Special Supplement

The Annual Fox Valley Flying Club Trip To Jim Wolak’s Summer House

By Vance Lorenzana

On Friday August 21st 1998, nine members of the Fox Valley Flying Club decided to make their annual pilgrimage to Jim Wolak’s palatial estate on the shores of Diamond Lake at White Cloud, Michigan.  Level-headed Vance Lorenzana along with his son Tim, Jim, Chuck, Rich, Mick and Rich’s brother-in-law Dan, Kevin, and Donnie all decided to fly the distance of some 240 miles for a weekend of fun and frivolity.

The weekend started off smoothly enough on Friday morning as we breakfasted at the Clow airport restaurant before lifting off into hazy skies with a helping tailwind.  Little did the innocents around me realize that these hazy skies were a mere foretaste of the perils that beckoned us as we touched down at Valparaiso Indiana, our first gas stop.

Jim, Kevin, Rich and I had sampled the delights of the second leg of the flight last year when we flew up to Jim’s on our aborted “Around Lake Michigan” attempt.  However, Mick, Chuck and Donnie were unprepared for the rigors of the Fox Valley Flying Club IFR Practical Test Course that lay before us.  The area at the southeast corner of Lake Michigan around the Indiana – Michigan state line seems to form a perpetual stationary cloud bank that never burns off before 3 in the afternoon.  Obviously this triviality did not deter us as we lifted off from Valparaiso at ten that morning.  The ceilings were never more than 1000 feet AGL and visibility was down to a mile as we continued on our way, groping and probing like two teenagers in the back seat of dad’s car.  Suddenly, Jim, our human advance weather drone (because he cruises 20mph faster than the rest of us) came on the radio to report that he couldn’t see ahead anymore and that he was turning back to land at airport 42C, Watervilet, Michigan.  I calmly punched the new destination into my database equipped GPS as Mick flew obliviously on into the worsening haze (he and Dan were talking to each other and weren’t listening to the radio).  Kevin and Donnie were on their radios, squealing like two pigs at a slaughterhouse, saying they couldn’t enter a destination known only as 42C on their marine GPS’s.  I calmly contacted Mick on the radio to inform him to turn around and directed Kevin and Donnie to follow me to the airport as I led the wayward group to our new destination, some five miles to our left.

At Watervilet, visibility was so bad that Jim passed Chuck on downwind in the pattern going the opposite way and disappeared off into the mist.  After the rest of us had landed we were able to raise Jim on the radio and directed him to the airport by the sound of his engine and by describing the location of the airport relative to a water tower nearby. We were delighted as Jim entertained us by making several low passes down the runway until we realized that he was trying to land.  The airport runway is very short and is cut out of a forest of tall trees. Jim had to make three or four passes before he could get his plane low enough and slow enough to stop on the short runway.  Luckily we were able to gas up with $1.00 a gallon gas from the kindly caretaker.  We were all in good spirits as we attempted to have another go of it but Dan (Rich’s brother-in-law and Mick’s passenger for the trip) did mention that he was starting to feel a little queasy.  It was over 90 degrees on the ground and with the extremely humid conditions takeoff was a very dicey affair.  I don’t think any of us cleared the trees at the end of the runway by more than 50 feet.

We didn’t get more than another 15 miles when again the worsening visibility forced us to land at South Haven, Michigan.  It was 1.00 PM by this time so we borrowed the courtesy car and drove into town for lunch.  We had a huge meal at a place called Clementines.  Tim and Donnie got full slabs of barbecued ribs that hung off both sides of their plates and I got a steak stuffed with crab, yum!  Everyone was stuffed to the gills as we headed back to the airport about 3.00 PM.

When we got back to the airport at South Haven after our delightful meal, the sun overhead shone brightly.  However, after we lifted off we had not gone two miles when visibility was back down to minimums.  We flew at about 500 ft altitude above miles of unbroken stretches of woods and debated the merits of a forced landing in trees or splashing down in one of the innumerable green slime covered bogs that served as the only breaks in the carpet of green below us.  Jim and Mick felt the bogs offered a chance at a soft landing but I stated that I would rather try to stick it in a tree because if you sank in one of those bogs, they would never find you.  Seasoned airmen such as ourselves can laugh about such possibilities but I think the conversation had an effect on Dan’s weak but now full belly.  As we got closer to Riverside airport, the simmering caldron that had been Dan’s stomach spoke with a vengeance.  This afforded Mick an excellent opportunity to demonstrate his partial panel IFR technique as Dan had blown chunks all over the instrument panel and the interior of Mick’s plane.  Judging from the rear, I would say that Mick’s approach at Riverside that day could best be described as “gooey”.

The stop at Riverside was relatively uneventful other than the fact that the rest of us had to wait a half an hour for Kevin and Donnie to show up because they were touring downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan by air.  As they passed by skyscrapers higher than they were, Kevin rightfully surmised that “I must have gotten the coordinates for the airport wrong” and they quickly cleared the area.  Of course after landing at the right location Donnie discovered that he had a flat tire but I have come to realize that such occurrences are commonplace with a group of pilots of this caliber.

One can of tire foam and an hour and 15 minute flight later we finally arrived at White Cloud airport at about 6:00 PM!  After we had finished tying down our planes, we all gathered around for a group picture.  Kevin took the camera and began stepping backward while looking through the viewfinder in order to get everybody in the picture.  He promptly stepped into the largest dog turd I have ever seen in my life!  The thing had to be at least a foot long and weigh 5 pounds; it completely engulfed his foot!  All the others laughed as he hopped around on one foot and screamed bloody murder.  However, his predicament did not surprise me because…such occurrences are commonplace with a group of pilots of this caliber.



All day Saturday we Jet skied, swam, and went tubing behind Jim’s 200 horsepower speedboat.  The skies were sunny and the water warm.


Donnie took Jim’s dirt bike and set out to explore some of the hundreds of miles of trails that wind through the national forest all around White Cloud.  After Donnie had ridden about an hour into the forest and had not seen another human since he had left, the radiator hose on the dirt bike blew!  As Donnie pushed the bike down miles of unmarked trails and despaired of ever seeing civilization again the rest of us lounged on Jim’s boat and remarked how wouldn’t it be funny if Donnie got lost?  After two hours of riding the bike till it got hot and then pushing it till it cooled, Donnie finally made it back.  We were of course concerned for his safety but that hadn’t stopped us from drawing straws for his new headset!

Early that afternoon Rich discovered Jim’s 200-power refractor telescope and promptly set it up out on the deck in the hopes of learning more about “heavenly bodies”.  An hour or two later Mick was standing guard at the telescope when he hit paydirt.  A young lady sunbathing on a motorboat a half a mile out in the middle of the lake decided to remove her top.  Little did she know that Mick had already counted the number of freckles on her back three times!  After Mick let out a yelp of glee you never saw eight grown men kick, claw and scratch to get in line so fast!  Luckily since I was sitting the closest to the telescope no one could get past me and I did not have to resort to such childish behavior!

That evening Rich took Jim’s brand new speedboat out on the lake and promptly proceeded to run it aground in the shallows on the far side of the lake.  Jim told me that when he got there the water around the boat couldn’t have been higher than his ankles!

As Jim’s supply of motorized vehicles dwindled that evening we decided that it was time to call it a day and retired to the hot tub to relax.

The next day it was time to head home but the weather conditions did not look favorable.  Conditions were strictly IFR and there was an Airmet out for turbulence.  We decided to wait awhile at Jim’s and did more swimming and jet skiing.  By one o’clock most of the others were chomping at the bit to get going even though I wisely counseled them that it might be better to just fly home on Monday.  After my pleas went unheeded, we all piled into the van and arrived at the airport to find the windsock sticking straight out.  As the others prepared to take off, Jim and I decided that maybe we should just spend another night at Jim’s cottage.  We watched them disappear off into the haze and retired back to his lakeside mansion to spend the rest of the afternoon Jet skiing and later, Jim cooked up a sumptuous spaghetti dinner.


That evening we got a phone call from Kevin.  It was one of the strangest conversations I’ve ever had.  It went something like this:

Vance:  Hello?

Kevin:  Vance, its Kevin

Vance:  Kevin How did it go?

Kevin:  Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale,

Vance:  A tale?

Kevin:  A tale of a fateful trip!

Vance:  Yes…

Kevin:  That started from White Cloud airport

Vance:  Hey, I was there

Kevin:  Aboard five tiny ships!

Vance:  You mean planes don’t you?

Kevin:  Now, Mick is a mighty flyin’ man

Vance:  To be sure

Kevin:  And Chuck felt the time was right.

Kevin:  Five airmen set out that day, on a three-hour flight.  A three-hour flight!

Vance:  Closer to four, if you ask me.

Kevin:  Hey, work with me on this, will you?

Vance:  Alright, go ahead.

Kevin:  The weather started getting rough!

Vance:  I knew it!

Kevin:  The tiny ships were tossed!

Kevin:  If not for the courage of the fearless crews,

Vance:  Fearless?

Kevin:  The flyers would be lost.  The flyers would be lost!

Vance:  So how far did you get?

Kevin:  The ships set ground on the shore of the lake, at Holland airport…

Vance:  That’s only sixty miles away!

Kevin:  With Kevin,

Vance:  Obviously

Kevin:  And Mick’s here too.

Kevin:  Chuck Teee - ter…

Vance:  But not his wife.

Kevin:  The boating star…

Vance:  You mean Rich?

Kevin:  And the rest…

Vance:  I’m not sure Donnie wants to be referred to as “the rest”

Kevin:  Are – here – at – Holland – Airport!


Apparently, Chuck, Mick, Kevin, Rich and Donnie had encountered the worst turbulence they had ever experienced in their life.  Rich later told me that his plane would drop 300 feet at a time like someone had just pulled the rug out from under him and then it would shoot up 1000 feet.  Other times it would turn completely sideways and he would have the stick full over but the plane would not respond, he was completely out of control!  Kevin said he saw Chucks wings turn at an 80-degree angle to the ground and Chuck confirmed that it happened more than once.  Mick told me that he was two miles from Holland and had the runway in sight and still was contemplating putting the plane down in a clearing because he didn’t think he was going to make the airport!

The next morning Jim and I awoke to clear skies and a tailwind!  We motored along through calm air and were able to talk to the other guys who were about 80 miles ahead of us.  At one point the visibility did get down to about two miles for a short stretch but we didn’t encounter any turbulence at all.  When we got to Valparaiso, we found Chuck stuck on the ground with a broken drive belt.  Unfortunately, there wasn’t much we could do for him and he had already called his wife to come with repair parts so we lifted off after a short gas stop.  I was the last person of the group to land and I got into Clow airport at 12:55 PM.  At 1:40 PM a major storm blew in with 70-mph winds, rain, and reported tornadoes.  By that time my plane was safely tucked away in its hanger, we had made it home by 45 minutes!