I then walked over to the Ace Cafe to get some breakfast, futzing with my cellphone, which was attempting to tell me that it was actually 7:58 AM, not 6:58 AM, which I knew it to be. After asking a few folks for the time, I came to realize that my cell phone always knows best, as it gets the time from the cell towers, which generally don't move and know what time zone they're in. Oh well, no breakfast for a while - Jason Heath and his wife would be waiting at my plane for me at 8 AM, which by this time was 5 minutes ago.
I got back to the plane, said hello to Jason and we got the plane ready and loaded up. For some reason, the ground folks didn't know where to send us, so we got the grand tour of the 18/36 taxiway twice while they sorted it out. But we got to follow a P-38 and lead an F-16 down the taxiway - there aren't too many places or times you can claim that.
Eventually we took off from 18L (next to a Breezy - I wasn't worried about him catching us - and headed south. After clearing the Class D airspace we climbed up to 3500 ft. and I let Jason fly around. We demo'd stalls, steep turns, and stalls in a 45 degree bank. We then headed back in on the demo arrival over the lake, and followed a King Air in for an uneventful landing on 27. Due to the wonders of the Matco brakes, I was able to make the second turnoff and did NOT have to taxi in the grass to get back to Homebuilt Camping, as would otherwise have been the case. Jason and his wife were both psyched by the ride (and were EXTREMELY generous in contributing to the gas fund - way more than was expected [actually, the expectation is $0 - anything above that is gravy]) and headed off to resume building with renewed vigor.
Next, some breakfast (you actually can get 1/2 decent food here if you look - it's not ALL crap, although it IS all expensive), a stop at the ACS booth to pick up my weekly pass from Jim Irwin (thanks, Jim!) and a start at aimless wandering. I stopped by to take a look at Cory Bird's "Symmetry" again, and said hello to Cory and Patti. Still the most perfect airplane anyone will ever see, no matter how long you live.
I registered for camping, paid my $126 for the week of HBC, and did my daily email fix. Got some lunch with Curt Smith, more aimless wandering, said hello to folks along the way, then found Len and Dani Evansic's "Flightling Chairs" booth. Len's a COZY builder who'll be starting work at Scaled in a week or two, and the sell these cool empbroidered chairs (that I'm too cheap to buy). Philip Johnson and the COZY Girrrls were hanging out in the shade in the comfortable chairs, so I sat and tested chairs with them for an hour or two, shooting the breeze.
Around 5:30 PM, a few of us went over to listen to the Beach Boy's concert (or "Beach Boy", since we think that only one of the original group was there), until a huge T-storm threatened to blast us, so we headed off to get some dinner under a tent where we'd stay dry. Turned out the storm wasn't too bad, but we hung out under the tent doing what we do best - telling stories and yakking.
After a nice shower to wash the stickyness off after a hot, wet day in Wisconsin, we all hit the hay. More rides in the morning!
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