Rock Stars

We felt like rock stars. As we taxied away from the runway after landing at the Buffalo general aviation airport, men with orange vests and official looking flags waved us to our parking spot. He shooed families in fold-out chairs away so that we could turn the aircraft off the taxiway and onto the grass strip that became the parking ramp. Strangers came up to help us push the plane into its spot. Okay. So writing this really doesn't convey the excitement of the moment, but honestly, we felt like rock stars.

To back up a bit, Tim started working on his commercial rating while we were still in Albuquerque, and a few months ago he started up again here. He's been flying longer than he's been driving – since he was fourteen. It's part of who he is. In the months when we first got here and he wasn't flying again yet, it was like a part of him was withering away. As soon as he started again, he was a new person.

Or maybe it was just the weather.

Anyway, we rented a single engine airplane from the FBO where he's been taking his lessons. If you ask me what the letters FBO stand for, I'll have to shrug my shoulders. I'm working on my fluency in pilot-speak, but I still have a long way to go. Buffalo is only about a half hour flight from Flying Cloud airport, where our plane (and the FBO) is based, so almost immediately after we got off the ground we started hearing radio traffic out of Buffalo, and the traffic controller managing a fairly heavy load of traffic. Maybe it was that tension of merging into so much air traffic that heightened our sense of excitement and made us feel like rock stars.

Apparently the french toast at the airshow was phenomenal, and a major draw in itself. Although we were hungry, by the time we got there the line was enormous -- it would have taken over an hour to get to the front. We weren't that hungry for french toast.



So we wandered around and watched the comings and goings of all the people at the show. It was surprisingly crowded – families and couples, pilots and young men yearning to be pilots, old and young. Most of the people came by car, not plane, and we heard that they had run out of parking.



Our timing was impeccable. By the time we wandered back over to where we had our seats in front of our plane, we didn't have long to wait before the airshow started. The airshow itself wasn't huge – only two airplanes. But man, they put on impressive shows. The acrobatics were astonishing.



We're planning to head to Oshkosh this summer, which is the mega fly-in. We're planning to stay there for a few days at least, so we'll have to drive. Rental airplanes are pricey enough to begin with but they get really expensive really quickly when you're talking about overnight trips. Man, we've got to figure out how to get our own plane someday.

I was moderately interested in going to Oshkosh before our trip to Buffalo, but now I'm really excited about the trip. And the even better news is that my parents are planning to join us there. I think they'll love it too, and it'll be fun to share it with them. Without the airplane, maybe we won't feel like rock stars, but I think we'll have a great time anyway!



See the rest of the photos here.