aweeks: Do you remember the name of the town or airport in OK?

1. I got caught up on the edge of a mean thunderstorm in West Virginia several years ago and was lucky to get landed in a driving rain on a private strip who's owner I had met before. Got tied down then went to hide on the down wind side of a building watching the rain and pieces of the metal roof blow by.

After a slight let up, I ran to the farm house while by buddy stayed protected. No one home, but this olds cutless was there with the keys in it. I drove it to the rwy to pick up my friend. I ask him if he thought it was knocking. He said no, it's a diesel. So we took it to town and got some food and went back after the storm and left.

A year later I ran into that owner and told him the story and handed him $20 for the use of the car. He said that when they got back from vacation his wife had the car blow up when she took it to town. I think it was knocking beyond the diesel knock now.

2. Last year in northern Alberta, we landed at dark and the FBO, smelled of "death" big time. It was bad, like dead bodies in the basement. Greg put up his tent by the planes, I slept in the back seat of the fbo's police cruiser.

No, I can't remember exactly. Those memories are all jumbled up. I'd say Weatherford or Clinton. Maybe even Elk City, but I'm not sure we were that far west.

A friend of mine has a old suburban that he leaves at the Whitehorse airport, his father in law was flyin in on air north so we told him where the keys were. The next day he showed up in Mayo, 400km away, in a ford van! Turns out some mining company had the same key hiding place and said father in law was not so good at vehicle identification oops.
Called the mining company and told them were there van was then gave a local kid some cash to go switch them out.

Going to Oshkosh a while back, I wanted to stop for gas, so I picked a small airport at random that was near the magenta line from Scotts Bluff to Brodhead. It was called Olewein, in the very middle of the mid-west. It had a 4000 ft paved runway, but I used the 1800 ft turf strip carved right out of the cornfield. I taxied to the pumps and got out to find noooobody around. The office was locked but there was a phone number on the door for "Steve". I dialed the number (thank God for Verizon) and Steve answered. The conversation went like this:

Me: Hi. I'm at the airport and wanted to get some gas.
Steve: OK.... ahhh... I'm just about to put my boat in the water, but look in the flower bed near the door and find the rock that has the office door key underneath. When you go in the office, on your right there's a clipboard hanging on the wall. Take the clipboard off the nail and there's some forms hanging behind it. About 5 or 6 forms back, you will find the key to the pump hanging on the nail. Just write down the start and stop reading from the pump, multiply it by the price on the clipboard and leave me a check, OK?
Me: OK, but I'm not sure I can find my checkbook in all the crap I have in the back of the plane.
Steve: You going to Oshkosh?
Me: Yep.
Steve: OK, then subtract 30 cents a gallon from the price on the clipboard and just stop in and pay me on your way home.

I laughed but Steve was serious!! I filled up and tunneled into my pile of camping gear and managed to retrieve the checkbook. It was the least I could do. I left a check on the clipboard, put everything back in its place, locked the door and put the key under the rock. I took off from the lovely little grass strip with corn on both sides as high as my wings. It was a good feeling to know that GA in America was not dead.

Oh, almost forgot. This is about airport loaner cars.

I guess it's safe to say most, if not all of them have some strange bumps, grinds and noises. I wasn't surprised then, when I took a loaner into town to get dinner that it had some thumps and bangs that I could feel right up through the seat. I just ignored them. When I got back to the hangar, I got my stuff from the back seat and spotted something under the driver's seat:



It's a coconut wrapped in plastic. God only knows how long it had been rolling around down there. Did I eat it? No, I put it back under the seat and pushed some rags into place so it's hiding place would remain secret and the next pilot could enjoy the full loaner car experience too.

An auction yard in Pocatello has a great site right near the interstate, you can watch it fill up with all kinds of stuff between auctions. Yesterday I noticed it looks like a few Poky city police cars are being put on the block, and I instantly thought "courtesy cars"! They go cheap, a few hundred bucks would be my guess, and still look official enough to be great fun to drive around, messing with other motorists

They let me use this one for a couple of rainy days in Indiana. Had a neat spotlight you could use from the drivers seat kinda like those remote manipulator arms they use in nuke plants.

All the windows worked and I won every drag race for two nights running.