Saturday Chores

Today was a lot more busy than we'd anticipated. Last night ended with a very late night phone call telling us that we might possibly have finished in the Top 12, meaning the Velociraptor would be inspected the next morning. That's great news and we're both obviously very happy.

We were also informed with another late night call that we needed to do another test flight, so the entire morning was spent handling that. We suspect that the weather conditions weren't conducive to accurate readings but were happy to comply. After the test flight the V'raptor was officially inspected before we joined a few other teams for lunch (margaritas, really) and swapped stories about the race.

Post-nap we signed our official score card and were given a W-9 tax form to complete, suggesting that we just might finish in the money. But we won't know that for sure until tomorrow night's banquet. So check back then, eh? And in the mean time, how about you cross all of your fingers and toes?! :)

Definitely the highlight of our day was our pre-arranged dinner with our local "host family". Yesterday's BBQ hangar party was hosted at a private hangar housing a P-51 Mustang, cool old cars, a Navion and a bunch of flying model airplanes, among other neat toys. The owners are aviation buffs and also happened to be our dinner hosts for this evening. We were treated to an amazing home-cooked meal (the first we've had on this adventure!) and fine drinks and dessert. Kathy is an excellent cook and Mike handled the grill with expertise and kept us entertained with flying videos and stories. The evening was shared with another racing team, Kristy, Susan and Bee, the WASP pilot in the back as their passenger! We enjoyed getting to know our competitors and hearing Bee's stories of flying military aircraft in the 1940's. Such neat women fly this race every year....

Unfortunately we still have 20+ hours to wait until we know how we placed in the race. Yeah, cruel to make us wait, but c'est la vie. Tomorrow will dawn early with a mandatory b'fast meetings and debriefings. We're looking forward to hearing the results of the race, learning everyone's scores and wrapping up our 2009 ARC experience. It's a very different time at the race Terminus for us this year -- last year we'd disqualified and this year we're in the running for a Top 10 finish!

SO more tomorrow. We didn't get any photos of today but we will definitely have some to post for tomorrow after the evening's celebrations and festivities!

!Buenas Noches!
K & E