We like to fly into Oshkosh in our RV-10 that we actually built, which becomes interesting when you are also a vendor and traveling with kids. But, that is part of the fun.
We were there at sloshkosh when our tent was flattened 3 times and all of our belongings were soaked. The roll clouds during that experience were scary as hell. And there was a tornado that touched down that year at Appleton. So, we know that we are rolling the dice every time we go to Oshkosh and camp for the week, especially when we can't leave.
Everything looked great for the forecast early in the week, but that all changed on Tuesday when we started getting ominous forecasts about hail and 50 knot winds. The mobile folks started to fly out and the smart folks got Syran wrap and cardboard to cover their planes. The other category of folks, us, started hoping. Our RV-10 is indoors 99.99% of the time, so this was not good as hail damage would be catastrophic. John Stahr may have been the only beneficiary of this event.
The next day, the warnings became more frequent and more terrible. Then, the busses came to cart us off to the museum, which you know is tornado proof. So there we were enjoying the grape juice we brought and waiting along with 5000 of our closest friends. Weather was a popular subject for discussion and you could hear adjacent groups giving their opinion on how bad it would be or whether the forecast was believable.
We let the fears over the paint damage subside as I began imaging a new plane with all of the options I would have added during my first build. It was probably just the grape juice, but I became increasingly giddy when the loudspeaker came alive and the warning came down: MOVE TO THE BASEMENT FLOOR FOR YOUR SAFETY, A TORNADO HAS TOUCHED DOWN! Great, I thought, at least it will totally wipe the plane out and there will be nothing to repair.
We all hunkered down, and started to get texts from survivalists that stayed with the tents. They were shared among the crowd and the frustration became immediately audible as gasps were let out. Are they smiling? Why are they laughing? The images portrayed a lot of rain and light, but virtually no wind and certainly no hail. We had been had!
Realizing the fraud that was perpetrated on the massive group of agitated campers, the puppeteers and their lawyers quickly made a smart decision - get the busses running and evacuate before folks can think! And, literally within minutes of the so-called tornado, we were pushed onto busses and escorted back to the wet grass to assess our fully in tact campsites.
While the dreams of the new plane quickly were grounded to reality of a pretty awesome existing plane, the real sufferage was on the poor souls who had to wake up to their planes plastic wrapped with garbage.
