On its face, this was a simple trip to AirVenture. The plan was to take the Centurion N7591N, glowing in her shiny new paint, to meet my friends Vance and Owen and celebrate Owen’s 15th birthday at Oshkosh. Our schedules were flexible, the camping gear had been assembled and weighed, and I had a fresh IPC check-off. I even had my passport, because after the event we planned to jump back into ’91N and deliver Vance and Owen back to their home in Calgary, Canada. It was a great plan, devised in the cold, long nights of winter. But it is said that no plan survives the first contact with real world, and there was about 3,600 miles of real-world flying ahead.
