99s

Besides the North Jersey 99s, the race could not be as successful without all the other 99s.  Thanks to the San Joaquin Valley 99s who hosted us at the start, the Central Pa. 99s that hosted the terminus, the Eastern Pa. 99s who hosted the hospitality room at the terminus, the 99s at Norfolk, Nebraska and all the 99s across the country that  helped support us during the race.

Thank you Shannon, Lorna, Susan, Cathy and Bev for celebrating with Mary and I at the terminus.  The North Jersey Ninety-Nines rock.

Facts - just the Facts

Well we didn't win, but we took First place on the last 2 legs, so obviously, we know how to do something right but not everything.  The good news is I have almost  a year to try to figure it out.  15 teams  did not finish and there was 1 DQ (no it's not Dairy Queen).  That being said Juliet and Terry came in 13th and Marilyn and I came in 22nd.  The rest of Eastern Pa. came in after us.  But we were safe, we didn't get stuck in the snow and ice, didn't land off route and we had a blast!!!

Speaking of Eastern Pa.  - they rock!!!!  I have never been so proud in my life.  Thank you so much for all your hard work and donations of food.  North Jersey Chairman, Shannon Osborne also worked tirelessly doing whatever needed to be done but her hardest job was keeping me organized.  The purple volunteer shirts are beautiful - thank you Linda Evans - everyone looked so cute.

Already working in next year.  Thanks so much for all your love and support.

Mary and Marilyn

We are here!!!

We are safely on the ground in Harrisburg.  I would like to say that there was no weather issues this race but out of 7 races I think this had the most weather  to deal with.  There are a bunch of teams still on their way in with the deadline being 5PM tomorrow.  The Eastern Pa. girls unboxed the silent auction items and Shannon Osborne helped me it up.  She is the queen of organization.  I would love to tell you where we placed but that won't be known until Saturday night :)

Almost Home

We left Scottsbluff this morning and headed to Norfolk, Nebraska.  There were clouds along the way and we determined that it was ground fog but you aren't really sure.  We were on top of those clouds and you just hope that they clear out like they are supposed to when you need to get down.  At this point you wonder if you made good decisions.  Some people are still out west and things are heating up on the east coast.  We won't know till Saturday night at the banquet how well anyone did but we got to spend time with our friends and fly across the country.  We left Norfolk, flew over Iowa City and landed at Danville, Illinois late this afternoon.  We will start again tomorrow morning and weather permitting should be in Harrisburg some time tomorrow.  Sorry there aren't any pictures.  The weather just needed too much of our attention.

GO!!!!

And so we did.  Breakfast at 6.  Weather briefing at 6:30.  Pack the airplane, say hello to Tammy and Tim Hand who flew in to send us off.  Start the airplane, taxi out, take off and the rest is a blur.  Only kidding - sort of.  I know that we flew over Doris - no problem flying into there we followed 17 right in.  Flew by to continue and went to Elko, determined today was better than tomorrow was going to be, left Elko and flew to Pinedale.  I heard Elko was having a barbecue - dang we missed it.  Left Pinedale - we were worried about Pinedale because of the mountains and high density altitude but did it anyway.  Flew to Scottsbluff only to hear that it was a mile visibility in a heavy thunderstorm.  Miraculously it moved before we had to do our Fly-by.  We are in Scottsbluff for the night.  Rooms are hard to find but we have a reservation - oh wait, it's for tomorrow night (like I said we didn't expect to leave Pinedale in the afternoon).  Not to worry we are not sleeping in the crew room :)

Tomorrow is another day

Ready, Set. ....

Well all the paperwork is done and tomorrow is race day!!!!  We are all packed up and ready to go.  Handicaps were given out and ours is 154.416.  Breakfast is at 6AM, weather briefing at 6:30 and we launch at 8.  We will keep you posted - wish us luck!!!!

track leaders

Here is the link so that you can follow everybody once the race starts http://trackleaders.com/arc14. It's fun to see where everybody is.

Fun with a WASP

A.J. Starr is a WASP and a displaced North Jersey Ninety-Nine.  Both she and Marilyn Patierno belong to the North Jersey Chapter.

Marilyn and Shannon Osborne picked her up and took her to the Racer BBQ in a huge hanger.  She had a great time meeting everyone, participating in the activities and checking out all the race planes on the ramp.  She was not familiar with the new models.  One curious race plane was shrink wrapped with advertising.  She was so pleased to be with a hangar full of young and seasoned pilots.  Both the young and seasoned had lots of questions for her.

When we returned her home, she handed me a copy of her Ninety-Nine medal.

Thank you

Yesterday was youth program day.  We were divided up into 3 groups.  The Baldwin Family Flyers and Kayleigh Bordner from the Flying Sycamores and I were a team.  We had over 60  Girl Scouts and chaperones.  We were outside where the local 99s had painted a 99s compass rose and the airport layout - to scale  - just beautiful and so much easier  than drawing with chalk.  We talked about ATC, flying out of different types of airports, procedures during the air race and other topics.  We were able to get everyone a tour of Concord tower so they had a bird eye view of  the airport.  A big thanks to Tower Manager, Charles Deavers (and I hope this is correct as auto correct did something else when I made a note)

A big Thank you to Tammy and Tim hand for the wonderful California wine, for their company during the BBQ and for taking Alison and Terri for a ride over the Golden Gate Bridge as all our airplanes as impounded.

San Franscisco here we come

You didn't hear from us yesterday bacause we were sightseeing.  We don't usually get to sight see when we are racing but we got here early enough to  sign up for an aquarium tour and a boat ride of the San Franscisco Bay.  Since they were short volunteers I got to drive a big old Tahoe and Marilyn got to drive a Ford Focus for the tour.  I made Juliet navigate.  It's a small aquarium but full of interesting things.  We had a wonderful lunch at Player  on Pier 35 and then we took a boat ride down to the Golden Gate Bridge around Alcatraz and back.  Since we had the cars for 24 hours we went to Ghiradelli Square and we drove down Lombard Street and in the not too distant future they are passing legislation to prohibit people who don't live there from driving down the street so how lucky are we!!!  Of course, it took us FOREVER to get back.  Juliet, our professional photographer took pictures and age will post them for sure at http://phillieflyersblog.com

We came back in time for me to drive everybody down to the Lazy Dog for dinner only to run into Sandy and Tracy.

Today we were all business.  We started with breakfast with our Eastern Pa. girls, followed by Credentials and plane inspections - which we passed with flying colors.  Thank you Pat Ohllson for helping with that missing piece of paper.

It was a beautiful day and Juliet wasn't impounded yet so we decided to go for a ride.  Linda and I got to navigate so we vectored  her right over to the Golden Gate Bridge - what a beautiful view.  Linda liked it so much she took her airplane and Barb and Juliet and did it again.

Bobby I brought both my good luck bracelets - I expect to do very well.  Thank you

Some beautiful country we have.

Our trip took us past some great parts of the country.  Here are a few photos which, of course, isn't as spectacular as seeing them out the airplane window, up close and personal.

Mount Shasta up close and personal.

Part of the great Salt Lake

 Bear Co Airport and lake

What a difference a day makes!!!

Last night when we went to bed the forecast was for VFR (visual flight rules) somewhere between 9 and 11AM.  What a nice surprise to wake up to a beautiful, calm wind day.  We were airborne by 7:30 this morning.  Tonight we are in sunny California.  Won't have much happening until later on in the week.  We will keep you posted.

Time to spare

We conned the airport guy out of the crew car last night but didn't want to abuse his hospitality so we were back early this morning only to sit here all day in Scottsbluff waiting for Mother Nature to be kind to us.  The good news is Classic 41 is close after only leaving this morning and Team 12 - freaking awesome has joined our party.   We would rather deal with this weather this week than during the race.  After we were able to get a rental car we went to Scottsbluff.  Juliet, our professional photographer took some fabulous pictures.  Check them out at Phillieflyersblog.com - besides being beautiful it will show you why we are still on the ground

One Stop Closer

Well we didn't really want to file IFR and we didn't want to scud run so we waited for the new forecast to come out at 1PM and decided that if we didn't want to spend another day in Sioux City that we needed to file and go.  The 4 of us jumped in the van and went to the airport, preflighted and picked up our clearances and left for Scottsbluff .  Team 9 let us call for taxi first so the controllers didn't need to overthink things.  It was good for us.  We picked the closest approach so that they would not get delayed but some corporate guys in a slowtation (that's an ATC spoof about Citations) got between us and it took them a little while longer to get in.  The slowtation had taken off from Alliance (15 miles away) and the weather was low clouds so another good collaborative decision.  We got the last room in Scottsbluff because of the Cattleman's ball  - there were others but none that we were willing to stay at.  Tomorrow we will check out the mountains and maybe Yellowstone.
Below is an example of good Kharma and I don't know what you call what they did or didn't have.

                                                                        Classic 15

Classic 9

Sioux City Iowa

We made it all the way to Sioux City Iowa last night.  We decided to land here because the forecast was for tornados and hail and we weren't sure we could get a hanger in Norfolk, Nebraska.  Doesn't look like we have to rush to leave.

OMG OMG!!!

My belief is that I am always where I am supposed to be at the perfect time.  So we go to take off and the left mag runs rough.  Take care of that and we take off - beautiful day.  We land at York to drop off things for Carolyn  Van Newkirk. We  leave  York and I decided to turn around to try the new equipment.  Back on course we decided not to do flight  following and just  concentrate  on team building and learning the new equipment but we decide we will listen and who do we hear but the Phillie Flyers.  Then we hear Johnstown calling traffic to them at 6 o'clock same altitude same direction.  Juliet tells the guy I bet it's a mooney..  So I click off the autopilot and got as close as I can - too much fun.  Then the guy yells ay me for not  checking in and he did all  that work.  She's not even in the same airplane and she is getting me in trouble!!  Will send a picture when I figure out how to do it.

California here we come

Well we are up, it's a beautiful morning and we are ready to head west.  Wish up luck!!!

Thank yous

A big Thank you to Russ Crouthamel for flying Arnold and up to Mansfield to pick up the airplane, to Dave Fetherston and the Nexair Avionics crew for getting the airplane updated and fixing things that weren't even in the list, to my husband Arnold for helping getting the airplane in ship shape condition.  We are ready to go.