Mazo Manor - S1E05 - Not an Airport

There were only a few cars around when we got there at 9am, the day before Labor Day. Little did I know, cars would be parked along the road by noon and a lot of exciting people would be there:

• The Elders, of course, who delivered pictures from the party.
• All other groups were represented, including the Diligents.
• The "high up political official" was there.
• The DNR.
• The couple with the neat electric boat.
• One guy brought a big flag and flew it high to celebrate the holiday.
  
• The guy that flies the helicopter landed it on the island.
• Another guy flew in with a plane...

The plane was this style of ultralight, and the pilot was apparently a newbie. He circled around the area for a while, and made at least 10 attempted landings along various beaches. It was apparent that he has never seen a runaway truck lane, which uses sand to stop trucks whose brakes have failed. In other words, there is huge drag when tires meet sand, especially when they are small. He ended up crashing the plane at the beach on the opposite side of the river. He went into town to buy some parts, and had the plane fixed by the end of the day. I don't know if he was able to take off again to return home -- I seriously doubt that he'd be able to from sand... TheDNR was investigating this, and he probably got a ticket of some sort.

The DNR warden passed through at some point. He stopped and talked to Kingpin for a bit, and made his way to the South-Ender section. Despite how busy the beach was today, it was all in good clean fun. Everyone was chatting or playing games and having a good day. The only issue I heard of was a South-Ender with a camera, and he got talked to pretty quickly. He was too far away to get any decent pictures, so he posed little threat to the main part of the beach.

I spent most of my time talking with the Diligents. While I can't dive into the details, there are a few things that I should be able to mention. First is that I'm amazed at how deep-rooted the group is in the community, and how much actually goes on behind the scenes to help the whole community out. I used to be sceptical about their lack of information regarding what they were up to, but they have recently earned a lot of my trust.

Second is that the DNR and other groups, at times, are against us. They spend a lot of time crawling through Mazo-related groups and blogs digging up any dirt they can to help their own case, which probably means taking things out of context and quoting only people that don't know what they're talking about. I've re-read my previous Mazo posts, and I think they would really have to twist my words to consider any of it "dirt". It would be hard to dig up dirt on such friendly, happy, peaceful, and helpful people such as ourselves. If only the opposition had such qualities...

The last point that I should talk about is that NAC did help Elizabeth Book. They covered the cost of mailing a lot of stuff and did several other things to help out. (I could get the details if needed, but I hate to bug them about it now...) A NAC representitive was there with Liz during one of her earlier protests. They didn't comment on Nudiarists open letter to NAC because of his request to organize mass support. They should've at least detailed what they were doing, but didn't spend the time to do so. She wasn't arrested as expected by Nudiarist and I, and NAC probably knew she wouldn't be. I take back the couple of bad things I said about NAC regarding the Liz Book issue -- they've earned my trust as well.

The Elders gave me a lot of grief for chatting with the Diligents, which may impact my social standing with them. Hopefully they realize that I can be a benefit to both groups at the same time. TheDiligents have a powerful network set up to support the beach politically, despite their occasional visits. The Elders are always there, know everyone, and do a great job in keeping the beach itself clean and family friendly. Both groups have their sets of contacts, and both groups have certainly played a large part in keeping the beach. I intend to help both groups in the work that they do, and may eventually end up being the bridge that links them both. If only these two groups would work together themselves...

On the way out, we met two women (newbies) who were just starting their way to the beach. They didn't bring bug spray, as usual. We gave them our can, which should've lasted the trip before being empty, and they were very appreciative. I'm sure they had a positive experience from that moment on, and we'll probably see them again sometime.

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