I had a last-minute window open up to make the trip, and we saddled up and were airborne out of 73XS just before 6am. A biological stop at KHIG and on to Monroe WI KEFT to top off the main tanks and arrive at KOSH with full tanks and empty bladder, plan worked well. We got to Ripon about 1 pm and only got spun out of the conga line twice, both times for a cub that couldn't do more than about 75 knots in front of us. Landed 27 and taxied to HBC, and spent the next couple hours sweating in 90 degrees and 90 percent humidity setting up camp.
Then the rains came - that was fun. Our tent collapsed, everything got completely soaked and we had about an inch of water on the floor inside. We ended up retreating to the airplane just for a dry place to sit while the storm blew itself out. At dawn we hiked to the Target store and were there waiting for the doors to open, and bought dry clothing and pillows and headed back to the field. The sleeping bags and other clothes were spread out all over the place to dry in the sun, looked like a yard sale but it worked well. More rain on Saturday but the tent held up and we were ok, and then it started to get quite enjoyable. I'm not sure if it happened during the Friday night storm or the Saturday storm(s), but somewhere along the line my plane took a gust strong enough to bend my Anti-Splat ultimate gust lock - but it still held in position, and I took no damage to the plane. Thanks Alan for a great product!
The beer event at HBC was great, and Dan's beer event sponsored by Gallagher on Monday night was even better. Our plan was to leave Monday morning to go back home but the ground in front of my plane still had some very squishy spots so we delayed departure 24 hours and bugged out Tuesday morning.
I'll say this for the EAA/FAA traffic control situation - from the ground Sunday and Monday watching traffic come in, they did a MUCH better job utilizing available runway surface and getting traffic in. No more of this "one airplane every 2 minutes" BS that was seen last year during the furball. This years set of controllers were actually doing their job and not going on union break, that was good to see.
The best souvenir I got from this years event? A little time spent with the man himself during Mondays Gallagher beer event.