2011 Fly-Ins

September 11, 2011.  Well, it was bound to happen sometime. While it was expected, it surely wasn't expected in September. I'm talking about weather!

As we all met at the general aviation building Saturday morning, the skies looked tempting but the forecast looked somewhat threatening with thunder storms and hail in the surrounding areas and moving north in the direction we wanted to go.

What to do? We discussed the options and took a vote (never take a vote :>). Because we had all of the food for the BBQ, we decided to divert to a local airport with less chance of being stranded. Surprisingly this turned out to be one of our better attended fly-ins. As we sett up at the east end of KTOA's Tee's in the grassy area, folks drove by and pitched in bringing chairs, sodas and something we seldom see at a lunch flyin, BEER! I understand that one of the pilots went out to fly the pattern just to make this an official fly-in.

Because there were 4 BBQ's, Mitch, Larry and Wayne shared the chores at the stove while many others pitched in setting up the serving tables and preparing the other dishes. At the end everyone pitched in to help clean up and some of us headed home to watch college football. As I tried to watch the USC game, Ii found it somewhat irritating that every 10 minutes they had an emergency announcement about thunderstorms, hail, and flash flooding throughout the Los Angeles basin, as well as a stationary thunderstorm over San Luis Obispo. Seems we made the right choice.

...Wayne

Editor's Note: A big thank you goes to Wayne for flawlessly executing his Plan B, "The First Annual Del Amo Flyers' Walk-In".

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