Mary got up at 6am this morning to drive Linda to the airport, so she could fly back to PA in the Cirrus. Linda called us later in the afternoon to let us know she had a great flight home, and made it back in two legs. She got great tailwinds and made 185 kt - shame we didn't see tailwinds like that during the race!
When Mary got back, we had breakfast and went to meet with the chief scorer. We were relieved to hear that his scores aligned pretty closely with our own records, and we had no penalties. We were quite pleased with our score - tailwinds were mostly nonexistent during this race but yet we scored high on some legs and had no negative legs. As we began to hear the other teams discussing their results during the day, we started to get our hopes up - we heard scores much lower than ours, including negative scoring legs or penalties. We started to think - could it be? might we make the top ten this year?! But later in the afternoon we heard that the top 12 racers had already been called to let them know their planes would be inspected, and alas we weren't called. We were a little bit crushed, but a few glasses of wine soon put us right.
Anyway, to backtrack to earlier in the day - after meeting the scorer and doing some laundry, we headed out on a tour that we had prebooked. Also on the bus were many of our racer friends including Mary and Cyndy, Nancy and Sherry, Linda and Cubby. The tour went to the Hitchcock House, a National Historic Landmark and stop on the underground railroad; followed by a delicious lunch in Our Daily Bread, a charming restaurant in Griswold; followed by the Cass County museum; and antique shops in Walnut. We even got to see a field where Amelia Earhart landed once! The story is that when she called Atlantic to get a ride and said "hello, this is Amelia Earhart", the guy she called said "yeah, and I'm Henry Ford"! But I guess she got a ride eventually. This part of Iowa is all gently rolling hills, corn fields, wind farms and small single highway towns, but it has a quiet charm.
We heard more discussion about how the other racers have been getting along today. Turns out many people got calls from the judges asking them to come and discuss potential issues that might require penalties, which is all part of the scoring process. There was some controversy over the experimental use of the new electronic trackers that we all carried with us, so we'll see how that all works out.
Our day ended with each of the racers going for dinner with local host families. Mary and I went with about ten other racers to Dr Trewitt, the local dentist and his family and friends including daughter Laurie, and grandchildren Caroline and Drew. The family gave us a warm welcome to their home, and we had a wonderful dinner of perfectly done steaks and homemade cherry pie. We were made to feel really at home. Back at the hotel we stopped in one of the racers' rooms for drinks, and now are ready for bed. Tomorrow is final results day! I will post pictures tomorrow.
