Racing

As I said, Friday was the start of the weekend of the show. The weather was beautiful, which helped. We just went ahead and had our Glenndale lunch out at Nathan's hangars using the tables we had left set up from the baby shower. Burgers and dogs on the grill are always a good thing. There was a pause in the action for awhile, and then the "VIP evening" began. We had several council members from the city there, members of the airport authority board, local business owners, etc. I don't actually know if the mayor made it or not, but I didn't see him. He's already sold on the merits of general aviation in the community, however, so either way, that's okay. :) The T-6 and the Super Decathlon (and Pitts I think) ran almost non-stop giving rides, all evening long. The rides ran so long we had to hold back extra food for the pilots and crew so they would have something to eat when they finally finished. Jim Z. gave the rides in the T-6 all day long, until Nathan took over at the end, and Greg A. and Mike W. gave the aerobatics rides.

Several of the political figures who came were those who were unsure or on the fence about the airport and its role in the community, and I know of several of them who left with favorable impressions and even unprompted promises of support, which left everyone associated with the airport feeling pleased with the results of the evening.

That night John Dale cooked up a wonderful pork tenderloin wrapped in bacon, Charlie steamed fresh corn on the cob, and Nathan's wife Tre made up some always tasty side dishes to go with everything. It was quite a feast. As the sun was going down, Bob had a live band set up on a stage in his hangar, and an open beverage area with someone to serve whatever you were thirsty for, and as we tugged airplanes and locked them away for the night, we had some good music to listen to. Shortly after the sun went down, a neighbor lit off fireworks, and we got our own impromptu fireworks show. The kids all climbed up on the gravel pile to watch the fireworks, and I just watched the kids enjoying them. It was a really beautiful evening, and I didn't go home until it was very late and I really needed to get Kaylee to bed if I was any kind of decent parent. ;)

I got to have some fun myself. There was one thing we needed to practice, and that was the race between the T-6 and the 4000 hp dragster, to try to get timing and speeds down for the show. So I took off and did a couple of passes down the runway in order to get a decent handle on about where I should be on my height and speed. Then as I circled overhead, the dragster did a "burn out", smoking his tires down a portion of the runway, which actually looked pretty neat from the air, too. He backed his car up on the runway, I hit abeam him and did a diving turn down, and when I got close to the end of the runway not too far off the ground, he floored it. His car was so loud, I could hear Him through My intercom system, over my own prop. It was unreal. I stayed just above him and to the left, and we ran down the runway. I ended up beating him. Afterwards, we were talking, and he smiled at my comment of being too far in front of him and said "Oh, don't worry about it". He had a plan for next time. Of course, I wasn't too sure if wanted him to have a plan--I don't like losing. ;) It made for something fun and different for folks to watch that evening, and I must say I had a good time myself. One guy made me laugh when he came up to me afterwards and said (in a funny way), "I have to tell you, I've never said this to a woman before. Never have. But you're my hero. That was awesome!" That stuff is too much fun to be 'work'. :) The dragster left some serious rubber behind on the runway, too. I'm pretty sure he enjoyed himself.

The work part was still there though, of course. Steve and I were up past 1 a.m. working on the pilot briefing, its handouts, the outline, the maps, all that stuff. My printer ran out of ink (naturally), so I ended up emailing it to myself so I could print it at the airport instead the next day...