Winding Down...

A lot of people packed up and started leaving Oshkosh last night, and today's crowds are down. There are actually campsites available again, and people are slowly trickling out. In previous years, we left Saturday as well. We decided to stay the extra day this year for various reasons, so this is our last full day here, and we're trying to make the most of it.

We headed for the flightline this morning, leaving Kaylee to play with Maggie. We had breakfast at Ace's Cafe again (they have good French toast and donuts). There was a paper there, and I saw the photo of all the women pilots...and they were almost all in pink t-shirts. I don't know if they were handed out there, or if people knew to wear them, but I don't own a pink t-shirt. Anyway, I guess there are close to 800 women pilots here this year, and that's some kind of record. We left the cafe and walked down the flight line next to the runway just looking at stuff. Home-built airplanes, vintage aircraft, classic aircraft, all of it. We watched some airplanes take off and land, and we took a tram down to the ultralight field. See, I've never made it down there before either in any of the years I've come, so I kind of enjoyed that. While I'm not overly interested in actually flying in the flying weedeaters or flying lawn chairs or whatever you want to call them, they are kind of pretty and interesting to watch. So we sat on a set of bleachers (we have got to get some of those for our BBQ Bash) behind a little wooden picket fence line and watched the weedeaters take to the skies. After the ultralights were done, they had helicopters going next. One was this tiny little purple thing called a "Mosquito", and the name completely fit. And it was tiny. I swear, when you look at it head on, it looked like if I sat in it, my right leg would be hanging out the right side, left leg hanging out the left side. It looked like half of the helicopter was missing, and the rotors were head height. Seemed like a good way to get decapitated too. But it zipped around pretty quickly and the guy flying it did a nice job of it.

We'd now basically walked from one end of Oshkosh to the other. The kids wanted to see the "Wall of Fire" or warbirds airshow from right on the field, so Chuck, Jamie and I walked all the way back to the campgrounds, I picked up Kaylee, we had some quiet time in the trailer, and then at 3 pm I headed back to the flightline with Kaylee and Jamie to go catch up with Nathan and Steve and watch the air show up close and personal.

Unfortunately, Nathan couldn't fly in the show today, because his alternator went out on his Mustang yesterday during the show. He has just enough battery left to start his airplane tomorrow, shut off everything, and fly home with a hand-held battery-powered GPS. That's too bad, but that's the way it works in aviation.

We sat under the tail of a giant DC-10 in the middle of Aeroshell Square at Air Show Center. It was shaded and cool, and we watched the air show from there. The show actually started with the warbirds, which was perfect since that's what the kids wanted to see. So we stayed for the "Heritage Flight", then 70 minutes' worth of trainers & observation planes, then fighters, then bombers. Kaylee was watching the Raptor go by at full volume, and after he passed she leaned in towards me and yelled "That makes my HEART hurt! I LOVE OSHKOSH!" That's my girl. ;) I decided to take a video of the Wall of Fire this year since I have a bunch of photos of it from previous years. I thought the bombers were going to make a pass and then the wall would go off, and I thought the wall would be all down the runway as it normally is. I was wrong on both accounts. Nathan was doing the same thing. He was video taping the bombers as they went overhead, so he got that part, and I didn't. We were then both aimed at show center-but they set the wall of fire off on the right side only. So Nathan got a video of the bombers, a bam, and then him saying "Dang it" as he missed the wall, and I got a video of no bombers and the tail end of the wall as it went from fire into smoke. Put them together and shift them right and we'd have had it. ;)

After the warbirds show, we broke into three groups. Nathan putting the Mustang "up" for the night, Steve and the kids going to buy air guns (Kaylee LOVES this thing...it can shoot air up to 20'), and me hiking back to get the golf cart and picking everybody up. Right now we're waiting for Nathan to get back in his car from the Mustang area, and we're all going to head out for dinner; our last dinner at Oshkosh.

We've had a great time. I'm actually not quite ready to go home yet for the most part. I want my own shower, and it'll be good to be back in my house with my own bed and the ability to easily wash my clothes and walk around in private, but I'll miss the constant sound of engines and all the activities to do. I'll miss Kaylee getting so much exercise playing OutSide all the time, something she won't do at home. This week has just been beautiful weather. Even the one day that it was hot and muggy, once the cold front moved through, it turned into a beautiful afternoon/evening. I've been completely comfortable up here this year, and that never happens. Usually I'm ready to go home just to stop sweating for awhile. This year-No Problem! I've gotten to enjoy the Sea Plane base, the Ultralight Field, the Warbirds, and everything in between. I even got to attend two Forums-something else I've never done before. I've done the public shower thing. I've watched an air show from the flight line. I don't think there is much left that I've missed this go-around. Well, maybe one thing. I haven't watched any of the movies they "feature" down here, but that's because I've seen them all and don't really feel the need to spend my evening that way. But John Travolta flew in yesterday to "introduce" or whatever the word is his movie "Broken Arrow" that they were playing down here. We tried to invite him to dinner, but he couldn't make it. ;) I did listen to/watch his jet take off after he was done though.

Anyway, like I said, I think we've hit a lot of the possible events, activities, and entertainment for the week, while simultaneously not being overly busy every day. We sit around for hours in lawn chairs with cool drinks in the shade and watch the world go by. Or we sit and watch a campfire burn down to embers and take out Nathan's Star Finder and figure out what stars are where, what their names are, and little facts about them. I've seen two shooting stars and three satellites. We have two golf carts and a car that we can take up to the gates to minimize walking distance, and they have buses and trams as well that we've utilized. So we have no problem making sure that we cover the fun stuff without making it more work than play. It's just been a truly enjoyable week...