Summer solstice today, first day of summer and the longest day of the year. Here is southwest Michigan it is starting to remind of home in southern Indiana as it has now begun to get hot and humid on a regular basis. As the summer continues it is a sign of something else nearing an end. My time as a maintenance student at SMAT here in Ionia is coming to a close in about 7 weeks. While I will be a student of aviation all my life, I am not sure what the immediate future looks like. It is my methodical personality to plan my life far in advance and not make many hasty decisions. Up till now my life has been a fairly regimented routine of school and more school. Do I stay in Michigan and try to find work in the Grand Rapids area? How about continuing as a flight instructor and maintenance intern at SMAT? Return home to Indiana and seek work there? Is the time right to join a missions organization formally or should I try to get some more experience in the work force first? We will have to wait and see what path I am to follow.

One of the biggest weekends of the summer in Ionia is the two day country music festival put on by a local radio station. Thousands of people show up at the country fair grounds for the live shows. I didn't pay much attention or intend to go, but I did hear from several people that this was "the weekend" for the city, especially with the number of tourists in town. There is one big problem, however. The fair grounds sit right along the Grand River in Ionia and it has a real problem with flooding. Heavy rain came down Thursday and Friday before the event on Saturday. A dam up river from Ionia was forced to release a substantial amount of water mid-day on Saturday due to this rain fall. The Grand River came up several feet in a few hours and flooded the entire music festival. All of the people made it out of the event; however hundreds, maybe close to a thousand, of cars had to be left behind in the flood. It has been all over the news here and is a real mess. It maybe Wednesday before the river drops enough to allow people to get their cars back! I was flying in and out of the Ionia airport on Saturday near the event and witnessed the water rising before my eyes. Today (Sunday) reveals the full extent of the damage from the air. The legal action and finger pointing has only just begun I am sure. As I understand the river did not even make it to flood stage and this would not be even close to news worthy if it had not been for all the cars and people at the music event. More soon!

JMG

Here you can see two main groups of cars that just a few hours before were not under water at all. The normal river location can be see running from east to west in this photo. Is this not the definition of a flash flood?

Highway M-66 runs north-south at the bottom of the photo. The center of the fair grounds is the oval at the center. It is surrounded on three sides by water. None of that water was there just a few hours before.