Flying

An American and a Dutch company have created their own unique versions of flying cars, and are looking to bring them to market soon. The American firm, Terrafugia , has designed a two-seat vehicle whose wings unfold, runs on gasoline, and can fly off with a propeller. It debuted at the New York Auto Show this week. The Dutch firm, PAL-V Europe N.V ., has built the PAL-V One, a two seat gyrocopter that has three wheels. The rotor and wings fold up neatly into the vehicle.

My town, Annapolis, is a special kind of college town. The students at the Naval Academy are distinctive not for their backpacks, ear buds and school T-shirts, but for their crisp summer whites and their somber dress blues. The midshipmen take off their hats - their covers - when they enter a building, and they say "sir" and "ma'am" when you greet them. At this college, you don't pay anything unless you quit or get kicked out. About 1,400 arrive every July, but only about 800 will graduate four years later.

Owings Mills now has a "healthy alternative" to fast-food joints, according to Flying Avocado Cafe's creator/general manager, Lisa Valle. An offshoot of the popular Your Prescription for Health Holistic Pharmacy, the cafe opened just a couple of weeks ago. Valle says the cafe's aim is to use almost all organic produce, bread, eggs and meat, and buy locally as much as possible. And to make that healthful food taste great. Valle describes the cafe as a "great little cozy space," with mahogany tables on an acid-stained concrete floor, mahogany counters that run along the windows and wall with high stools, tin ceilings and walls painted ... you guessed it, avocado green.

Wings stood off to one side. The propeller lay in a carton. But the main part of Carl Kesselring's pet project was clearly recognizable as an airplane in progress. "I don't have fear of getting in an airplane," he said, standing in a hangar in Suburban Airport in Laurel surrounded by tools, parts and the remains of a bird's nest that fell through a hole in the roof. "I have confidence in my ability to make it work properly. " Kesselring's daring hobby is increasingly shared by other enthusiasts as the number of amateur-built airplanes grows every year, according to the Experimental Aircraft Association.

Isee where the airlines are engaged in another price war, which means you can fly from Baltimore to London for about seven bucks now and, as an added bonus, the three surviving members of the Beatles will greet you when you land.By now we're all familiar with how these price wars work.One airline slashes its fares 30 percent and everyone gasps"Ooooh! That's not bad!"Then another airline says: "Oh, yeah? Not only will we match thaticket price, but we'll let you bring all the carry-on luggage you want.

For one week each year the Wittman Regional Airport here is the busiest airport in the world, with up to 12,000 landings and takeoffs each day. More than 14,000 planes were tied down in the green fields around the place.It was the week of the annual Experimental Aircraft Association Fly-In Convention. More than 800,000 people were here, spectators and pilots alike, some of them staying a week, living in hotels as far away as Milwaukee, 100 miles down the road, or just camping under the wings of their aircraft.

A few months ago, after a flight from Baltimore to Miami during which I clung to the arm of a startled nun for two hours, I wrote a column about being a nervous flier.The flying itself is not what scares me. What scares me is the prospect of the plane plummeting 33,000 feet and slamming into a desolate ravine, after which it'll take weeks for teams of emergency personnel on burros to drag out what remains of the charred bodies -- assuming they haven't all been picked clean by vultures.Anyway, unlike most everything else that appears with my byline, that column on flying actually provoked a response from many readers.

I WAS TRAPPED in an airport security cattle call early one morning on my way out of Baltimore when a disturbance erupted just ahead of me in the long, serpentine line. A man wearing dress pants and a dress shirt open at the neck was berating a woman of Middle Eastern descent who was wearing a head wrap. "Why don't you dress like an American?" he said to her. "Because your people flew planes into our buildings, we have to stand in lines like this." Another man just ahead of her in line and wearing jeans and a T-shirt took up her cause, saying that because this was America, she could wear what she damn well pleased.

Jen Pastor just wouldn't learn. She swung from the top of her canopy bed, from bathroom towel bars that came crashing down, from monkey bars she fell from, leaving a small round scar on her forehead. "I hurt myself pretty bad," Pastor says, laughing. Undeterred, Pastor wanted to join the circus but instead went to college to study psychology. But tonight, the 21-year-old is back on the bar, this time with some professional guidance. At Gerstung Inter-Sport school in Mount Washington, Pastor swings on a trapeze, smiling contentedly.

Any restaurant that serves food loaded with nuts, seeds and tofu runs the risk of becoming a spoonful of medicine kind of place. That's especially true when, as in the case of the Flying Avocado Cafe, the restaurant is started by two pharmacists with a strong belief in the value of healthy eating. Poor:]

Tonight on “Dancing with the Stars,” each couple did two full dances. As the couples were introduced, Jacoby Jones was wearing a cowboy hat. We didn't find out why until his first routine, which turned out to be a Viennese waltz to “It's a Man's World.” And the cowboy hat is missing now. Huh. They replay Jacoby's mom yelling at Len last week. My parents are worried she might be turning voters off. We viewers love a protective mom, but we also don't like people griping or talking back to the judges too much.

Thanks for reporting on the real ownership of the 20 acres at the proposed Mays Chapel Elementary School site ("Mays Chapel school groundbreaking disrupted by protesters," April 26). Contrary to County Executive Kevin Kamenetz's claim that the Baltimore County School System owns all 20-plus acres at this site and thus has the right to use it for a school, the BPCS owns only 10 acres; the other 10 acres are owned by Baltimore County Department of Parks and Recreation. The parks department's open space program requires reasonable use of the space by all citizens.

What does it require to get members of Congress to take action quickly and decisively on an issue of federal spending? Now we know. The possibility that they will be delayed in an airport terminal somewhere waiting for a flight out of town is apparently so abhorrent that the usual gridlock and party politics just don't apply. That's the take-away from last week's lightning-fast, lopsided bipartisan votes that transferred more than a quarter-billion dollars to the Federal Aviation Administration budget so that the agency would no longer have to furlough air traffic controllers.

Spot the International Space Station moving across the night sky this week. Chances arise the next three nights, but the best viewing opportunity Wednesday is possible to coincide with rain and thunderstorms. Look tonight at 8:59 p.m., Tuesday at 9:45 p.m. and Wednesday at 8:54 p.m. In each case, the space station will appear brighter than a star moving steadily across the sky, first appearing on the northwestern horizon. Wednesday's will be the best chance, with the spacecraft taking a path directly overhead and at its brightest.

Spanish actress Sara Montiel is dead at 85, Don Draper is having a depressing time of things, and a nice German man has invented a faster way to apply contraception. Welcome to your post-weekend trends report for Monday, April 8, 2013. Montiel, who starred in some of Spanish cinema's most successful movies in the 1950s and 60s, has also been credited as a singer on several occasions. She died at her home in Madrid, according to El Mundo . Looking back at the 60s in a less biographical light, Mad Men started its sixth season this week with an incredibly gloomy episode that included a lame New Year's Eve party, a sad vacation trip and a lot of death.

Buck Showalter remembered sitting in the Orioles clubhouse as a driving rain delayed the first playoff game Baltimore had hosted in 15 years. "Do you think the fans will stay?" asked a relatively new Oriole. "Hell yes," replied closer Jim Johnson. The Orioles manager told the story to illustrate the connection between his team and Baltimore. And that bond, which Showalter helped restore, was a big reason why he received The Baltimore Sun's 2012 Marylander of the Year award on Monday.

Ten-year-old Lauren Economou wasn't the least bit nervous as she waited for her connecting flight. She was flying across the country by herself, home to San Diego after a visit to her grandparents in Connecticut, but she was prepared for every contingency. Her blue gym bag was stocked with a family of tiny troll dolls, a hand-held video game, art supplies and plenty of snacks and gum."The gum really helps with the pressure on your ears," Lauren explained knowledgeably, adding that "Kids shouldn't be scared fly alone at all."

The Wings of Freedom Tour, sponsored by the Collings Foundation of Stow, Mass., will fly into Carroll County Airport/Jack B. Poage Field on Tuesday afternoon for a three-day stay. A B-17 Flying Fortress and B-24 Liberator are expected to arrive at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday and stay until Thursday afternoon. Both planes will be available for tours and flights. The Collings Foundation, a nonprofit educational organization, provides living history transportation vehicles and programs around the country.

This will be Flight Test No. 40. In the center of the contraption — a 90-pound, human-powered helicopter made mostly of carbon fiber, balsa wood, foam and string — is University of Maryland doctoral candidate Colin Gore, decked out in orange cycling clothes and safety goggles. Gore will pedal, as he would on a bicycle, until the craft they call the Gamera II XR lifts off the floor. A student stands at each of the four massive propellers as they wait for the cue. "Tension on, take off," comes the order, and Gore's face turns red with effort as he pedals.

"I flew a mother and two young daughters, probably 4 and 7 years old, and as we took off I heard this shrieking from the back of the plane," said Lin Caywood, a 12-year pilot. A mother and recent grandmother herself, Caywood thought the kids were upset about the flight, and banked to circle back to Frederick Municipal Airport for a quick landing to calm the hysterical children. "Then I caught a look at them, and they weren't upset," said Caywood, a Baltimore native and graduate of Poolesville High and Hood College.