From: Bill Pyles [billpyles@msn.com]
Sent: Sunday, February 22, 2004 6:53 PM
To: tom@truax.com
Subject: hello from Bill Pyles

Tom,

Not sure if you remember me. I am Jeanie Lippincott's ex husband and I met you several times when she and I lived in L.A.

Since I got my private pilot ticket last year, I have been reaching out to other folks who are or were pilots who I know personally. In the past
couple of years, I have been pretty enthusiastic about aviation, and I try to fly at least once a week. Aren't you a helicopter pilot (or was it A& P)
in addition to being a noted para-glider pilot?

My second wife and I recently moved from San Jose (where we lived for 9 years) to Phoenix. I fly out of SDL and DVT, and of course the weather is VFR virtually always. I am just starting to read about the instrument rating, however, as I would like to gradually fly faster and bigger
airplanes, and instruct someday, perhaps as a retirement gig.

Jean re-married a couple of years ago. He's a captain and check-pilot (737) for US Airways. They live in Miami.

Do you know what Steve Wurst is doing? Is he still involved with Space Access? I can't find any recent news about him on the web.

Let me know how you are doing.

Bill Pyles
22615 N 45th Pl
Phoenix, AZ 85050
480-219-3692
mobile 408-892-6920
fax 775-703-7213
www.apisensor.com

Reply from Tom Truax

Bill,

Good to hear from you.  Of course I remember... you married the prettiest girl in our high school class.  When I was in eighth grade, Kirk Thompson and I used to ride our bikes to the Dairy Queen on US 101 and use the pay phone to call "girls".  I always called Jeanie.  I had a crush on her, but she was always dating my best friends.

Glad to see she married an airline pilot.  Her dad would have liked that.  I remember taking her for a ride in Columbus's J3 clipped wing cub.  We flew over her house and had to watch the fuel getting get back to the grass strip.  Her dad was furious.

Still remember our trip to Laguna Seca.  I occasionally take my 5 year old and his friends to the Ventura Raceway to watch the action.

Good to see you're flying.  I'm still passionate despite a number of hard knocks.  Did work as and A&P for about 10 years, and liked the helicopters, but mostly flying paragliders currently.  My personal flight stuff is at http://paraglide.net/

My family web site is http://truax.org/  Married with a 5 year old boy and a 10 month old girl.  Living in Carpinteria California, but working in the Midwest doing field service industrial control stuff for Peaker Inc. http://peaker.com/
I sometimes connect through Phoenix on my way to Detroit.

Last I heard, Steve Wurst was in the rocket business somewhere in So Cal, but that was a number of years back.

Hope to see you in the air someday.

:) Tom Truax