Down in Wise, VA for Energy Tech Summit
Posted by Chap at 4/6/2008 8:04 PM and is filed under uncategorized 
Thanks to the fearless piloting of Fairfax City Mayor Rob Lederer, I flew into Wise County's Lonesome Pine Airport this afternoon. Tomorrow I am speaking at Energy Technology Summit at UVA-Wise, which is located in the far southwestern tip of Virginia.
As an airport, Lonesome Pine is ... well, lonesome.
There was nobody there when we landed and the gate to the terminal building was locked. It was a beautiful day and the highlands of Appalachia rose up on all sides of us. It was so quiet you could hear the crickets chirping in the grass.
Fortunately, Evan Day of the Sierra Club was there to meet us. I slipped thru a gap in the chain link fence (no, I'm not kidding) and pulled my bags behind. We have a room at the Best Western in Wise tonight.
Tomorrow I'll be talking about Clean Energy and SB 446. The focus of my talk is on the inevitable march of renewable fuels in the 21st century market place.
What a condescending comment about a part of Virginia you are obviously not familiar with. The FBO's hours at Lonesome Pine are posted in all pilots' guides, and should not have been a surprise to any pilot who properly prepared his flight. Didn't you actually pass through the personnel opening beside the vehicle gate? What an exaggeration! We welcome everyone who comes to this part of the Commonwealth with open arms, but it's sad when a visitor from an overpopulated quagmire makes negative remarks about Southwest Virginia. Why did you describe your pilot as fearless? Were there challenges flying to LNP that were beyond his experience level? Had he never flown that far away from home? Usually, the further away one gets from the DC area, the less fearless one needs to be. That not only applies to flying, but also to driving and existing there on a daily basis.