Race Day 3 - The Chess Game

We were up early, early for departure - hoping for the best winds. We left the hotel at 5:45 so we could be in the air at the first "legal" time - 6:30 a.m. George is both the owner of the Acorn Inn, where we stayed, and a volunteer driver for the Air Race. He was up early to drive us to the airport in spite of being at a swim meet last night that lasted until 11:00 pm.

Becky and Robin are using the same weather person, so we ended up traveling along together and having lots of fun together. They are flying Robin's Cirrus and have a 13 kt. advantage over us, but we have a fuel capacity over them. Since our strategy is almost the same, the competition between our two teams will be who coaxes the better performance out of their plane, I suppose.

We crossed the Missouri River two more times. This photo showed the flood stage well.

We had to take a picture of the GPS. It was the best ground speed we've seen on the whole race - 162 knots. Didn't last long, but it was beautiful for a while.

If you were following on SPOT, I turned it off before it sent the signal for the Carbondale Airport. For a while, the track stopped in a field. Sorry, we didn't mean to alarm anyone. I turned it back on at the motel. Now, it looks like we landed in the Hampton Inn parking lot.

More waiting, and more waiting. Okay, since we didn't have anything to do, we decided that we may as well go get a pedicure. To embellish on our fashion photo yesterday, Classic 7 team had their toenails painted blue to match their airplane & shirts. We, Classic 15, went for purple. Cristen said that if your toenails don't match your transportation, you're not really girls. We agreed.

Now for the race strategy. Yes, in spite of two days of little or no activity, we are still in the Air Race. Our delays have not been because the weather was too bad to fly. Instead, we have been waiting on optimal winds. Mikeal said this is more like a chess game than a race, and that is a very good description. Just like in a chess game, you have to get everything set up for the kill. We are really hoping that we have everything in place. Tomorrow morning, we hope to leave again at sun up. If we have played our cards right, we will be able to make all three remaining legs and arrive at Frederick, Maryland with the best time. We think there are only three planes at the airport here in Carbondale, so we are definitely in the minority with this strategy. Right now, we just hope to make it without incident to Terminus.