About Us: "Throttle Forward"
By Ralph McCormick, Publisher

As Fly-Low grows, we may be going International. I have been getting request from Ireland, Canada, and Mexico for subscriptions. We have subscribers in over 20 states at present and always expanding. Our growth has been fun. To create a product and see it expand as it has for the past year and a half is fascinating and very satisfying.

This issue we have the first cartoon from Rob Pudim of Boulder, Colorado. I have been a huge fan for years. His cartoons are published in many papers in Western States. Aviation magazines are new for him, but as you see with his first cartoon for us (see hard-copy edition), he “hits the nuke on the head.” So get ready for a new monthly feature from Pudim. I would like to introduce him to you thru this biographical sketch he provided. I asked for a picture and a caricature is what I received. What would one expect from a cartoonist?

In his own words…..

Ralph McCormick with his Cessna 182

I live near the old mining town of Sugar Loaf about 3000 feet higher and 10 miles west of Boulder, Colorado (1V5 at 5,299 ft msl). My wife Pat and I have two horses, two dogs and two cats. We ride, often with our dogs, on all the old mining roads and railroad beds near us. We go backpacking about six weeks of each year (Wind River Range of WY for at least two weeks for the past 10 years), canyoneering in Moab and the Grand Staircase, and are volunteer backcountry hosts for the Forest Service in the Indian Peaks Wilderness for the last twelve summers.

In addition to collecting butterflies (since I was 8 years old), I collect primitive masks (about 300 and counting) from all over the world. I play racquetball about three times a week (A- or B level depending on my concentration), lift weights and do aerobics regularly.

My father and all my uncles were hard-coal miners. After a mine accident, my father was a carpenter/builder. I was the first in my family to graduate from high school and the first to get a college degree.

FOUNDER (along with others): Boulder Valley Clinic, People’s Free Clinic, Boulder County Methadone Program, and Unsatisfied Man Magazine.

I have done lectures on butterflies in the local schools, field lectures on butterflies and alpine ecology (most recently for Rocky Mountain National Park) and have collected butterflies throughout the United States, in Central and South America, Vietnam, Europe and Africa. I’m fairly good at identifying birds, mammals and the other insects, along with many Rocky Mountain area plants. I am not a pilot. My interest in airplanes is in WWI combat aircraft.

I do editorial cartoons for about 50 newspapers, mostly west of the Mississippi River, mainly in the states of WA, AZ, NM, CO, WY and MT.

We are glad to have you flying with us, Pudim!

See you at Oshkosh AirVenture 2002.

Throttle Forward and Fly-Low!!

ralph@fly-low.com

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