I didn’t get here until late today, too late to fly. My ever-supportive wife was out of town at a conference, so I was saddled with cat-sitting duties, and I had also unfortunately scheduled a Condor teaching session for Friday night. As punishment for letting life get in the way of my soaring, I had to drive all the way here through what looked like spectacular soaring weather, thinking the entire time that I was missing out on some great stuff! Turns out I hadn’t missed that much after all – it was mostly cloudy here until fairly late in the afternoon, and only a few of the die-hards like Baud Litt (LBL), Eric Nelson (5E) and Leigh Smith (AC) did any XC at all. At about 5pm, these three pilots swooped in over the field, pulled up, and glided in for beautiful landings – nice! Later we heard from Eric Nelson that there were a few anxious moments out on course, as a part of the local ridge that was supposed to be working in these conditions apparently hadn’t gotten the memo, but it all turned out OK in the end.
Anyway, I’m here, and the Micro-Castle is parked on the ramp by the main hangar, about where I have been parking my Odyssey all these years. Got to say though that the Micro-Castle is a LOT more comfortable! During and after the process of setting up the camper, I had a number of people stop by for ‘tours’ (doesn’t take long to tour the Micro-Castle), including 10-year old future basketball star Ethan Mann, son of Erik and Mary Mann. Ethan is tall for his age, and can certainly handle a basketball. Reminds me of when I was that age, except for the skill part ;-).
Danny Butto (P6) and the rest of the MASA crowd put on a fantastic welcome dinner tonight, featuring delicious brats with piping hot buns, Boston baked beans, and potato salad, along with lots of dessert stuff. Dinners are traditionally served outside under some tents, and tonight was no exception. The weather turned quite nippy here after the sun went down, so we were eating this wonderful dinner with multiple coats on and hoods drawn up, huddled over the candles on the dining tables for warmth! The forecast is for a low of 42 degrees tonight and the Micro Castle’s heater is already getting a workout as I write this.
One last humorous note. As I was helping Baud push his glider to his trailer, in comes SM’s trailer, but without SM. Turns out SM crew, aka Janine Acee, towed the glider down by herself so that her pilot could stay at home, doing whatever it is that pilots without gliders do. I once again tried to convince Janine that a *real* pilot would treat her better, and she should switch here allegiance to me. She considered this for about 3 nano-seconds before once again laughing me out of town – foiled again!!
The forecast chance of rain percentage for tomorrow has been going up and down all day, and this has been causing some long-range angst from a few of the contest pilots (like SM) who haven’t yet arrived. As the forecast for tomorrow changed over the late afternoon and evening, there was some talk about alerting the holdouts that they might need to be here tomorrow; however, now it looks like their bet will pay off after all as the new percentage forecast is for 100%. I can’t really bitch about this, as I did exactly the same thing myself for the New Castle contest ;-).
Stay tuned!
Frank (TA)
