Weekend Update

Wow, where to begin?

Friday was a beautiful day; I blocked myself off for that day so I could run around and pick up brochures, name badges, banners, and whatever else needed picked up for the day. We got out to the hangar at Kokomo and everyone was so hard at work getting things set up for the air show, that most things got done in a reasonable time. I'll tell you what, this stuff would be impossible without helpers, and a lot of them. Anyway, by 3 that afternoon, it was time to do a little fun PR flying. I took up an older gentleman in the T-6 for a ride, and he'd been talking with Dale Etherington and a few others before I showed up to get him in the golf cart. So he made sure to ask me if I was old enough to do this kind of thing. ;) Made me laugh. When we were getting our picture taken, he leaned in and whispered "No, really, how old ARE you? 23? How long can you have been doing this?" I whispered back that I was almost 40 and had been doing it awhile and he'd be safe. As we buckled him into the parachute and Jon gave him the safety spiel, he hadn't really thought about having to jump out of it, so he made sure to clarify that it was not actually going to happen. He had fun with the flight, we landed, and the next fellow was loaded up and we were on our way. He wanted to do some aerobatics, so I went up higher and took him upside down a few times. He started off ready to do a lot, ended up happy with a little. It's all good. :)

The airport was hopping with activity. We got a great homecooked meal out there, airplanes were buzzing around, and some of our "acts" were practicing, like Scott P. on Walt S.'s Italian racing motorcycle, out on the runway racing against Pitts Bob to work on timing. Then Nathan got out his 950 hp Corvette and ran it down the runway three times, with Steve on board in the passenger seat. As Nathan lined up on the runway, there was a whole brigade of golf carts out there with seats all filled with folks watching. Nathan tore it up, hitting about 150 mph by the intersection and 185 on his fastest run before he hit the brakes, very close to the end. Steve was big-eyed and pumped up. The car and driver both were rather impressive, and he spent much of the night saying "Did I mention I went 185?" It WAS impressive. I wanna go too. ;)

We ended the night at Applebees as a group of 10, before going home and finishing up a bunch of last minute stuff for the show...