this last weekend

Last weekend I went to two fly-ins. That's nothing really, because lots of times I've been to two fly-ins in one day. And so have my friends. In fact, my fly-in in August was the same day as "Smoketown, Pa" which is a really nice fly-in. I had a few guys show up at my place who had come straight from Smoketown. Next summer I will not schedule the same day as Smoketown. I want to go to Smoketown. Anyway, I went to two fly-ins last weekend. Saturday was Essex Skypark. I can't explain why I like it so much. But I sure do like it. It's a wings and wheels. It's close in suburbs to Baltimore. It's riverside waterfront suburbs. Not fancy mcmansion suburbs. The airport is right next to Martin State, a big controlled field. And not far from BWI either. The airspace around Essex is insane, when you consider that you can fly in without talking to anyone. You can bypass the SFRA, the BWI ClassB, the Aberdeen 4001's, and the Martin State Tower. Even though the place is congested as hell, we just landed and they parked us and it was easy. There were not many ropes all around to block you from areas. There were not a lot of rules and people running around trying to supervise. The place is pretty small and it was full of planes and cars and it went along quite smoothly. My buddy was there in his Stearman. When he wanted to fuel up at the pumps, I was a bit worried because the crowd was pretty thick milling around the cars on the apron. I knew he couldn't see straight ahead and I was giving him a thumbs up from my side. But it was amazing how the car buffs and families and folks just calmly stayed back like they did this every day. And the car show rules are simple. "Look but don't touch". And that's exactly the same for airplanes. I registered my airplane, and I got a free t-shirt. I bought one for my buddy. He bought one for his friend. I knew a few of the fly-ins. The 310 Songbird. The 172. The RV-8. The Sky Arrow. I ate a burger. Looked at all the cars. Ate a hot dog. Looked at all the planes. We took off and headed home. My friend the professor had flown in while we were gone. So we had a campfire and grilled some steaks and tried to get to bed early for the next fly-in tomorrow. Alas, I stayed up till 1AM. So Sunday morning we are off to Wellesville, Pa to the Aeronca fly in. We got there too late for the breakfast send off. But we got to hang out a bit and see our friends. And the three different grass strips within that 4 mile area are all spectacular and sweet. And each deserves a story of it's own. From Wellesvile, we went to Frederick and had lunch. We were escorted by our friends to another great car show. Then we got back into the air. This time in a loose formation with our friends as we followed the 172 west out to a fine strip in West Virginia. We hung out there and were shown around. We flew loose formation back to FDK and parted company at 2500 feet as we continued east. Beautiful late summer sunset as downtown Baltimore glided by our right wing. We went around the SFRA and talked to no one. I shut my eyes for a while and dropped off quickly. My buddy flew so smoothly I didn't waken until we were on downwind. I dropped my buddy at Bay Bridge. We stopped by the gourmet gas station. I had a lovely, quiet, solo, dusk, flight back to Rosewind. It was a fine weekend and there are still one or two fly-ins left in the season. There's GED, OC, Campbell, and a few fly-outs. Happy Landings.