Later in the afternoon it was our turn to meet with Marvin the chief scorer to check our final scores and sign off on them. Like all the racers, we had kept our own records of time off, time on, elapsed time, and a note of which airplane is before and which after us on each leg, because it helps to have this information as a check on the official scores, and also to use in discussion if there are any discrepancies. (We were missing information on the last leg though, which was rather a busy one!). Marvin's scores agreed very well with ours, except for leg 5 which was lower because we incurred a 2 kt penalty. We did not inquire about the cause of the penalty, but let's just say that Carbondale airport had two south facing runways 18L and 18R, one of which was obscured by trees at low altitude, and we were not the only team to experience a little confusion when setting up for the flyby on 18R. So how did we do? Well, our overall score was 8.206 kt over handicap, meaning that our average speed over the entire 2158 nm race was 155.946 kt (which is about 180 mph). Despite the much higher handicap this year, we only had one leg that was marginally negative (-0.229 kt), and our highest leg score was 15.076 kt. So we feel quite pleased that we ran a respectable race. But we won't know the all-important rankings until Sunday night....
Tonight we went to a wonderful event, which was the premier screening of "Breaking through the clouds", a movie about the 1929 All Women's Transcontinental Air Derby from Santa Monica, CA to Cleveland, OH (http://www.breakingthroughtheclouds.com/). This race was the predecessor for the current Air Race Classic, and also led to the founding of The Ninety-Nines that same year. This was doubly poignant since 2010 is the 100th anniversary of licensed women pilots. The event was sold out and took place in the auditorium of Hood College, with an introduction by the producer Heather Taylor. For me the most amazing part was that the 1929 movie footage of the 19 participating pilots, (all names that I and my fellow racers and 99s are very familiar with, including Lousie Thaden, Phoebe Omlie, Amelia Earhart, Bobbi Trout, Marvel Crosson, Blanche Noyes, and Pancho Barnes), which was somehow restored to high definition quality so that you really felt these women were right there talking. There was one death in the race when Marvel Crosson crashed in the desert, and some of the planes were sabotaged by putting oil in the fuel or cutting the guide wires of the wings, but despite everything 14 of the women completed the race and Louise Thaden won the trophy. These were extraordinary, pioneering, fearless women, and the movie was great.
Not a very interesting photo, but the only one I had time to take today before the battery ran out.
We then went on to a reception in the Delaplaine art gallery in Frederick, which was sponsored by our Eastern PA Chapter of the 99s in memory of our beloved Theresa Dellaquila, who we lost to breast cancer in 2007. It was a lovely event in a beautiful setting, great food, and a good chance to catch up with all the other racers on how they felt the scoring had gone. Gail Norman, Lin Caywood, Seth van Lehn and all the Sugarloaf team that organized the terminus events have done a phenomenal job, each event has been just wonderful.
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