Mary, Linda and Alison in front of N29SP, Sparta Tennessee, early morning.
We had obtained an outlook briefing the night before, and knew there might be some problems with weather after 11am due to convective activity associated with a cold front moving in from the North, so we wanted to get away early. Our first leg was 315 nm to Jacksonville Illinois. It was another beautiful day, with fog settled in the valleys between the rolling Tennessee hills, very peaceful. We encountered our only cloud so far on our race flight path, a horizontal smoke column from a power plant that we had to climb over. Compared to all the cloud and weather issues we had to deal with last year, this didn't even register! We flew a good leg, and I think we have definitely got our groove back as a team. Mary did a great job with nav/comms and got us through airspace without any deviations, and we coasted along low enough to read the signs on the bigger storefronts. Not a great tailwind on this leg, but we didn't slow up too much either. The leg ended with the usual high speed low altitude flyby - this one was interesting because we had to stay high over the prison 3 nm off the end of the runway, as the prison officers had said they would shoot airplanes that came too low! This left us hot and high close in for the flyby, so we had to dive down to the flyby altitude in the small distance available. We pretty much smoked on the way in, with the airspeed indicator showing 165 kt!
We arrived in Jacksonville mid-morning, and the folks there hooked us up with fuel, cold water, and food. Linda arrived close behind us in her Cirrus - she is really enjoying following the race. Lots of racers were there in from Jacksonville, and people who had stayed in Grenada the previous night also began to arrive, so the terminal building was busy. We met a lovely lady who had flown in the 1977 Powder Puff Derby Commemorative flight, and had a great hat with lots of pins from that event (see picture). She and the other volunteers put out lots of food. Mary, Linda and I found some very comfortable recliners which we set up shop on, from which we watched the weather channel, called the briefers, and tried to make plans. Everyone was trying to decide the best thing to do in light of the incoming cold front. The weather systems all reported a widespread area of high atmospheric instability over the central plains, and there were already a couple large areas of thunderstorm activity just to the North and West of the route. Storms were predicted to be isolated to scattered, but severe. Once of the racers reported that friends of hers who are stormchasers were on their way to Racine Wisconsin (our next stop) because of the high probability of tornados! Some people left, but many others waited around like us considering the weather reports. By lunchtime we had pretty much decided to stay over in Jacksonville and complete the last two legs on the final day, which we knew was forecast to be gorgeous weather due to a large high pressure system. But we continued to hang out at the airport, which in any case was the most interesting place to be. At one point I went out into the blistering heat to clean up the airplane, and ended up letting four local children who had been hanging out all day watching the racers climb into our plane.
By about 2pm, the promised widespread convective activity hadn't materialized, although there was still one heavy area to the West of the route. We started to think that maybe it wouldn't get any worse, and called the briefer again. We changed our minds (a woman's prerogative!), and decided to get going anyway and risk the outside chance of isolated severe weather. So we cancelled our hotel reservations, leapt into the plane (Linda close behind), and took off for our flyby to continue.
The 210 nm flight to Racine Wisconsin was also fine, and this time we picked up some great tailwinds. We saw the severe weather way off to our West, but weren't even close. We flew under the Chicago airspace ceiling, and Mary got us through Peoria and Kenosha airspace to Racine. The flyby went great, and as we pulled up we flew over Lake Michigan. The folks in Racine put our planes in hangars, which was very nice, and drove us to the Marriott, where a whole crowd of racers was staying, and we had dinner in the restaurant there with Linda and the other racers.
We will probably get an early night tonight and not hurry tomorrow morning, as we have all day until 5pm to get to Atlantic Iowa, the terminus. Mary is in a lot of pain again as it is evening and her foot has been in use all day. She is doing great on the crutches and gets in and out of the plane fine, but the pain definitely wears her out so she is exhausted by the evening. Poor Mary, she's a trooper but this is a lot for her to stand. I just hope we win! Imagine the kudos of winning despite having a broken leg - that would probably be a first in 80 years of women's air racing! 
The first photo shows what racer 43 looked like as we overtook it 20 nm outside Racine! The second shows final approach to land at Racine, runway 4.
