What Happened to Aero Pines?

By Bixyl Shuftan

It's been months since we've reported about Areo Pines. This place in Second Life was noted for it's nature scenery, horseback riding, and holding special events across the year, such as it's 9/11 Stairclimb Tribute events and it's Superbowl parties. But over the years, the sims were slowly trimmed back until there were just a few left. It's sad to say that when I went to check up on the place during the Thanksgiving holiday, the place was gone from the map.

When I talked to Aero's former owner, Cindy Bolero, she told me she had turned the place over to someone else in 2015, "and early this year, January I think, she closed the park and redesigned the sims. I was out with eye surgeries n' stuff for a year, and this year been working on CERTsimulator, the FEMA disaster management and practice virtual world I've been working towards for five years."

Besides real life challenges, there were other reasons for her giving up Aero Pines. The money and management was one, "(It) was much work and great expense. ... So many different languages. It was a lot of work to do translations of all our information." But another was the change in the people who were coming over, "We were getting (a) huge amount of visitors in recent years, but it wasn't the same. ... it became mostly men preying on our endless supply of day old females. There was no more community feel, just a meat market." She does still hear from a few friends from previous happier times about the park, but times have changed, "Now I host private VWs profressionaly serving good causes, instead of just playtime."

But Aero isn't completely gone, "I never really announced it closed, but I have announced that its moved." She had gotten a place on the Sinespace grid, and duplicated part of the park there, but it hasn't been worked on in a while, "I haven't had a chance to upgrade it. It's still in winter from 2016. ... there may be a 12th annual Winter Festival if I get time to improve the sinespace version. I have to go on travel this week for a FEMA program management training. So many worlds, so little time. (smile)"

I did take a short trip into Sinespace to check out Aero Pines, or Winter Festival as it's called there. Going about on that virtual world is a bit different than Second Life, but I got there and was able to get a sled ride. But hopping off I was back where I started from. Sinespace takes some getting used to.

Sadly, it looks like a great area in Second Life has now become part of it's past, with that's left of it in another virtual world and pictures on it's Flickr page: https://www.flickr.com/photos/aero_pines_park/

Bixyl Shuftan