Yesterday evening I was in the air, flying back from Dublin to Chicago. As there was nothing much else to do in the Aer Lingus plane, I was watching the flight path and flight information on the little computer screen mounted in the seatback in front of me.

Suddenly I realized that the flight path would carry our plane RIGHT OVER Blind River, Ontario and that we were coming upon this Town Of Some Repute at 557 miles per hour. A flash of inspiration hit me: if the flight crew would cooperate, I could drop a present for "Shane" McBride!

I explained what I wanted to do, and the flight crew became quite excited by the idea. The co-pilot and several of the passengers with laptop computers calculated the drop point, taking into account the headwinds and stuff like that -- this was going to be a dead-on present drop.

What to drop was never in question. With a large selection of liquors and beers aboard for the passengers everyone agreed.

So, just after we crossed someplace called something like "Pushpatina Ridge" at 38,082 feet (and with the permission of the Canadian Air Defence Forces), the pilot dropped the contents of the lavatory holding tank. The CDF later told us that the Icey BM made a direct his in Don McBride's yard.

So..."Shane", this one's for you! That greenish-brownish-yellowish ice sculpture is my present to you. The green is the disinfectant solution, in case you were wondering -- Aer Lingus is, after all, an Irish air line. And there's lots of beer and stuff in there, too.

Glad to be able to do it for you, old buddy.