WE HAVE ARRIVED

Me leaving N10

Rose and I getting ready to leave Leesburg

 Our little 496 and the weather we were going around

The same weather looking outside the window 

Windmills

I am a day late letting you know that we arrived safely.  We arrived last night about 7:30PM.  I started out knowing that I wanted to leave earlier than later with Philly's forecast.  I filed IFR to Leesburg to pick Rose up but there was a line of weather and I didn't want our race numbers destroyed so I filed for 4000 on a route that Iknew I was  was going to have to beg for.  The woman at Philly was a newbie so I was given the standard route and to expect 6000.  As luck would have it, one of  my old cronies was working departure so he let me stay at 4000 - it was perfect.  Potomac even cooperated and changed my route and let me stay low.  I landed and walked into the FBO and there was Rose waiting for me.  We gassed up and taxied out and after waiting close to 30 minutes for a release away we went.  Because we knew the headwinds were worst the higher you went we asked for 4000 again.  That worked for awhile but we eventually had to climb to 6000.  That 496 is worth it's weight in gold and we were able to skirt around the weather.  Just about the time that it was going to get really ugly we asked for and was given 4000.  The controllers were very helpful and although it probably took us an extra hour to get to our first stop -  CQA we had a fabulous flight.  It was a very quiet airport in the middle a farm that smelled like we should have been able to see a lot of cows.  A very nice man named Sam lent us the keys to the crew car and away we went to find food.  We stayed a little too late eating because when we got back the FBO was closed, the wind was howling and it was starting to rain.  We decided that it was just a small area and decided that we could practice flying VFR for the race.  We only talked to one controller because we didn't want to go around Class C and then landed at Iowa City shortly afterward.  We found our parking spot and set off to find people.  Things were pretty quiet but Minnetta was still there working away.  She got us a ride to the hotel with Dan and I won't bore you with the rest of the detail.