After I finished up with a primary student at the Santa Maria Airport Monday, July 22 I picked up a nearly new black Prius and headed off for AirVenture Monday afternoon, July 22.
It doesn’t matter how many times I make the drive it is always magic to me. The drive on the two lane winding through the hills east of Santa Maria is beautiful and things open up past Tehachapi. I love the desert past Barstow and there is always ugly traffic in Las Vegas. Climbing up into the hills out of Las Vegas gives me a feel for the size of the drive and the further into Utah I get the more magic the scenery becomes.
I made it as far as Richfield, Utah Monday night and stayed in a lovely big room at the Royal Inn. The nice woman had just bought the motel and was doing a great job of fixing it up with her husband who builds bridges for his day job.
The drive over the Rockies is always magic and I love the transition to the flat lands. I stopped at the recently refurbished Motel 6 in York, Nebraska.
It looked like an easy drive to Oshkosh until I started hitting construction. By the time I arrived it was too late to find lodging or even a camp ground so I slept in the car at an unnamed truck stop with the permission of the management on condition I not mention the name of it.
The next day I was able to find lodging in Neenah, WI through Saturday night at what I felt was a pricy $120 per night.
I made it to the National Association of Flight Instructors breakfast at 8:00, Thursday and visited with some flight instructor luminaries including John and Martha King. The rest of my time was spent immersed in the magic that is AirVenture going to classes and learning about aviation.
I saw lots of old friends and met some new ones. One of my new friends is Al from Racine Sport Flyers. He wanted me to give a proficiency check ride to one of his instructors for Sport Pilot, gyroplane and Sport Pilot gyroplane instructor who had 19 hours of gyroplane time in his log book. I could feel my tour of the Henry Ford museum slipping away. I had wanted to spend some time flying an ELA Eclipse and this seemed like a good way to manage that. I called Daniel, the applicant and we agreed on Tuesday at Racine.
Sunday most of the vendors are clearing out and I went to the Air Museum. I had my afternoon planned to be at the EAA Library and that didn’t work out because it was closed for the lack of a librarian so it was off to Green Bay to see the tall ships and the train museum.
I called my client Daniel to see if we could move things to Monday so we had a weather day if things didn’t work out and he agreed to move a client and Monday at noon.
It was late and pretty deep into the nineties when I rolled into Racine and my skill at picking out charming older inexpensive motels let me down. It is the sort of place where I leave my socks on. The toilet didn’t flush and the air conditioner was not able to drop the room below ninety degrees till well after midnight. In the morning my efforts to take a shower were rewarded with a tepid low pressure dribble.
More about the check rides and Mentone coming up.