Sam's Birthday Present

 

It's easy to come up with gifts for Sam, especially since he has been doing the major rebuild of his airplane this past year. All you have to do is listen to what he is currently doing to the airplane. For Christmas last year, I offered either a new interior or a new canopy. He didn't really want to give up the old canopy, but it had a hole in it, which he had covered with a pyro sticker for the past couple of years. He finally decided on the canopy. As it turned out, he had to do a lot of rebuilding to make the canopy work and he thought it was darker than the old one and there was a lot of grousing about it. So in the end, he wasn't too thrilled with that gift.

He has been occupied all summer with getting the airplane repainted. It was a huge amount of work to paint and then had to repaint, but it is now painted and back in one piece. This week he was agonizing over whether to hire a painter to help him add the stripe or to do it himself. His birthday is coming up this month, so I offered to foot the painter's bill for his birthday present. It was a little altruistic on my part, but I couldn't stand to see him mess up the paint after all he's been through. So today we went out to take a look at the new stripe. It looks great and he definitely seems happier with his birthday gift than he did his Christmas gift.