News-Worthy?!

Today dawned early for the racers -- Erin finished up a trip very late last night and both of us were up and at 'em long before 0600. So this is going to be short and sweet.

After some yummy grub at the Fly Trap (made famous by the Food Network's "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives")....,

.... we handled our obligatory media event (http://www.wxyz.com/news/local/story/Pilot-Races-for-Charity/jfTuFdNJSEm-WbsLopowhA.cspx) and launched skyward toward the vast, humid, corn-filled plains of Iowa.

The 3:00 hour flight was fairly uneventful, despite the continued IFR re-routes around weather and Chicago airspace (at one point we were going north to get from VLL to IOW!), and we enjoyed our maiden ARC 2009 flight. As evidenced by our descent into samurai mode:(headbands compliments of former racer Pam!)

(okay, maybe not quite samurai, but The Force is with us nonetheless....)

Once we had the V'raptor all tucked into her hangar for the night, we treated ourselves to an adult beverage or two in the city before downing some grill fare around the pool back at our cool hotel.

Minneta, one of our fellow racer buddies, has hooked us up with digs here at the Alexis Park Inn. Barring either exsanguination from all the mosquito bites or food poisoning at the hands of our hosting rivals (for which Erin lost the coin toss, meaning she was the one who got to consume dinner) we should be good to go for a short night's sleep in the Amelia Earhart Suite.

Maybe she'll speak to us.....