We lifted off about 830am from Racine, came back around to do the flyby to continue, then headed off to the race terminus in Atlantic Iowa, a 332nm trip. We alternated pilot and copilot roles during this trip, and enjoyed a smooth flight with a pretty good tailwind coming off of Lake Michigan, although it dissipated towards Iowa. We overtook one of the slowest planes in the race, the Citabria (which has a handicap of about 103 kt) around Des Moines. This is a tailwheel airplane and these girls are doing a great job on the race. 332nm is pretty far in a Citabria without refueling, and they later told us they had to manage fuel very carefully and throttle back to conserve fuel, and they did so very successfully. Other than that, we didn't see any other planes. Many had taken advantage of the early morning departure, so when we did the flyby at Atlantic about 2/3 of the race planes were already there. Linda and some of the racers cheered and clapped as we taxied up to our parking spot, and did "we are not worthy" bows to Mary! A photographer took our pictures, then we had to unpack the plane and hand the keys and tracker to a race official immediately so our plane could be impounded. The Atlantic ground crew were transporting racers around in a couple of old army vehicles, and they brought up an ancient field ambulance complete with stretcher for Mary, and insisting on taking us back to the FBO with the alarm blaring - it was quite funny.
After hanging out for an hour or so, the three of us got a ride to the hotel with another racer from last year, Karen Workman. Turns out that Atlantic Iowa is indeed a very small town, and the one hotel is not exactly luxurious. But we racers are a hardy bunch! We all took a nap for a couple hours, then got delivery of a rental car, and went back to the airport for the welcome party. It was really nice - it was a lovely warm night, and they opened a hangar with a P-51 Mustang in it, and we had grilled chicken with all the trimmings. The racers, their families, race officials and local people all milled around swapping stories and signing each others' race programs. About 15 of us went to a local bar afterwards for drinks, and only just got back.
The other good news of the day was that Mary called the hospital in Lufkin, as the radiologist was supposed to call her back and never did. Her ankle is not broken! she has a sprain and soft tissue damage. This is much better news.
Tomorrow we meet with the scorer to finalize our scores. Then, the top twelve planes get impounded for inspection - if your plane is impounded, you know you have a very good chance of being in the top ten. If not, oh well, you know for sure that you didn't make the top ten! A nail biting time.
