Grant’s “Oshkosh Experience” Checklist

I’m over here at Oshkosh, Wisconsin for the EAA Airventure 2011 event (aka Oshkosh aka “Aviation Mecca” :) and am trying to soak it all in, which I acknowledge is an impossible thing. Given the amount of experiences I’d already had within less than 24 hours of arriving, I figured I’d start this list to cover what I want to experience & what I already have experienced. This is just a fast core-dump in the morning and certainly doesn’t represent all I want to do yet so feel free to add comments with recommendations of items you think should be on the list :)

Experience Oshkosh Checklist:

• ✔ Trying to arrange your schedule (before I arrived :))
• ✔ Meeting amazing new people with a common love of flying (At Rockford before I arrived :))
• ✔ Flying into Oshkosh (0 hours)
• ✔ Mass arrival to Oshkosh (0 hours)
• ✔ Heat beyond belief (<4 hours)
• ✔ Life sucking humidity (<4 hours)
• ✔ Salivating over an aircraft (<4 hours)
• ✔ Seeing an aircraft you’d dreamed of seeing (<4 hours)
• ✔ Doing a shopping run to Target ‘cos you forgot yet another thing (6 hours)
• ✔ Eaten alive by insects despite insect repellent (8 hours)
• ✔ Camping on the North 40 (8 hours)
• ✔ Late night thunderstorm with heavy rain & lashing winds (14 hours)
• ✔ Early morning warbird wake up call (18 hours)
• ✔ The hunt for good wifi (19 hours)
• ✔ Angsting over two important events that happen at the same time (21 hours)
• ✔ Chatting with complete strangers yet having a blast & feeling connected (22 hours)
• Wishing you had a TARDIS (or a cloning machine)
• Meeting in person all your online podcasting & social media friends (thanks to Rob Cigliano :)
• Camping in Camp Scholler
• 3G coverage dropouts
• Realising you just can’t do it all! :(
• Making new firm friends from people you never knew existed before Oshkosh
• Seeing more aircraft than you knew existed
• Touching an aircraft you’d only dreamed of seeing
• Seeing an aircraft you’d never known existed
• Overloading on aircraft such that you only react to really unique ones
• Flying out of Oshkosh
• Flying the FISK arrival