Big THANK YOU to everyone who showed up to help with this project! Luke’s update is that the project is very close to completion now, just before the weather turned.

Luke, Daniel, Albert, Owen & Jeff spent Saturday and Sunday sanding and painting the outer beams to protect them from bad winter weather. We still need to get paint on the south side, but that should not take too long. We still have supplies left for that and we’ll be using a 24 foot extension ladder to get the remaining work done.

Jerome, thank you so much for leading the way! I wasn’t sure if I’d join you guys, but after I got that one big thermal in front of Crestline and saw you heading towards Marshall, I decided I’d try to follow along as far as I could. Turns out I was able to stick uncomfortably close to you almost the whole way! 😂

No worries Billie. I know you haven’t been here for that. Not many people are aware of everything that happens around the LZ behind the scenes. I don’t know what the previous board allowed or condoned, but I bet a lot of it wasn’t discussed, voted on and approved like we thought.

Luke and Tim would be the best source of contact for that. Luke is our site coordinator and Tim frequently uses it to fix the roads. Kelly has offered his help as well, but regardless of whether that works out, it would be great to have more people with expertise in heavy equipment for times like these. Please get in touch with Luke by e-mailing: sitecoordinator@crestlinesoaring.org

I’m told that Jeff Bether (our treasurer) kindly picked up the new radiator and now we also need replacement fluids such as anti-freeze, hydraulic fluid and distilled water. Luke said he would pick some up on his way to the LZ.

Big thank you to anyone/everyone willing to help us out with Gracie! 🙏😎

I think there’s a bit of confusion here. Gene, Dan and Tim are the only people in the club using Gracie for projects and road maintenance (as far as I know). Whenever Gracie needs repairs and replacement parts, one of them lets the CSS board know what’s going on and the board cuts a check for repairs.

Lately (as in the last couple of years) Gracie has been used for what I would dub personal projects, even though we’ve been told they are for the benefit of the club. Examples include spreading out tons of dirt we didn’t ask for. In fact, we’ve been begging for it to stop. Despite the questionable/unauthorized use of Gracie, the club still pays for the repairs when we are told they are needed.

When I saw this post, that was the first I heard of Gracie being broken down and abandoned on a road somewhere. We are now trying to get someone who has experience fixing and driving heavy equipment to look at it and move it to safety. Can’t act on fixing a problem if we don’t know there is a problem. This seems to be a case of broken communication.

It’s because I haven’t been able to fly all of September. I’m ruining it for everyone else. 😜 Day 23 of no flying, 7 more to go. 😑

Bille, the developers and neighbors have been very accommodating to us so far. That’s exactly why we need to be careful, so that we don’t attract negative attention from any of them. I think it’s fair to say that we all want what’s best for the club in our own way, however, there are proper ways to go about it.

As a board member and even just as a paying club member, I don’t like to show up at the LZ and not know why there are huge piles of dirt at the base of the PG hill & parking lot area, or pipes running through the parking lot. I’m not even sure who to ask! I have an idea, but I don’t want to cast accusations without solid proof.

As the current vice president, don’t you think I should be one of the first to know why they’re there, who called the trucking company to dump them there and who these trucking companies are? The board as a whole should have this information, so that we can call it off as soon as we think it no longer serves the club in a positive way. No individual member or officer should be able to make these decisions on their own, as they please.

When we ask the people we suspect are responsible for it, we don’t get clear answers. We have asked politely multiple times, but it seems to be getting us nowhere. When we ask these individuals to immediately call off the dumping and it still doesn’t stop, what recourse do we have?

It’s easy to say; “But these people have contributed so much work over the years to make the club better! Let them do whatever they want, whenever they want!” I get it. I too appreciate and respect those people immensely, I’ve benefited from their hard work, I don’t want to damage relationships over these things, but there’s a reason we elect a board of officers every year. They’re supposed to be in charge of scheduling projects, improvements, maintenance, events, insurance, etc. We can still get these nice things done for the club through proper procedure.

The board is supposed to make sure that the lease is safe, that we’re covered as a club, that we play nice with our neighbors and that we’re not endangering the site. Sometimes that means the board has to put a stop to certain activities until those activities have been discussed, planned and approved. In this case the training hills are not on AJX or XC ranch land, but they are in extreme proximity to us and we need to be delicate about how we interact with that land.

I’m begging you, whoever it is that keeps calling these trucks to dump dirt at, or near AJX, please put a stop to it now, before it really gets out of hand. The improvements are just not worth the possible consequences. The training hills are fine as they are, let’s leave it there. Going forward, please discuss all future plans for LZ improvement with the board first. Let’s work on this together.