The first attempt at "Operation:GO!" was relatively successful! Especially when you take into consideration all the factors that were in play; a short lead time for planning, a conflicting date for other events, the weather, etc.

The weather was really the biggest factor affecting us, as it had been raining/storming off and on for the better part of the week leading up to the event. We had the mother of all storms blow through the night before that dumped many, many inches of rain on the area; flash flooding of areas that I can't recall having ever flooded before, were going underwater, quite wild. The rain pretty much cleared out in the early AM.

The storm system was still trudging east; which presented another issue for us, our glider tow plane and pilot were still in Flint, and the glider was in Marshall. Flint was IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) and Marshall was MVFR (Marginal Visual Flight Rules). So unfortunately, the glider flights had to be scrubbed.

The weather almost caused an issue for our change of command for our group commander. Two of our color guard cadets were getting an O-Flight in from KGRR (Grand Rapids) and by the time they made it into Sparta, they had all they could do to get changed from their BDU's into their blues!