AirVenture 2022 | Day 5

July 22 | Friday was catch-up-on-your-homework-the-night-before-the-final-exam day. Whew!

By the time we got to the motel each evening during the week, I was pretty tuckered out. I knew we had done things, but I couldn’t dredge up the energy to remember what and to get it into the laptop. After a good night’s sleep Thursday, I finally brought the laptop to the pavilion at Brodhead and spent the day trying to remember what Calvin and I had done all week.

We had breakfast, and then I claimed a table in the pavilion with a nice view of the grass parking area and the traffic pattern and got to work. I’m a slow typist, so I only got through Wednesday, although I did get up from the hard wood bench of the picnic table from time to time and walk around to get blood flowing through my tail feathers.

I was through Monday and into Tuesday when I saw Calvin come through with plastic gloves on his hands. Calvin always smiles, and I could see that he was up to something. He told me that he had volunteered for kitchen duty again, this time grilling up grill cheese sandwiches.

I came into the breezeway to buy dinner tickets for the fish boil and pork chop dinners, and saw Calvin diligently scouring the grill to get it ready for the grilled cheese. When I saw him next, well after lunch, he seemed disappointed and told me that he had only made about ten grilled cheese sandwiches. It seems that people were ordering the brats instead, leaving Calvin’s culinary ambitions thwarted.

The routine at Brodhead is always the same. Look at old airplanes. Watch old airplanes flying. Talk to pilots and builders. Talk to aviation enthusiasts. Eat. Repeat.

Dinner last night was the white fish boil. That is the main reason I come to Brodhead. Chapter 431 boils up big pots of carrots, potatoes and, of course, onions, then boils up big pots of cod filets and lets the whole thing cook until the cod is shredded and the vegetables are nice and tender, then serves everything up with melted butter on top, coleslaw, a dinner roll and a cookie. Hot cuisine!

I found Hannah, the Kelch museum worker who so helpfully offered to print up the flyers for the D.VII project and a couple other engines I decided to sell. We had initially tried to connect my laptop to the museum printer by WIFI, but that didn’t work. Next, we tried sending the files to her computer by email, but found later that that didn’t work. I then put the files on a flash drive, found Hannah coming from the museum eating an ice cream cone and gave her the memory stick. She printed up some flyers, then spent an hour trying to find me. I finally spotted her, and she told me the flyers and stick were at the registration desk in the museum. I thanked her profusely and took a photo of her and her beautiful smile. Another of the lovely, helpful people you find at Brodhead.

After dinner, we sat around the fire pit again and talked and listened and watched airplanes circle overhead as the sun set against some magnificent clouds. The Pietenpols not only make a dawn patrol to ensure everyone is awake in time for breakfast, but hop rides throughout the day and then fly until they are just about out of fuel in the evening.

One woman finally revealed that she had been an aircraft mechanic in the Air Force for 21 years. She talked about the aircraft she worked on, including KC-135s and B-1B bombers, and some of the challenges they faced maintaining the fleet of aircraft. She then started talking about the airplanes they own, including their daughter’s Champ and their Aeronca Chief. When her husband finally joined us, he told us that when the kids ask him to fix something, he tells them “Go ask your mom”. It was delightful listening to them.

We also talked about cars. Since Calvin had aa wrecking yard and has worked on cars his whole life, he was able to keep up with the conversation. The Air Force mechanic told us about finding her dream car, a 1963 Ford Fairlane, with a 289 engine. Another woman talked about loving to go on rallies through the mountains with her son and other drivers in her Mazda Miata. I loved listening to them talk about the things they enjoyed.

We finally headed to our tents about 10 o’clock. We had settled in and I was fast asleep when the first approaching thunderstorm started shaking my tent. By the time the rain hit, everything I had in the little web shelf above my bed had shaken down on me. I had put all my gear into the airplane to keep it dry in the event of a storm, so I just stuffed my phone, pocket knife and pens into my shoes, set my clothes on top, turned over and went back to sleep. I would bail out the tent in the morning.