I am very happy you enjoyed the story, many more to come! Yes it is sad we do this to our awesome planet! Especially so in that it is utterly pointless to continue destructively extracting resources in this day and age.

I may have rubbed shoulders with your uncle as I too have flown through Redding many times and also John Wayne airport in Orange County.

I am saddened to hear of your wife's brother being grounded by Parkinson's. I lost my father recently from Parkinson's, don't be sad for me though it was a great passing and he had a wicked sense of humor right till the very end. Perhaps I will post about that too later on. It was actually dad that got me into shooting pictures while I fly, because he wished that he had done this so that he would have had them to review in later years when he lost the ability to fly. I love the Mooney pilot community. I bet your uncle was an engineer right? Seems like every pilot I have ever seen step out of a Mooney had a pocket protector full of pens!!! LOL :)

On being knocked around by a downdraft. If you look closely in the photos of inside my cockpit you will notice the cross bars are covered with padding, much like a race car roll cage would be..this is because I got slammed very hard once flying over Glacier National Park. The wind dropped me so fast and hard that it slung me into the ceiling and I hit my head on the center bar! I put in a stronger harness and covered those bars!!!