On Monday, May 6, 2013 1:28:52 PM UTC-5, Mike the Strike wrote:
This might be a good time to tell my favorite land-out story - when lift died one day, I ended up at small strip of an aviation community in rural Arizona that consisted largely of retired airline pilots with hangars attached to their houses.



I rolled off the runway onto the front lawn of a house where a Cinquo de Mayo party was in progress. The retired airline captain who lived there walked over and handed me a Margarita before I was out of the cockpit! My retrieve crew and I spent several hours there exchanging aviation tales with a varied lot of pilots.



Mike

I haven't had nearly as many landouts as Tony, but several of them were a lot of fun. A couple years ago I ended up in a field about 15 miles from the gliderport. I tried to get the crew to hook the trailer to the car, but instead I got a picked up, and then had to hook up the car and drive back to the field.

In the mean time someone must have called in a plane crash, because as soon we got back to the field to de-rig the Ka-6 a local county cop shows up.

The usual questions happen, and he gets a ton friendlier after I explain that I didn't crash and no paperwork is required. So now cop #1 is a bit happier, but has to go, so cop #2 shows up to get my info etc. This guy is a bit more curious about these bucket hat wearing weirdos. As cop #1 left he mumbles something about a "special weather statement". We didn't give it a second thought until we notice the sky turning angry.

So now we're taking shelter in my trailer (think giant aluminum box) during a thunderstorm with pea size hail. So we make the best of the situation, and cop #2 is surprisingly cool about the situation.

The rain finally stops, and we continue to put the plane away, when the cop asks me a couple more questions. Right at this point i notice a bunch of water pooling on the turtledeck, and I want to make sure I get the Ka-6 as dry as possible so I brush it off the turtledeck. Right onto the pants of cop #2 :-).

Thankfully he gad a good sense of humor, and mentioned something along the lines of this will make a good story at the bar tonight.

To this day I still get crap from my retrieve crew for that one.

Pete