Planes...

Last night we made it out to Wentd's on the Lake as a group of 13 and enjoyed our view of the lake while we ate Perch and shrimp and other various tasty things. It's way too easy to overeat there. What am I saying--it's way too easy to overeat everywhere.

Today was another day to hit the grounds. Kaylee started off with Zak and Steve T., and they went through the buildings. While they were there, they ran into the Aeroshell team, who let Kaylee take a photo with them, even though only one of them was looking at the camera when the photo was snapped. :) They asked her about flying, and she told them that her Mom flies a T-6 too, so they were asking her a few questions about me, I guess. That's kind of cool. She then went on to get a 3D holographic "crystal" (plastic) image of her face in a keychain that glows blue, which was also pretty neat, actually, for $10. Meanwhile, I went out with Steve, Jamie and Nathan to hit the buildings. Our first stop was Garmin, so that we could complain about and see if they could fix several issues both Nathan and I were having with their product Garmin Pilot. What was funny was that before we got there, I had said something about getting irritated to get something done. Steve says "Getting angry isn't the way to accomplish it." So we get there, and Steve is explaining the problem about Garmin Pilot crashing while you're flying IFR, and the sales guy comes back with "Well, you should always carry a back up." Oh, Snap. That was not the way to handle that. So I step back out of his line of sight because I'm snickering, because I know Steve. Then the guy says "The iPad isn't an approved device for flying charts, it's just an iPad, you should always carry a back up of your charts." Steve snaps back with "That's a LAME thing to say about why your software isn't working properly. I have a lot more hours than you do, I've been flying for a very long time, I have a backup, that's not the point." By the time we left there, I'd updated my Garmin Pilot, Nathan's mini iPad was fixed, and we'd both learned more on how to use the software, plus our Safe Taxi was fixed. So sometimes getting irritated is the way to go after all. ;)

We hit lunch where I had this Ginger Sesame salad and onion and sour cream fries, which were both really good, and fairly reasonable, too. Their cheeseburger was $6 and a 1/2 pound burger! Not. Bad.

At that point I broke off with Steve and Zak and Kaylee and we went over to KidVenture and the Museum. Kaylee painted up a wooden airplane like the Checkertail Mustang again, and said "I miss the Mustang." What was funny there though, was when she went to pick out her airplane to color, the guy said "You can pick your airplane" and she picked the Mustang. He said "Do you know what kind of plane that is?" She said "Yes, it's a Mustang." He said "But do you know what kind?" She said "It's a P-51!" Zak said "She's flown in one--our friend owned one for several years". I don't think he believed it. ;)

Kaylee really wanted to do another helicopter ride, but I wouldn't let her. Too much wait time sitting there on a bench for a 5 minute ride.

Tonight is Steak Night. We have 23 people eating steak at our campsite tonight, and Steve T. and Australian Greg did a fantastic job as always. Steak, salad, potatoes, corn on the cob, fixin's galore. If you left there hungry, it was your own fault! After dinner, Kaylee and I went to see the premier of Disney's "Planes". It's a neat thing, to be able to watch the first ever showing of a movie anywhere in the world, at the outdoor theater at Oshkosh. But getting in there was not for the faint of heart-or me. We were JAMMED together, a veritable herd of people, standing, pushing, people getting into a mob mentality almost. They had shut the gates and were not allowing any new people in, only people who already had seats saved down in the theater, and then you had to have someone from the inside holding your chairs let you in. It was a massive back-up of people calling on cell phones and waving at folks inside the theater to get them to let them in. It was a literal crush of humanity. I hated it, and was concerned about getting separated from Kaylee, because people were shoving and shouldering and elbowing their way in between people to get ahead. At one point a guy did that in between me and Kaylee. I grabbed his arm, grabbed her arm, said "This is my daughter, she stays with me" and he backed up. Craziness. But then we got in and the movie started, and that was pretty cool. The sunset was gorgeous, and I got one nice shot of it standing in the herd line just by sticking my camera aimlessly up at the sky and shooting blind. Kaylee met up with two of her friends from here, Amy and Alyssa, and they all sat together. There was a bunch of security there, people there facing the movie-goers, watching us all with night vision scopes, trying to prevent piracy of the movie. See, it's not being released to the public for another week, and they're really worried about an early release or a leak of the movie. So they were all over it, telling anyone they saw even texting on their phone that they could put it away or get out of the theater. I decided not to give them any reason to worry about me, so I just kept my phone in my pocket.

We enjoyed the movie. A cropduster airplane who has dreams of being something more than he was built to be. A knock off of Cars, but everybody knew that up front. I thought it was sweet and I enjoyed the flying scenes, the racing scenes, and I think all the pilots there did. It was late and dark by the time we got back to the trailer, so we just hung out by the fire for a few minutes, then hit the hay...