say, what a grand adventure it was, especially in a car that runs on electric motors.

North and west of Belfast, Northern Ireland.

On our way from Chicago to Dublin and over the Atlantic Ocean with a moon rise off the right wing.

Dozing off in Dublin, Ireland tomorrow night, Yee Haw...

This is the smallest factory-built airplane I've owned and the funnest one I've ever had. The photo was made by a motion detecting camera I installed at the side of the runway on my farm. The largest airplane I ever flew was right seat in a B-52 for a very brief period and the smallest was once I built in my barn, taking two years to construct. To give you an idea how short a modified Cessna like this can get off, look at this one on YouTube www.youtube.com/watch?v=Min8mPpDjrQ An A&P/IA mechanic (folks who are licensed by the FAA to work on airplanes and sign off on the annual inspection) once owned this little jewel and he spent a fortune installing a much larger engine into it. I acquired it a few years later and added some more whistles and bells and this puppy turned into a Giant Killer. The runway on my farm was once 3,000 feet long and 90 feet wide, but I shortened it so my critters could have more grass to eat. When all was said and done, the "new" runway became 800 feet long and basically 11 feet wide. My "giant killer" didn't even need 700 feet for a take off, and in the picture here, in my previous airplane, I wasn't even off the ground yet. My best adventure in the Giant Killer was the summer of 2011 when I flew from Texas to Mount Saint Helens and stopped to see an uncle who like my dad was an Army Air Corp Instructor Pilot during WW2 and who flew B-25s in the war. I wish I would have had a camcorder in the airplane for that flight so that I could look back and savor every minute of that incredible experience... I flew half way across Texas, through New Mexico, into Arizona, into Utah, into Idaho, Oregon, Washington State (all the way to the Pacific Ocean, to Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and back home. On the return trip, I had no idea that I had cancer and a few months later had surgery and I still see an oncologist even now in 2014 (and a mess of other doctors) toss in two years later a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis and it's adios to flying an airplane and I was forced to sell The Giant Killer. She flew me to 15,000 feet while above a mountain in Wyoming and was happy to get up to 150 miles per hour, but I usually flew it around 100. These days, I just "fly a Volt" and I fly it slow too.

One of my favorite bands (and get this, they are Texans) are called the "Fabulous Thunderbirds" and my favorite song they have is called "Ain't That Tough Enough" which reminds me of this monster front loader, which proved this week "Heck yes, I'm tough enough." The tires are more than 4 feet tall, and when the bucket is raised like this, the tip is nearly 17 feet off the ground (which is nearly two stories)... I had so much fun getting dirty this week. Oh, and check out their song... www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxBx0nfRp9s

The task ahead... Move a bunch of dirt, rock and debris to protect the bank on the edge of my property. In the process, I am rerouting the stream bed and I have to do it before we get a bodacious rain.

Some of the 1,000 tons of material I relocated on our second ranch.

I had a monster job to do moving lots of dirt and sand and lions and tigers and bears, and the project was too ambitious for my 80 horsepower Kubota "Tang Thang". I rented this monster state-of-the-art front loader and in the matter of 4 days, I moved 1,000 tons of dirt, sand and rock. It has an on-board computer that is able to weigh each load you pick up and then computes the total at the end of the day. This monster (compared to all other tractors I've owned or driven) was like a Cadillac and was quiet, comfortable and as smooth as silk, and the weird thing about it, no conventional front wheel turning. The thing turns by articulating in the middle and it is incredibly easy to move around, Sadly, I want one very much however these cost $200,000. Maybe when I win the Texas Lottery, I'll buy one. The one week rental (I turn in in next week) is a tad over $2,000 per week, but it sure beats using a shovel and a wheel barrow.

When I was 4 years old, my dad came home from work (he was a pilot and had been on a trip) and he showed me a device he bought while he was gone. I recall standing in the driveway at our modest house in El Paso, and he holds up an 8mm film camera and immediately shows me how to aim it, punch a button on the front and make movies. That single even in my young life would be the seed planted for my career in television. I eventually worked almost around the globe, to spending the summer of 1989 working and living in the Soviet Union based in Moscow, but also touring Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus and many regions of Russia. Little did I know, that my relationship with the camera would take me to Mogadishu in 1992 where I witnessed our American military as they participated in Operation Restore Hope, to save the lives of starving people in Somalia. The camera has greatly rewarded my life as I look back on my times and I was lucky to have a father who graced my life for 55 years and 14 days.

If every kid had a father who was as responsible, ethical, devoted and available as my father was to me, the world would be a much better place.

PT-22 Ryan My father (3rd from left) with other Army Air Corp Instructor Pilots, WW2

My dad started flying not too terribly long after Wilbur and Orville Wright first flew in 1903. When World War Two broke out, the U.S. Military was in a world of hurt for aviators for our Army Air Corp and Navy and Marines. And in the 1940s, there were not a lot of people that had actual pilot's licenses and experience in airplanes, partly because of the expense of owning and flying airplanes, and the fact that a full recovery from the Great Depression hadn't really returned our nation back to the original condition it was in, when most people were earning money to afford an airplane. The nation quickly formed quasi-military flying schools and in this picture, my dad is working for the Pacific Flying School at Gibbs Field in Fort Stockton in 1942. He taught hundreds and hundreds of young men to fly, many of which didn't even know how to drive a car.