Change of Plans

Well, today has been  . . . interesting.  There's been a major change of the race due to the incoming crummy weather.

Here's the plan: no racers are going to be departing tomorrow on the race.  We had three teleconferences today with a weather briefer, and he says "It doesn't look good for the next couple of days for what you want to do."  The first three legs for the next few days appear to be impassable unless you're IFR.  Obviously, since this is a VFR race, that doesn't work, and the race can't be delayed for that much time.

So, the race start is going to be pushed back until Wednesday at 12:00PM Mountain Time in Alliance, Nebraska.  All of the previous legs will be removed from the race, and the deadline to arrive at the terminus has been extended to sunset on Friday.  Racers are to get themselves to Alliance, NE any way possible (IFR, VFR, some combination?).  Jo and I are looking at winds and trying to pick a date/time to head over.

Tonight's weather for Iowa City is supposed to be terrible.  Hail, thunderstorms, wind, maybe tornadoes . . . we bribed someone at KIOW to get the airplane into a hangar, so we're not too worried.  We'll be mostly worried about tornadoes and the river flooding, since it's right across from the airport.  We didn't think it was worth ferrying the airplane out.


Speaking of ferrying, I was approached by a few teams today to ferry their airplanes to other airports that had hangar space available.  I declined, because none of the teams in question had any plan to get me back to Iowa City.  Not my idea of fun, ferrying a strange airplane to a strange airport to be ditched there for the night.  I'm not stupid.


A few teams have elected to stay tied down in the grass.  With the weather that moved through last night, several of the airplanes got loose and had their stakes flapping in the wind.  No airplanes were damaged. 
 Right now Jo and I are in "wait and see" mode.  We're going to evaluate the weather tomorrow and see if we want to make a run for Alliance tomorrow or narrow down a time for Wednesday.  It's about 500nm, so it's not exactly a short trip, especially with headwinds.


In the meantime, I have the hotel drapes open so I can watch this storm roll through.  It should keep us rockin' and rollin' for some of the evening.  Cheap entertainment!