Day One of Briefings

We've completed our first set of briefings.  The briefing this morning was just over generalities, so nothing really entertaining was gleaned from that.  There was a part where we had to go over a refresher of how to get a clearance through Class C and Class D airspace.  It was a little alarming how many ladies thought approach/tower speaking "Aircraft calling standby" was a valid clearance to enter the airspace (they have to speak your callsign or tail number for you to pass through).  Flying through Norman, OK should be interesting for them.

I did get a pack of Jeppesen plates this morning for the fly-by airports.  They came packaged all nicely in a "Special Air Carrier Trip Kit."  I told Jo something along the lines of, "We're a special air carrier, that's for sure."  I want to take a picture of them; I feel so professional!

I was invited to lunch with the collegiate teams.  The conversation went something like, "Well, you're not on a college team, but you're in college, so I guess you can come."  It was fun.  I was the oldest person there out of twenty college folks, and they're all looking at me like I'm some old, crickety grand dame at the end of the lunch table.  It was pretty funny, since the median age of the rest of the racers seems to be sitting at about 55.  Many of them were first-time racers, so they were looking at me like I was some font of knowledge (which I'm not).  Yikes.

Jo and I attended the Takeoff Banquet this evening at the hotel.  I sat with two older ladies who were completely lit up, courtesy of the bar.  They were lots of fun.  The one older woman (70+ years old who snuck her own bottle of red wine to the event) jumped up in the middle of one of the racer's speeches and started trash-talking her.  Her equally lit up partner had to grab her and sit her back down, spilling red wine over the two of them.  Everyone breathed a sigh of relief that they had been cut off, until they produced a second bottle of red wine from under the table.  I wonder if they made it back to their room . . .

Tomorrow's agenda is full of briefings.  There will be the fly-by briefing, a safety briefing, and a weather briefing.  Then we're cut loose about noon.  Jo and I signed up for a Rockwell Collins tour, but we'll see if we will be able to make it.  We have quite a bit of planning and hashing out to do, such as divvying up pilot flying/pilot not flying duties, stop duties (fuel, paperwork, flight plans), preflight, postflight, fly-by callouts, and we need to review our routes and look at the weather for Tuesday.  I don't worry about the later routes until we get there, but we'll still need to review the fly-by procedures and routing for the next day's flight (s).

Tomorrow is when the madness really starts to hit.  Throw in some maybe nasty weather, and Monday/Tuesday can quickly turn into a zoo.  We're just going to have to wait and see.