We awoke at 7 AM in Baraboo on Thursday, July 26th in order to be ready when Bill Murphy, he of Baraboo-Dells Flight Center, Inc. (yes, another plug for a great guy) picked us up at 7:30 AM. At the airport, I decided to fuel up for the flight out of OSH so as not to have to bother with a fuel truck at OSH. I put in a quart of oil and we waited until the weather in OSH and the surrounding area was VFR.
We flew the 20 minutes to OSH, did the Ripon - Fisk high approach (I will never do the 90 kt. low approach again - 135 kts is just about right in order to adjust for faster OR slower aircraft who cannot follow directions). It was not very busy - only a few planes in the pattern - we did the 27 approach and had to taxi in the grass for a while, but no problems getting to the Homebuilt Camping area. We were given a spot right near the concrete pad at the end of the taxiway, which was very convenient because I needed to move the plane later that day. We parked, unloaded, and set up the tent next to the plane, putting all our stuff in the tent so the plane was lighter for the move later.
Deanie relaxed near the plane for a while and I took a quick walk to the Homebuilders Headquarters to see about arrangements for moving the plane, to the ACS booth to get my wristbands, to say hello to the folks in the ICON booth and to take a quick walk through Hangars "A" and "B", looking for Hilton Software (makers of WingX Pro7).
At 12:30 I made it back to the plane, as that was the time we had arranged for the move. I had been asked by Chad Jensen to display the plane and give an introductory talk about COZY MKIV's for the general public - this was to start at 1 PM and last an hour or so. This was apart from the COZY forum on Friday. Just as the volunteers appeared to help move the plane, it started raining pretty hard so I went in the tent and we waited about 20 minutes for the rain to dissipate before dragging the plane over to the Homebuilders Hangar. It's a lot easier to drag a plane 1/4 mile when 5 people are helping you.
We brought the plane into the hangar and I started in on an abbreviated version of the COZY forum presentation - just the COZY MKIV introductory part. There were 40 or so folks in attendance. Right about in the middle of the 20 minute presentation, it started raining again. Not just raining, but blowing, too. After about 2 minutes of this, the deluge started and I saw an ark with some random assortment of animals float by, just before the two hangars visible 50 feet away from the Homebuilders Hangar completely disappeared in the horizontal rain and 60 kt. wind. I attempted to keep talking, while thinking that if my tent hadn't blown away and destroyed someone ELSE'S winglet (still sorry about that, Curt S.), it was at least completely flat and very wet. It's hard to concentrate when you're worried about your earthly belongings.
After the talk, I hung around the plane for an hour or so, talking to folks about it and then the volunteers showed up and we dragged the plane back to the tent. Tim Andres (and others) had magnanimously re-erected the tent after it had, in fact, been blown flat, and Deanie had taken everything out and hung it up to dry (the sun was out and it was a glorious afternoon). Amazingly, everything except one sweatshirt that had been used as a sponge (there had been 2" of water in the tent) was bone dry by 6 PM. We hung out and relaxed by the plane and then went to eat dinner at the "Beer Tent" with Tim Lumpp and his brother Steve, who volunteers at OSH.
After a relaxing walk back to the tent we cleaned up and went to sleep - no preparation for travel the next day.
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