Saturday, July 11, 2009
Its raining
Brief update: Job - starting in two days. Old house - no offers yet. New house - passed termite, radon, home and water inspections, but failed septic inspection! 35 year old system, never been upgraded. Explains the luxuriant vegetation growing in the front yard... Waiting to see what our next steps are, but this task will fall to the seller so I'm not worried.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Day 12 - Home at last!! with one last surprise
We got up this morning around 7am and headed to the airport after breakfast to set off home from Atlantic. I must admit the Super 8 was starting to feel like home after three nights there! Many people had departed very early (Mary Unger left at 3am to get a ride to Omaha to catch a flight!), but we said goodbye to many friends, and also to Lori and Barry at the airport who have been wonderful to all of us.
Mary piloted the first leg, which we planned from Atlantic Iowa to Fort Wayne Indiana. The latter is a place that Linda and I stopped at on our way out to last year's Air Race Classic, and was exactly half way home. Over the last few flights we had noticed that the right magneto was dropping, and during our runup this morning it exceeded the 175rpm drop recommended in the POH. But we decided to head out, and had a backup plan for if we lost the right mag. We were probably a bit braver than usual because of the Mooney team this year, who completely lost a mag during the race but managed to fly that leg on the other mag and still placed in the top ten - great going girls! The flight to Fort Wayne went without a hitch. We filed IFR at 7000 and flew it in beautiful VFR weather. We kept a close eye on all engine parameters and everything looked good, although we thought there was a little more vibration than normal which made me sweat a bit. We got great tailwinds as it was a very windy day, and were cruising at 170-180kt most of the way. But it was also very windy on the ground, and Mary landed in 30kt, but fortunately they gave us runway 28 so it was pretty much all headwind and no crosswind. She did a great job as always.
Once on the ground, we taxied to the West ramp and did a runup. Now the right mag drop was more like 250rpm, and we decided enough was enough. Fortunately a mechanics shop was right there in the middle of three hangars on the West ramp (Mercury?), so we taxied over. When we had shut down and climbed out, we saw a lot of oil on the underside of the cowling, so we knew we had made a good decision to get it checked out. The first person we saw at Mercury was a lady A&P and avionics person (yay!). She knew Margaret Ringenberg! Margaret was a lady we raced with last year, a legendary pilot who had her own chapter in Tom Brokaw's book "The Greatest Generation". She was in her 80s, and still flying and racing, and was based at Fort Wayne. She died last year in her sleep while at the great annual airshow at Oshkosh, and we miss her.
Gary from Mercury worked on our plane while we got a ride over to the commercial side of the airport and had lunch. When we came back, he was already taxying it around with the cowl off. He explained that the right mag had the wrong seal on it (that's not the right word, I do know the right word but I'm so tired I can't remember it), and was leaking oil, and the mag had worked loose. I asked what the worst case scenario would have been, and he said the mag could eventually have come away all together, and we would have lost all our oil! Not good. I could have hugged him. He replaced it, tightened everything back up, retimed it, cleaned up the belly, charged us a minimal price, and we were good to go by 3pm. Thanks Gary and Mercury for really helping us out, we appreciated it so much!
On the runup leaving Fort Wayne, the mag drops were 55rpm and 65rpm, a vast improvement. We took off feeling much happier and confident in Adelle's airplane, which has worked so hard for us over the last month. We had a smooth flight at 7000ft just under the cloud deck, with great tailwinds. We felt so excited as Pennsylvania came closer, and we reached Akron Ohio then Pittsburgh. By the time we got to Harrisburg, we were in our home turf, where every landmark and curve in the terrain is familiar. There were very few clouds, and a soft late afternoon light as we flew over Lancaster and back to Pottstown Municipal, where I landed on 26. Nancy and the crew were still there and welcoming as always. We put the plane back in the hangar, loaded our bags into Arnie's car, and headed home.
I had left my car at Perkiomen Valley airport all week and it obviously didn't like it, because it seems to have some kind of brake problem (knocking sound at the back on braking). Just something else I'll have to fix over the next week or so!
So now we're back at home, after about 4600 nm of flying, totalling about 45 hours. We did really well in the race - we overcame obstacles we didn't anticipate - we learned many new things about flying the race and just flying in general - we made new friends - and we came home safe and whole. What a great 12 days! I hope everyone gets the chance in their life to have such an adventure, and to have such a wonderful friend as Mary to live it with.
Mary piloted the first leg, which we planned from Atlantic Iowa to Fort Wayne Indiana. The latter is a place that Linda and I stopped at on our way out to last year's Air Race Classic, and was exactly half way home. Over the last few flights we had noticed that the right magneto was dropping, and during our runup this morning it exceeded the 175rpm drop recommended in the POH. But we decided to head out, and had a backup plan for if we lost the right mag. We were probably a bit braver than usual because of the Mooney team this year, who completely lost a mag during the race but managed to fly that leg on the other mag and still placed in the top ten - great going girls! The flight to Fort Wayne went without a hitch. We filed IFR at 7000 and flew it in beautiful VFR weather. We kept a close eye on all engine parameters and everything looked good, although we thought there was a little more vibration than normal which made me sweat a bit. We got great tailwinds as it was a very windy day, and were cruising at 170-180kt most of the way. But it was also very windy on the ground, and Mary landed in 30kt, but fortunately they gave us runway 28 so it was pretty much all headwind and no crosswind. She did a great job as always.
Once on the ground, we taxied to the West ramp and did a runup. Now the right mag drop was more like 250rpm, and we decided enough was enough. Fortunately a mechanics shop was right there in the middle of three hangars on the West ramp (Mercury?), so we taxied over. When we had shut down and climbed out, we saw a lot of oil on the underside of the cowling, so we knew we had made a good decision to get it checked out. The first person we saw at Mercury was a lady A&P and avionics person (yay!). She knew Margaret Ringenberg! Margaret was a lady we raced with last year, a legendary pilot who had her own chapter in Tom Brokaw's book "The Greatest Generation". She was in her 80s, and still flying and racing, and was based at Fort Wayne. She died last year in her sleep while at the great annual airshow at Oshkosh, and we miss her.
Gary from Mercury worked on our plane while we got a ride over to the commercial side of the airport and had lunch. When we came back, he was already taxying it around with the cowl off. He explained that the right mag had the wrong seal on it (that's not the right word, I do know the right word but I'm so tired I can't remember it), and was leaking oil, and the mag had worked loose. I asked what the worst case scenario would have been, and he said the mag could eventually have come away all together, and we would have lost all our oil! Not good. I could have hugged him. He replaced it, tightened everything back up, retimed it, cleaned up the belly, charged us a minimal price, and we were good to go by 3pm. Thanks Gary and Mercury for really helping us out, we appreciated it so much!
On the runup leaving Fort Wayne, the mag drops were 55rpm and 65rpm, a vast improvement. We took off feeling much happier and confident in Adelle's airplane, which has worked so hard for us over the last month. We had a smooth flight at 7000ft just under the cloud deck, with great tailwinds. We felt so excited as Pennsylvania came closer, and we reached Akron Ohio then Pittsburgh. By the time we got to Harrisburg, we were in our home turf, where every landmark and curve in the terrain is familiar. There were very few clouds, and a soft late afternoon light as we flew over Lancaster and back to Pottstown Municipal, where I landed on 26. Nancy and the crew were still there and welcoming as always. We put the plane back in the hangar, loaded our bags into Arnie's car, and headed home.
I had left my car at Perkiomen Valley airport all week and it obviously didn't like it, because it seems to have some kind of brake problem (knocking sound at the back on braking). Just something else I'll have to fix over the next week or so!
So now we're back at home, after about 4600 nm of flying, totalling about 45 hours. We did really well in the race - we overcame obstacles we didn't anticipate - we learned many new things about flying the race and just flying in general - we made new friends - and we came home safe and whole. What a great 12 days! I hope everyone gets the chance in their life to have such an adventure, and to have such a wonderful friend as Mary to live it with.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Day 11 - Prize giving day (Part 2) - the results are in!!
After my last posting, we dressed up in our finest and set off to the Atlantic Community Center for the final banquet. We chatted with our hosts of last night, the Trewets, and Mary presented Mr Trewet with a certificate for a birthday flight lesson for his granddaughter Caroline, who really wants to fly!
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.
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.
Day 11 - Prize giving day (Part 1)
I will write up today now, before the banquet, then post the final results after the banquet.
Today we had a mandatory breakfast and All Racer's briefing at the Atlantic Community Center. The judges and timer each presented a report, then people gave praise for things that worked well and raised some issues that might be improved in the future. One of the racers broke her arm last night while having dinner with a host family, so the list of injuries is growing longer! The back of Mary's ankle is now an impressive bruised color, but the swelling is coming down and it seems to be healing very well. Then we drove over to the airport to refuel our airplanes, and picked up a guy who had just flown in representing Wings of Hope. This is a charitable organization that the Citabria race team is sponsoring, so he had flown in to be at the banquet. We dropped him back at the hotel, then went for lunch (Chinese, with fortune cookies).
At 1pm we joined another tour we had prebooked, to see the Iowa Aviation Museum in Greenville. Also with us were various racers including Mary and Cyndy, Linda, Sandy, Minnetta, Bernice, and the Mooney team girls. The museum was on a small airport in the middle of rolling cornfields, and was delightful. The collection included a Stearman, a Taylorcraft, two DeHavilland Gypsy Moths, J2 and J3 Piper Cubs, plus various other airplanes and some very scary looking early gliders. Bernice Heydu, our racing WASP, said that the Taylorcraft was the airplane she learned to fly in, so we took pictures of her with the plane. The Iowa Aviators Hall of Fame included Netta Southern, a woman who taught Amelia Earhart to fly! Just got back from there, off to the banquet in an hour or so to get our final positions....
Day 10 - Scoring day
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.
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.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Day 9 - Final race day - we made it!!!
Mary and I decided not to get up for the 5am breakfast in Racine. We only had one leg left to do, and a whole day of high pressure to do it in, so why hurry? So we slept in till 700am or so, then had breakfast and left for the airport with one other team. Linda had left very early to ensure she got off before the racers, and arrived in Atlantic in time to see them all finish.
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.
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.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Day 8 - Race day 3. Team Adelles Belles rises again!
Today started with a 530am wake up call from Mary. We packed up and had breakfast in the hotel in Sparta Tennessee, then got a ride to the airport.
Mary, Linda and Alison in front of N29SP, Sparta Tennessee, early morning.
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.
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