Thank you for 40 years of flying...

On June 8th, 2008 my father, Don Linke, flew for that last time as a pilot for Northwest Airlines. He had been flying airplanes since he was 20 years old and he turned 60 on Thursday the 12th of June. In his 40 years of flying airplanes here are some interesting facts...

In that span, he flew 8 million miles and carried more than 750,000 people safely to their destinations. He was in the air for nearly 20,000 hours. So if he has flown a total of 8 million miles, he could have flown to the moon and back over 6 times, of course it only took the Apollo mission 4 days to get there. And as far as the number of people that have flown on his flights? He could have flown the entire population of Minneapolis to a destination of their choice....Twice..

On Saturday, we celebrated! We celebrated the retirement of my father and celebrated that he doesn't have to be in a range of 11 different time zones multiple times a month. So here is a slideshow that we put together from his early days of flying to the party on Sat. Hope you enjoy...

Oh and a special thank you to Mark Adam's for photographing and capturing my favorite moments from Dad's party.

SLIDESHOW


Here is dad in 1982...



Here is dad after his last flight on June 8th, 2008





The surprise retirement party revealed!



The discovery of long time friend Jerry Barron...

Jerry and Dad..
Real 747-400

Edible version (thank you Mark Brickman over at Baker's Man)

Dad impressed by the amazing resemblance of the edible version and the flying version...

Ahhh. Like father like son...

Memorial Day weekend was the first chance we got to take Hayden out on the lake this year. He was a great sport and even enjoyed his first cool dip in the lake. After a hard day of crawling and exploring all over the boat, it was time to relax and enjoy a cold one.... Ok, so he enjoyed the water bottle but, he really enjoyed trying to sneak his first beer....

Go go gadget arms.....

Hmmm. This is going to be trickier than i thought. I have never seen this type of bottle before.. Where is the nipple? (gotta love G-Don's Tilley Hat)

Ah... successs...
Ok, so he never really was able to open the beer, but he was certainly fascinated by these frosty cool cylinders of fun....