Sunday, June 26th

Sunday morning the cell phone alarm went off at 5:30, and I felt quite refreshed. At 6:00, Andrew, Steve and I all were at Linda's ready for breakfast. Mark joined us as well as Kendall and a friend of his whose name I can't remember right now. They were both students learning how to fly. I ordered biscuits and gravy, three pieces of bacon and hash browns. When the biscuits came, it was a huge plate with 2 biscuits split in half and filled to the rim with gravy. Then the bacon and hash browns came. If I had only known, I would not have ordered bacon or potatoes, but I didn't have too much of a hard time polishing it all off, but I was very full. Back at the patch about 7:30, we pulled all the planes out and before long, Andrew was up in the GT400 twin, Lee and Kyle were taking their last flight, Lee in the Grey Navy and Kyle in the Orange Shorty. This was the only time they had flown together. I snagged the Grey Navy plane when they returned and took one last ride around Diamond Island in the middle of the Ohio River.

Over the next couple of hours, Kyle and Lee left, Louis and Charlie left, Andrew left and the only people remaining at the patch were Myself, Tommy Smith & relative (a lady), Steve, Mark, Victor and Jesse and his wife Diane. I found the time to take one last flight in the GT400 and I still wasn't comfortable in it. It would probably take another 5 or 6 hours to really start enjoying it's capabilities. I did a couple of touch'N'gos and was up for about half an hour. After that I enjoyed the company of all that were left sitting and talking outside under an umbrella. Jesse noticed that a storm was blowing up to the southeast. We quickly got the planes in the hanger and all battened up. Tommy left with his relative in the two-place and then the downpour came. It rained heavily accompanied by 20MPH+ winds that really beat my tent up bad and blew some rain inside. Diane and I were stuck in one hangar, everybody else was in the other, watching the NASCAR race on TV! After 20-30 minutes, the rain quit and we joined the others in the other hangar. I had a final piece of the cake that Diane made (OK...it was two) and I decided to pack up and head home. I did an expeditious job of packing because another storm was looming. I said my final good-byes and told Mark and Steve how much I enjoyed the fly-in. I left at 4:00 on the nose, stopping in Evansville to fill up with gas and then headed home. It was about a 7+ hour ride home, but it went fast.