Sonoma Wings Meeting Minutes

Friday, December 13, 2002

The Christmas Party!

We had the Christmas Party at Kurt Bainum’s home in Petaluma. In spite of wind and rain lots of people made it to the party which as usual was pot luck. As always there was lots of great food, side dishes, and desserts. Among the drinks were homemade wine and ale.

Kurt’s home, an old classic, is now something akin to the Winchester House. He raised it up and put in a giant full basement. He also is in the process of converting the original huge tall attic area into several bedrooms, a turret, and a bath. As most parties with food and drinks go, most people congregated in the kitchen area, which is gigantic due to some of Kurt’s previous enlargement efforts. It’s a great party house.

This is where it gets hard because I neglected my traditional duty of noting all who came to the party. I’d like to talk about all the people and couples who were there, but without the complete list, I will just move on because I don’t want to leave anyone out.

Mid way through the evening our new president, Albert Branson, briefly convened the club meeting to make a few announcements, that the new dues have been raised after decades to $25.00, and that the parachute clinic date is being changed, and then moved on to the main agenda item of the night, the yearly awards.

The Awards Presentation

This years awards include:

1. The Go For It Competition (best 10 XC flights…)

2. The Coffee Can Competition (longest flight from a local site)

3. The Best Flight Award (best overall flight of the year)

4. The Club Service Award (recognition for service to the club)

5. The (highly coveted) Turkey Award (best screw-up(s) of the year)

Well, the man of the hour this time was Vince Endter who won, as he put it, the Triple Crown: the Go For It, the Coffee Can, AND the Turkey awards! Vince had formidable competition for all three, but was able to edge all other competitors out and make a clean sweep. He only topped Scot Huber by a small margin in the Go For It, and snagged the Coffee Can with a margin of only two or three miles over Todd Robinson and Rich Sauer. Although Barry Levine challenged him mightily for the Turkey award, Vince prevailed again with multiple major blunders this season to claim the dubious honor.

Todd Robinson won the Best Flight award with his excellent flight from St. John (on a so so day) north to Shasta Lake for ninety some odd miles where he ran out of LZ’s and had to turn back. Rich Sauer accomplished a similar flight that day as well.

Linda Sauer won the Club Service award for her many contributions to the various club activities over the last several years. She treats us like kings at launch with food and snacks and other items we always forget, and is legendary in her XC chase/retrieval support, always well organized with an unflappable “can do” competence which is unequaled anywhere.

After the awards, we partied on into the night.

Greg Sugg, Secretary