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.