Oshkosh Without an Airplane

The first time I visited Oshkosh was in the very early 2000s—I was building my RV-8 and felt I needed to go on a shopping trip. I drove from Houston—a long way up the center of the country—and spent several days with friends from the space program who set up a large army tent with a bunch of cots and old sleeping bags as a sort of flop-house for NASA refugees from the Gulf Coast. Ever since then, I have flown an airplane into “the show”—either from Houston or from the West Coast, where I now reside. It is always exciting, never dull, and often angst-causing as you wonder if you’ll make it in… and more interestingly, when you’ll make it out.

This year, with many commitments on my plate for AirVenture, we decided to leave the airplanes at home and arrive via the big aluminum mailing tube. It’s a different way to do the show, but judging by the sheer square mileage of Camp Scholler and the fact that a hotel room costs upward of $500 per night, the folks camping with their planes are the select and chosen few. And so I sit and write from my usual haunts—the Pavilion in Homebuilt Camping, the table outside of Homebuilt Headquarters, or the bench behind the press center—with no worry about what might be happening to my airplanes, since they are all locked safely away in the hangar at home.

Gone is the need to hike out to the plane first thing in the morning to remove the cover so that visitors can gawk. Gone is the need to find time to cover it up in the evening. And gone is the worry about watching the weather forecasts or radar, sweating over whether or not “the big one” is coming that will end the aviation insurance industry as we know it. No, my only worry is if I am going to get caught in a gully-washer myself—and that’s what they make rain parkas for. I know which day I am leaving. My airline ticket says so.

So the worries are gone—but so is the warm memory of beating the challenge of weather across the plains, the air-to-air combat of the Fisk Arrival, and the knowledge that once again I have flown myself into the grandest of all aviation events.

Don’t take this to mean that everyone should leave their airplanes at home—heavens no, where would the show be without them? But once in a while, it’s OK to leave the airplanes—and the worries—at home. We can take turns.

Oh, and this isn’t retirement; it is but a pause to do something different for a change. Next year there will be another airplane to bring to the show, and quite probably the year after that, and the year after that. But it’s also good to know how the other half lives, I suppose.

And, uh… my kneeboard is in my backpack in case anyone has something for me to fly this week. Please?