Dexter van Zile

First, there was Spruce Creek, which applied the golf community model to private aviation and created the fly-in community. Now, a Daytona Beach, Fla., company has taken the fly-in community concept, applied it to the office park premise, and produced plans for the World Jetplex on the grounds of Daytona Beach International Airport. The ultimate […]

Colorado energy company executive Alex Cranberg certainly is not the first frequent flier to complain about airplane food. But unlike most of these criticisms, his barbs are directed at the food served on private jets, not on airliners. “It’s just atrocious, generally speaking,” says Cranberg. “It’s $40 for a dried-out sandwich and a bunch of […]

Valhalla Shooting Club & Training Center With a loaded pistol in his holster, the stockbroker, while on vacation in southwestern Colorado, enters a forbidding city neighborhood, seeking a pair of armed criminals who have taken refuge here—perhaps in the smoky bar or maybe in one of the dark alleys. Just as the stockbroker steps into […]

It is a common scene at any major airport terminal: chauffeurs or taxi drivers holding signs bearing the names of passengers, awaiting the clients’ arrivals so that they can drive them from the airport to their hotels. To an exhausted traveler who has just completed a long flight and is far from home, such a […]

The environmentalists’ complaints about Caspian Sea sturgeon have become increasingly difficult to ignore. Even the most ardent caviar connoisseurs have come to acknowledge that, given the depleted state of the 27 different sturgeon species in the region, sacrificing even one female fish for its caviar is akin to killing the goose that lays the golden […]

The sight of a commercial fishing vessel usually conjures up images of long hours of arduous labor often conducted in rough weather and always accompanied by the threat of injury. However, Bruce Kessler, a successful television director from Los Angeles, took a different view. For Kessler, the 90-foot tuna boat that steamed past his sportfisher […]

The aisles of the Lannan Ship Model Gallery in Boston’s waterfront district are as confused and congested as the roads that have been rerouted by the Big Dig construction project taking place just outside its doors. With binnacles (compass cases), engine room telegraphs, life rings, antique diving helmets, old lanterns, and buoys cluttering its floor, […]

Standing on the bow of a flat skiff a few yards from North Monomoy Island off of Cape Cod, Ken Abrames makes a kind of whipping motion with his fly rod. While the passengers on the nearby guide boats cast their flies into the deep water without any success, Abrames follows his own dictum of […]

The Sound of Music includes a scene in which the Baroness Schraeder character explains to her friend Max Detweiler how she plans to avoid the chores of motherhood after marrying Capt. von Trapp, a widower with seven children. When Detweiler doubts Schraeder’s ability to raise a family, the Baroness asks pointedly, “Darling, haven’t you ever […]

Like magistrates presiding over an inquisition, a trio of auctioneers sit high on their perches at the back of the auditorium’s stage while a chestnut colt paces anxiously before them and about 300 horse owners, trainers, and other interested parties. All have gathered here this afternoon, the second day of the annual September Yearling Sale […]