We sat with Mary and Cindy, Linda Moody, and Camelia and Laura, and had a lovely dinner. We knew we weren't in the top ten, but still the butterflies started as we wondered how we had done. After the speaker, a high ranking woman military flight nurse who gave a very interesting address honoring the WASP, they called every team up individually to give out our plaques and certificates for everyone who finished the race, and took our team photos. Then they started with the leg prizes. These are the first, second, third and fourth place airplanes for each individual leg, excluding the overall top ten winners. So our first good surprise of the night was that we won three of them!!! We won first place on the first leg (for which Mary was primary pilot); and also second place leg 8 and fourth place leg 7. For each prize you get a little medallion, and a small amount of cash which in our case totalled $110 I think (between us!). We were thrilled to get these. Mary and Cindy also won a leg prize which was awesome. 
Then they did the collegiate prizes; then the top ten winners were announced. Many of our friends did really well, and the overall first place winners were Classic 7, Erin and Kelly, who are lovely and really deserved to win. Then finally they produced the overall rankings. So ..... Mary and I placed 14 out of 32!!! We are really pleased and excited about this. Last year was our first year racing, and our respective teams ranked in the 20s, and we had one leg prize between us. This year was our second year racing, and we came up to 14th with three leg prizes. So we really feel that our performance showed that we built on what we learned last year, and worked well as a team.
So now we are going to bed tired but happy! Tomorrow we'll fly back to PA in two legs over about 6 hours, Mary taking the first leg. It has been an amazing trip, and we feel great about successfully completing our second transcontinental air race with honors. Also, we have really enjoyed all our fellow racers this year, reconnecting with old friends and meeting new ones, and the atmosphere has been so friendly and collegial. But it will be nice to be home after almost two weeks away, and we are looking forward to seeing family and friends again! Hopefully I'll post tomorrow night with details of our trip home.
