Airventure 2025 | Day 3

July 18 | Friday has been a busy day catching up on my reports, pricing things for sale and visiting with Tim Bloodgood and Sindy Mikelsen.

Tim and Sindy arrived just before 1, got lunch, sat for a short, enjoyable visit, and then headed off to get into Oshkosh before the forecast thunderstorms blow in tomorrow morning. They got away before I had a chance to take a picture of their smiling faces. I’ll catch them at Oshkosh.

Tim and Sindy moved to Seattle a couple years ago, but come down to visit their granddaughters Iris and Ivy and family in Hopland. On one of Sindy’s trips down, she brought her paella pan and prepared dinner for our monthly meeting. They flew out in Tim’s light sport, crossing the Rockies and making it to Brodhead in three days. 

They overnighted in Billings, Montana and then stopped in Chamberlin, South Dakota when it got too windy to fly comfortably. They left either Billings or Chamberlin just in front of a fast-moving thunderstorm that chased them for miles before finally giving up.

Their granddaughter, Iris, is one of Chapter 1268’s Air Academy participants this year. She will be arriving Tuesday and will be able to spend a few days exploring with Tim and Sindy before her Air Academy session starts.

Tim and Sindy are sponsoring Iris’s childhood friend Dane on his trip to Oshkosh, so the four of them should have a great time looking at airplanes and attending forums.

I’ve spent much of the day catching up on my homework here. As wonderful as it is being here, I do miss home, my pups Tillie and Odie, and wife Catherine. I had planned on bringing my great-granddaughter Norah out this year, but she doesn’t turn 10 until October, so we thought she should get a little older before we bounced across Wyoming.

I mentioned to Catherine that maybe we could rent an RV and drive out with Norah and the pups. As heretical as that sounds, I would still be at Brodhead and Oshkosh with my loved ones.

Friday evening was whitefish boil, put on by EAA Chapter 431. I tell people that this is the reason I come to Brodhead for the Pietenpol reunion, but that’s only because I’ve never seen a whitefish boil back home in California. I love seafood, but this an entirely different kind of fish dinner.

The evening was again a chance to see some of the people I’ve seen before, and meet some new people and learn their stories. Frank Russo is here with his son and grandson. Frank flew corporate and was at Skypark from 2002 to 2020, when he moved back to Delaware with his wife after retiring to be near his family. Frank was an active member of EAA Chapter 1268 at Sonoma Skypark and was greatly missed when he left. It was delightful to see hiss smiling face, catch up on each other’s lives and reminisce about good times at Skypark.

Last night I sat at the campfire after taking a nice hot shower, and listened to people talk about flying, building their own airplanes, and their lives and families back home.  The young man from Abilene, Texas sitting on my left told me that he had come up to Brodhead with his cousin from Imperial County, who flew out in his RV-8 to pick him up for the trip to Brodhead and Oshkosh. Listening to his soft Texas accent made me thing about the universality of the experience of coming to Brodhead from every corner of the country to share this common interest in building and flying an airplane of your own.

It was a lovely evening, and I went bed tired, satisfied and slept well until morning.