| Thomasville Fly-in
2005 Finally after 3 years of rain and low ceilings it was a perfect weekend for a flight to the Thomasville, Ga fly-in. Since one of our planes is down and the other sold we bummed a ride with Bill and Elaine Metz in their Bonanza. Lorene and I and the Metz's loaded up Fri. morning and departed Love's about 11:00 for the flight, however we decided we couldn't go without food for the hour and ten minute flight so we set course for Ocala and one of Sam's fine hamburgers. We expected Judie Betz to join us for lunch, but she was running late so she skipped Ocala. Now full of Sam's food we departed Ocala about 12:45 and set course straight for Thomasville with Bill's Garmin 430 pointing the way. Climbed to 6500 and the ride was perfectly smooth and not a cloud in sight anywhere. When we were about 50 miles out we heard Judy about to enter the pattern so she beat us there in her RV-4. We entered the pattern shortly thereafter following the most highly polished Ercoupe I have ever seen. Bill managed to follow him in with no problem and after we landed we were directed to the spam can parking. There was already a large number of aircraft on the field and for the rest of the day airplanes kept streaming in. Judie had seen us land and she made her way to our parking spot. We all then went over to the fly-in booth and signed in and got our Thomasville badge, after which we walked the line looking at the various airplanes that had arrived. About 4:00 pm we decided it was cocktail time so took the shuttle to the motel. The Quality Inn is a really good one - gave a free drink, plus has a small restaurant. However, we had the fixin's with us and had cocktails in our room before going back to the field for dinner. Had grilled chicken, beans, rice, dessert and drinks for $10.00 each. While this is a lot higher than our fly-ins, that is their way of paying for the fly-in. No cover charge - just food. They furnish transportation and trips to town. Saturday we started with a super breakfast at the Quality Inn. Their room rate was very good and it included breakfast, a free drink, and cookies in the evening. Took the shuttle to the field and had a great day watching the planes come in. At the end it was announced they had about 300 planes. We had their hamburgers and hot dogs for lunch - looked at more planes and visited those we knew. We had a total of 21 from our area: Bill & Elaine Metz; Lorene and Ollie Washburn' Judie Betz; Brian, Susan, Hunter and Carson Freitag; Dick and Dian McLean; Curtis, Tracy and Piper McClung, plus Tracy's parents; Jack Barker; Jim Bassett; Leonard Elmendorf; Mike and Norma Cannon; and Ken and Kim Risley. I would say that was a pretty good representation from our area. There were also a lot of RV's but didn't get a count. After a very full day we headed back to the motel for our private cocktail hour and plans for dinner in that cute little restaurant. Surprise! For some reason they didn't serve that Saturday night. So - we walked across the street to a fish place and had a good meal there. Sunday morning we had our full continental breakfast at the motel then took the shuttle back to the airport. In this case, though, we had our private driver. Bill Metz had offered to lend a hand on transportation so he had wound up with their van overnight. He continued to shuttle people Sunday until about 11:00 am. At that point we headed for home. Stopped at Ocala for lunch. Judie Betz had too many things to do and decided to skip lunch and came on home. However, as we were taxiing out to come home, here comes Judie and Dick Krause in for lunch. She had hopped out of the RV and into Kessler's plane with Dick (to exercise their plane) and came back to Ocala. Pretty busy lady! So all and all it was a great weekend at one of the best fly-ins in the Southeast..Now if we can just have weather like that for our Nov. 5th fly-in at Love's I'll really be happy. Ollie and Lorene Washburn
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