After over a year of planning for the IOW Start Weekend, the final celebration for the City of Iowa City was snatched away by bad weather. In addition, 3 great cities - Brookings SD (BKX), Jamestown ND (JMS), Spearfish SD (SPF), and Rawlins WY (RWL) - also saw their En Route stops vanish on the eve of their celebrations. Needless to say, my emotions have swung from extreme happiness to extreme sadness in the last 24 hours.
The weather conditions approaching IOW last night and through the northern 4 stops made it impossible to fly a VFR (good weather) course, unfortunately. So the ARC leadership chose to eliminate those stops, allow racers to reposition their planes to other airports for hangar space, and to relocate the start timing line to noon on Wed Jun 22 at Alliance NE (AIA). Racers were free to make their way to Alliance for the new start site.
After a good cry or two or three, I asked Charissa if she'd be interested in flying the FULL course and arrive at AIA via BKX, JMS, SPF, and RWL. Without a moment's hesitation, she jumped on it, and we started planning accordingly. We packed up 51-Charlie, sumped enormous amounts of water from the gas tanks after Saturday night's rainfall, taxied out to Runway 12 and launched from IOW heading to BKX. It was a great IFR flight in and out of clouds with some light to moderate rain and a nice GPS approach into BKX.
When we made our call into the local air space and identified ourselves as Classic 41 arriving, the FBO staff was pretty surprised. We got 1st class service with a crew car, homemade chocolate chip cookies, dinner at Nick's Burgers, and a very nice chat with the owner of the burger joint. GREAT burgers, chocolate shake, and people. The FBO manager jokingly asked if he should call out for some timers to come in. I demanded a full top off for the next leg.
While we thought that another team or two had this crazy idea too, the folks at the FBO claim that we are the only racers stopping in Brookings. Is it possible that we are the lone racers here?
After over a year of planning for the IOW Start Weekend, the final celebration for the City of Iowa City was snatched away by bad weather. In addition, 3 great cities - Brookings SD (BKX), Jamestown ND (JMS), Spearfish SD (SPF), and Rawlins WY (RWL) - also saw their En Route stops vanish on the eve of their celebrations. Needless to say, my emotions have swung from extreme happiness to extreme sadness in the last 24 hours.
When we made our call into the local air space and identified ourselves as Classic 41 arriving, the FBO staff was pretty surprised. We got 1st class service with a crew car, homemade chocolate chip cookies, dinner at Nick's Burgers, and a very nice chat with the owner of the burger joint. GREAT burgers, chocolate shake, and people. The FBO manager jokingly asked if he should call out for some timers to come in. I demanded a full top off for the next leg.
Hi Minnetta...Dale Walker @ Fort Worth. Gretchen passed along your blog...
ReplyDeleteI applaud you both for taking on the full route. What a great idea! I'm sure that you are great reps for the ARC racers that would have loved to fly the entire route and enjoy the stops along the way. Safe journeys...
Minnetta, you two freaking ROCK! So glad this is shaping up to be your best ARC ever -- it's the least the Universe can do after all that amazing work you put in the last year as Start Chair!
ReplyDeleteTailwinds to you and Charissa and have a blast! S. and I'll be vibing the crap out of you....
:)
Tater