Left St Louis this morning after breakfast, filing IFR to Salina Kansas. The St Louis airport is enormous, and full of SouthWest airplanes, but about 15 taxiways and one runway were closed for work, so it took ages to get cleared to taxi to the active runway. Mary took off around 9am and we headed West once more. We flew at 8000 ft to avoid turbulence lower down, but once again headwinds slowed us down. But the choices we made yesterday really paid off - by flying a more Southerly route to St Louis, we avoided a whole bunch of weather to the North today. As the flight progressed the clouds thickened, and the GPS showed active cells fairly close to our route. Since it was such a clear day under the clouds, we got a nice view of one cell that had built fast and was raining heavily a few miles away. We flew this leg at full throttle all the way to simulate race conditions, and were pleasantly surprised that at 8000 ft the engine could be leaned out to only 11 gallons per hour even at this high setting. Approaching Salina, a cold front started to move in across the route, so we landed a few miles short at Manhattan Kansas, known to the locals as "the little apple"!. 
Mary's legs, and the instrument panel showing the GPS496.
PS Thanks to Kenny for fixing the autopilot - we really appreciate it!
In Manhattan we borrowed a crew car and drove out for lunch. The lady at the desk told us "its a small red compact with a lot of hail damage". Bizarrely, when we started to look around the parking lot we saw at least four cars meeting that description, so we had to go back inside and get more specific directions! We had a good lunch, and by the time we arrived back at the airport the frontal weather had passed over. I departed on a clearance for Akron Colorado, into blue skies with little puffy white clouds to play in. Again we flew this leg at full throttle to simulate race conditions, leaned out to 11 GPH. The plane did great, except that (annoyingly) the gear in transit light came on again, again with a definite drop in airspeed indicating we were probably getting some drag once the gear had shifted. This time we recycled the gear and the problem went away.
Meantime, the weather just kept getting better. We were flying across the vast open planes of central Kansas, with a reported visibility of 70 miles although I'm pretty sure it was more like 150 miles. You can practically see the curvature of the earth under these conditions, and the land just stretches away in a patchwork of farms and fields for as far as the eye can see in all directions. Mary had fun flirting with the Kansas City Center controllers, and we talked to another collegiate race team on their way to Denver. Once we crossed the frontal barrier and into Colorado, the winds shifted and we picked up a 15-25 knot tailwind, with ground speeds up to 150 kt! We were making such good time that we amended our destination to go all the way to Denver Centennial, our ultimate destination. All in all, Pottstown PA to Denver CO in about 13 hours.
Approach to landing, 17R at Denver Centennial!Touched down in Denver around 4pm local time, and taxied to our assigned FBO, the Denver JetCenter. Frank, the husband of a local 99, kindly drove us to the Sheraton where we were staying. We took a shower and just missed the closing of registration, which we will take care of tomorrow. We met a couple of other racers that we remembered from last year, including Camellia Smith, her husband Bill, and her copilot Laura Berry (racer 15), as well as Cindy Kerr and her new partner Mary Unger (racer 25), and we all crammed into Bill's rental car and went off for a really nice dinner.
