Sunday, August 24

Westward, Ho!


One of our new members brought a friend so the five of us and three new members head out to Greeley, CO. One of the interesting things about our stay in Iowa City is the airport had a web cam and many of our friends were watching us and making comments. A rather odd feeling.
In Greeley, we are joined by Peggy Fairchild, Steve Jacobson, Jim Gentry and, big surprise, Larry Jameson. Larry is a long time member of the Flagship crew who has been out of the loop for about two years battling pancreatic cancer. He has a summer home in the area. Larry is looking hale and hearty and pitches in to help like he has never been away.
Andy, the mechanic aka Jim Gentry
The format here is that the show opens Friday at 5, features a night air show and ends with a fireworks display.  Then there is a full day on  Saturday. We are to do a media flight at 3 on Friday and set out to sell  memberships to defray the cost. We sold six but only one member of the media showed up for the flight, Alexander Lewis with Air Show Productions. Alex is totally enchanted with the plane and will be promoting us at the air show convention in Las Vegas. He is with us a good bit of the time right up until the close of the show on Saturday and mounted video cameras in the plane for one flight.  Another new member, Will Zahner, has an unexplained desire to clean the plane and is with us much of the time also. Will cleans, and guards the plane and tells folks about her. This is a rather small show and so we are the main attraction and have a long line most of the time. Peggy and Sheryl alternate stewardess duties in their uniforms. Jim Gentry is a fun addition in his period mechanic's outfit. Our friend from Iowa, Bruce Duling, is with us a lot of the time along with his friend, Arlene Kramer.
Peggy and Sheryl counting the money during rainstorm
Greeley is on the plains and therefore hotter than most of our Colorado venues. However, the weekend was cloudy and drizzly most of the time which kept it cooler. Saturday afternoon a squall line moved through which shut down the show a bit early and had us taking cover in the plane. The weather cleared fairly quickly and left delightfully cool air in its wake. We had a membership ride with ten new members.  This ten day trip has been financially successful, mostly due to the tireless efforts of our leader, Zane Lemon. Zane set up the Iowa City stop and contacted the media who came out in force and promoted our visit. Zane was always out there soliciting memberships day after day and it paid off.

The crew, along with Bruce and Arlene, adjourn to Texas Roadhouse for our last dinner of this trip. We bid farewell to Jim Skelly who will leave from Denver early tomorrow and to Bruce, who has become so dear to us in the last week. We will leave Jake and Peggy here to enjoy Colorado and the remaining five of us will head for Tulsa early tomorrow.
Will Zahner polishing

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