Well, it’s been 8 months since Gene was banned from being on the CSS LZ , in part due to claims of his dogs roaming freely and crapping on the LZ and bothering pilots and spectators. Neither Max nor Sonny are anywhere near AJX now, yet large dogs are walking unleashed, and yesterday I barely missed some dogsh*t while packing my wing. Can we either enforce the rules for everyone, or drop the stupidly pointless and hypocritical ban ?

If you see a particular dog defecating in the LZ and the pet’s owner doesn’t pick up after their dog, please e-mail one or more of the board members to let them know what you saw and when you saw it. We will then take the time to speak to that person about the issue and urge them not to let it happen again.

If the owner is found to ignore our warnings, they will also be asked not to bring their dog back. If they bring the same dog back after multiple warnings, they will also be banned from entering the LZ. Thus far we have not received any official, multiple complaints about anyone specifically, other than Gene. In Gene’s case, it wasn’t just about the dogs, it was also about the horses roaming free, posing a risk to pilots landing, and multiple nice and friendly warnings gone completely disregarded.

Also keep in mind that we have stray dogs (dropped off in the hills by irresponsible owners) and coyotes coming around, hunting gophers. They defecate on the grass as well, so if you didn’t actually see a dog defecting, there is a small possibility that it may not have been a pet at all.

In Gene’s case, multiple people on multiple occasions contacted the board privately to complain about specifically his dogs urinating on their gliders and equipment. In one case, one of his dogs urinated on the reclining chair while I was sitting in it. If I hadn’t said anything to Gene, he would have never noticed and never taken the time to clean the chair. If the dog had been supervised, or on a leash, that could have been avoided. This happened just before the ban, and perhaps during the “warning” period.

I don’t know about now, but in the past Max never even had a collar where a leash could be attached. He had to be dragged away by the skin on his neck, so that he could be returned to Gene. He’s a huge dog and if he doesn’t want to cooperate, there’s not much you can do about it without a collar and leash.

When Gene was asked to control his dog, his rebuttal was that the dog couldn’t read the rules. This is true, but you are the owner of that dog and therefore responsible to either train, or restrain him from doing what he shouldn’t be doing. A collar and leash are basic tools to accomplish exactly that.

Bille, please read my reply one more time. Hopefully you’ll see the answer you’re looking for.

Yes, Bob was kind enough to help us out. Gracie needs repair and we had to wait for the heavy rains to stop before renting a tractor. Grading the road before that would have washed away any progress.

In the meantime, pilots were using the neighbor’s fixed back road to get into AJX. Unfortunately one or two drivers didn’t respect the speed limit, which can cause damage to the fixed road, and this rightfully upset Bob.

The last thing we want to do is upset our neighbors, so Owen and Luke (? I believe) approached Bob about helping us fix our road in exchange for whatever compensation seemed fair. Bob turned down any payment from us and fixed the road on Friday last week.

We are extremely grateful to Bob for helping us out! I was told he’s a fan of Coors Light, if any of you would like to thank him personally. 😉

I’m glad this was resolved. Hopefully their road won’t be as busy and our pilots can get to AJX using the road they’re used to. We get more time to fix Gracie, or raise funds to buy a new tractor so that we can continue to keep our own roads graded.

I too am super excited about Kathy running for Events this year. She’s helped out with SO many past events and has always done a great job. She takes it very seriously. Now we just need Nacho and Noel to come help BBQ at the next fly-in. 😜

Everyone is welcome to vote for whoever they think will do the best job. Being on the board is a thankless one, and worse. Anyone willing to take it upon themselves to run and stay on deserves a lot of credit, and I’m not talking about myself, because I feel like I do the least amount of work.

Luke has been doing an AMAZING job with very limited resources, so please have a little bit of respect. He drives out from San Diego to get to San Bernardino early in the morning, even when it’s not flyable, because he’s busy taking care of the grass, the shade structure, the tractor and the roads. He treats it as if it was his part time, almost full-time job, but without the pay. Where’s the thank you? Instead he gets to listen to criticism from some people who haven’t lifted a finger to make the place better.

Every decision we (the board) make TOGETHER is a result of thoroughly discussing the problem, weighing all of the options available, the club budget and the volunteer labor required to get the job done. We ask for volunteers and we can’t get people to show up for us. It’s always the same 5-10 people who take turns coming out and helping with projects. We have 300 members! Many of you should be very happy and grateful that someone stepped up and is taking over where Tim left off. It’s one of the hardest volunteer jobs in the club.

Bille, if you know of a natural way to get rid of gophers, please let us know. We don’t want to use poisons and we do not want to have to pay for professionals to come out and get it done. Unfortunately we just don’t have the manpower to keep up with the problem.

We’ve been talking about it for years and while people want to -sound- helpful, they’re just busy throwing out random ideas without showing up to help implement them. What’s your ex-wife’s number? We’ll get in touch and maybe she can fill us in on a better solution. Or maybe you can find out for us, show up and help us put it into action.