080103

August 1, 2003

Note: This entry was composed on August 4th, not August 1st.
selected pictures from Aug. 1st at the end of the entry

pan of the airshow

We left for the airshow at 8am. After we got our wristbands and all, we had the entire day to take in all the awesome stuff there at the 2003 EAA AirVenture. I walked around the Airshow with Pratap all day. We walked through all the 'Warbird' planes. All the aircraft there at the show were privately owned... so all these old military craft were just being displayed by their owners.

Also, instead of driving to the show, you can fly in on your privately owned plane. They have an entire runway dedicated to people coming to and from the show... and all in the fields around the runway there are TONS of airplanes... it was impressive to stand at the one end of the field there and look back at all the planes and see the planes landing and taking off one after the other... just about non-stop all day long. While walking through this field, we were asked to help two of theses guys push their plane out to a point where they could start it up and taxi out to the runway. :)

Apparently some of the people on the design team got to get their picture taken with Chuck Yeager... that would've been pretty cool. Anyway, after lunch, we walked around the 'fly market'... they had tent after tent of people selling aviation artwork, t-shirts, souveniers, hardware supplies, old airplane parts, etc. Also, we looked around the main exhibition areas where companies and other organizations had tents set up to display products and such.

Around 3pm, we walked over to the large runway area to watch the airshow... apparently every afternoon beginning around 2:30pm, they have this airshow (mainly acrobatic flying demonstrations). So we sat around watching that for the rest of the day until we had to go back and meet up with the group. The air show was probably my favorite part... I've never seen anything like this live so it was really exciting... all the demonstrators were VERY talented.

After meeting back up at the vans, we drove back to the dorms and had a chance to clean up and get ready to go out to dinner. Today we we drove over to a place called Appleton. Ryan and Dustin were on the design team when they were freshmen as well and had gone to this steak place back then and requested that we go back again this trip. It was called "Prime Quarter". Basically the only things on the menu are different cuts of steak. All are the same price and you just go pick out a steak out of their fridge. Then there are several grills set up around the restaurant and so you go and cook your own steak.

After getting back at the dorms, we just all hung out again.