This might drag on for abit, but I think it’s worth the story…
Anna my flight partner and myself were on a mutual training flight up in the Salmon arm area early this morning doing some ADF/NDB work. I finsihed up my required excersices and landed in Salmon Arm to have a pee and switch seats. A couple minutes later Anna had us rolling down Rwy14 and airborn over some forested industrial area of the city. Being the retard I am, I popped opened my window to spit out my gum and ended up loosing my less_than_a_week_old Spyoptic sunglasses. To me, a ~$200 pair of sunglasses doesn’t get given up on that easily, so I asked Anna to land me back at Salmon Arm. I hopped out on the runway, ran to Airport Manager’s hangar and snagged the courtesy car keys off of him. We both knew this was going to be a pointless effort, but I needed to at least say I tried. Anyhow, about 10 minutes later I find myself driving this ancient yellow boat of a car through the area that I think my sunglasses landed, having flashbacks of Physics12 and tryign to imagine what type of drag and fligth path my glasses would have taken… Deciding I’ve gone to far, I backup about 100 yards, get out, and start looking in the gravel lot of some shady looking machien shop. HOLY SHIT! My sunglasses are about 40 feet from where I stepped out of the car, in almost perfect condition, less the missing lens. I can’t belive this… It blew my mind. We were doing about 100Kts, 1000ft above this place 30 minutes ago and I’m looking at my sunglasses that got sucked off my head in flight. Anyway, I find the lens about 20-30 feet closer to the highway, pop it back in, plunk the glasses back on my head and drive back to the airport to get picke dup by Anna. Of course I pretended I didn’t find them and sneakily placed them on during the flight…
Man, I always end up sitting on my sunglasses or scratching them all to shit. Or leaving them on some Spanish train. I can’t imagine paying $200 for sunglasses…
I’m still finding it hard to believe I found them. It’s not like we just pulled over, hopped out and ran down the highway a couple 100ft… We literally flew another 10 miles or so before I was back on the ground. Then needed to figure out how to get to the area I wanted to get to. Looking at things from the sky and then trying to get there on the ground is confusing!
I’m in the works of writing something up for Spy and perhaps someone like Transworl Snowboarding, who advertises for these guys… A little mag blurb would be sweet.
wow That was a cool story man, what are the chance’s of you getting them back in one piece. Have to agree you should write or a
email the company and tell them your story. never now they might do a commercial about it.
Im so sheap I buy my sunglass at the aiport in Van I buy 2 a year from there. you now those $10.00 doller sunglass.lol
Maybe as they were falling, the lenses acted like a little parachute. It doesn’t account for the luck you have finding them but probably for them not being smashed up. Maybe you should drop them again from a tall building and see if this is what happened.
I’ll write up a letter and send it to Spy. Probably five people suggested that to me today, so I’ll do it. I think that the lenses would have been facing downward because of the mass in the front of the frame, but the (ear handles?) probably kept it kinda balanced, like a glider or something. Anyway, the only marks are on the bottom of the frame, under the lenses. I imagine the grunt of the impact was absorbed there, and that’s probably why the lense shot out (from the frame compressing). Anyhow, I was wearing them all day and ended up stopped by Spareparts, where I bought them to share the story. Hopefully they pass it on to some customers and sell a few more pairs becuase of it.
The lenses are made out of some sort of polycarbonite composite, so that might explain why they didnt’ get scratched… (?)
Somebody tell Monteith! See if he still remembers me.
And Astrothug… I’ve been told by many people, especially optomoetrists to spend atleast $70 on your sunglasses, especially if you spend a lot of time in direct sunlight… Apparently these (100% UVA/UVB) Walmart specials really don’t do that great of a job protecting your eye balls.
Financial Hint: Wanna make money? Start a walk-in catarac clinic in the Okanagan… Seriously. Sun causes more damage to your eyes than you might think.
I said Landon, and I mentioned pilot. He said something about him knowing you were interested in that (I don’t know what that is, but I’m guessing aviation).
And also, never think twice about contacting a company in regards to their product regardless if it is a complaint or a compliment. Just recently, I had a very “rotten” experience a with an un-named KRAFT product, so I emailed the company with my complaint and within 2 weeks I had a check from them in the mail. Also, my husband and I bought a new bed about 3yrs ago and have hated it for a long time; the springs are coming through, there’s no comfort left, and it’s all lumpy & bumpy. So… we brought our complaint to the store (here) and placed our complaint and a claim under the warrenty. Well, it took a few months, but we finally got a full refund for the price of the mattress. Anyway, the point of my story is to always let companies know your feelings on a product as chances are you’ll get something out of it, either a new one, a free one, a cash rebate, or maybe just a coupon. Something is always better than nothing.
My boyfriend got 3 packages of Ernie Ball guitar strings for free because he wrote them an email saying one of the strings broke the 2nd time he used them. So he got $50 worth of free strings.
The free ones however, broke as well… as Ernie Ball strings suck!
wow That was a cool story man, what are the chance’s of you getting them back in one piece. Have to agree you should write or a
