Frederick - June 26th

Sorry folks but I have had some problems uploading pictures so hold on to your seats because I will have some great pictures along the way and some pictures of us after we landed at Frederick yesterday.

So let's go back to yesterday morning (Where were we??) at Carbondale, IL. We got to the airport in the morning and we were first on the RON (remain over night list - that was an easy one for me to remember) list so we were the first plane allowed to take off if we were ready. There was one plane that got off the ground before us but we left IL and headed to Elkhart.

Now Elkhart is a different story. We got there and everyone was just waiting for weather to clear in the East. We grab a water and granola bar while we waited for fuel. There was hardly anyone leaving but we made a decision to make a run for the money. The skies were clear through Parkersburg, WV but the line of storms were heading to Frederick. Off we went and lucked out with the best tail winds the entire trip. We got to Parkersburg in less than 2 hours. We were expecting more than a 2-1/2 hour flight but the tail winds pushed us hard over the hills of West Virgina.

When we got to Parkersburg, WV there was a group of pilots waiting for the weather in the East to clear out. I checked the computer at the airport and saw the weather was over or just barely past Frederick. Being an East coast team we had a pretty good idea what to expect from this front that was moving through the area. We got fuel quickly and were only on the ground for about about one hour. We made the decision to run for the finish and off we went.

Now for those of you who haven't flown in a four seat airplane over the hills of WV in with high tail winds you have no idea what you are missing. One of the girls hit an air pocket and hit her head on the ceiling of the plane. We on the other hand were strapped down well and hit some air pockets but never came out of our seat belts and harnesses. Remember if you do get to experience this type of flying when you hit the air pocket you yell....Yeeeeee Haaaaa....

We get to Frederick and see the timing line only to hear that someone is in the pattern using the same runway for the timing line to do touch and goes. Somehow the timing works out and he didn't get in the way but we were prepared to kindly ask him to move because you want to fly low and fast over the line. Then it was off to try to land in 25 gusts of wind. It was interesting and we made it safety to the ground.

It was actually surreal how it felt to complete this race along side this bunch of women. What an accomplish!!! What an amazing adventure that we took.

I will continue to blog about our activities this weekend (there are a lot of them) and continue to post pictures. We will not know what place we came in until Sunday night. I can tell you now after calculating our score sheet that two legs we flew slower than our handicap (bad) and two legs we blew our handicap out of the water. The rest of the race we were better than our handicap speed so that was exciting. Win or lose it was an experience of a lifetime. More about that later!!!