40th Annual Palms to Pines Air Race Aug 14-16th:

Saturday morning, Red Bluff CA to Redmond OR leg, Pam's turn to fly. The local car club once again picks us up and gives us a ride out to the airport. We put Tookie in the 68 Ford GT and send her ahead to preflight, while Shannon and I follow in a truck with the luggage. I am really lucky I got to go at all, most race teams are only two people, then I show up with all my "technology", the computers, the GPS with all its WX antennae and cords, the camera, the movie camera, the personal GPS tracker....everyone muttering behind their hands "did you see all the weight they're carrying? They don't have a chance"

I was a little apprehensive about this flight, we were going from the valley up through rising terrain to do a fly-by at a towered airport before returning to Bend for landing. And I've never flown a 172. But, hey, I have two of the best flight instructors on board, so not to worry. Tookie helped me find all the right buttons to get the airplane started and we taxied out to take off and start our timing. As we turned on course, we were still discussing what altitude to fly, the winds were more favorable lower, but the pilot was more favorable to flying higher! This airplane doesn't have the rate of climb I'm used to and I was wary of flying so close to the ridge lines. Shannon is saying "it's no biggee, you get boxed in you just do a chandelle and get out of there, you know how to do a chandelle, don't you?" "No..." "Well that's okay, Tookie does" We ended up flying higher, and would you believe it, all the airplanes we passed were above us, and the ones that passed us were below us.

It was a beautiful, beautiful flight, this leg we saw more race planes which made it exciting and saw awesome views-Mount Shasta covered in snow in the morning light, some of the big fires we had TFR's for off in the distance, luckily their smoke didn't interfere with our view. The big lake at Klamath Falls, rivers, green fields, and before we know it, were 40 miles out from Redmond and making our first calls to tower. Luckily, Tookie handled the radio for me so I could concentrate on my rate of descent and finding the airport. We had assigned altitudes over the different check points and I wanted to hit those just right. The Redmond airport had us doing our fly-by right down runway 4, and still had commercial jet traffic landing and departing as we did our fly-by, they would just have us offset a little to the east. As I prepared for my fly-by, another faster race plane was overtaking me on the right, and swooped in ahead of me! A commercial jet was preparing to take off on runway 4, caution, wake turbulence! And I'm just zooming in, airspeed in the yellow arc, don't touch the throttle, don't go below 300' AGL....YeeHAW! What a BLAST!! We pealed off to the right and headed for Bend.

We were met in Bend by the local 99s chapter and local TV crew http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrLmO3eq6JQ&feature=channel_page                           But first we had to turn in our times. Tookie had taught us how to do the time sheets the night before and told us what kind of times we needed to hope to place in the race. (We really wanted to be in the top ten, because, as Jan would say, I am a trophy whore)  It's kind of complicated and Shannon told us the year she did the race with Ann and Donna, they had no idea how to do the scoring and no idea how they were doing in the race. Again, we felt so fortunate to be doing this race with Tookie! We already had the times for Tookie and Shannon's leg, we just had to figure mine. It's becoming apparent that while I really love the idea of air racing, I'm just not very good at it...Shannon's score whooped up on my score, just like she whooped up on my Bonanza with that Tomahawk the last time we raced...Oh well, she admitted that I did keep her very SAFE, and very COLD, flying high through those CA and OR mountains.

Tookie had mentioned several fun things we could do that afternoon, and when she said that Sisters, OR was close by, that's where I wanted to go! Sister's is famous for their quilt show in July, they hang quilts throughout the town and the park for the weekend. We got our rental car and headed up there, had lunch and a fun afternoon of walking through the town. I guess next year we'll get to see the birds that walk underwater. Yeah, right. No one we asked in the whole state of Oregon has heard of it, but Tookie verified it with Don, so we guess she didn't dream it.

Our hotel room was great and they had upgraded us to a room with a balcony overlooking the river. Almost as good as the hotel Tookie had originally booked us at, where we could walk out the back door and stick our toes in the river, but the race committee cancelled all those reservations and moved us, go figure. We had a glass of wine on the balcony and speculated about our chances at the awards ceremony. We knew we'd been heavy, with an extra person and all the technology, we knew my score had dragged us down, but N22080 is fast and we had flown a good, straight, on-course line, so we just crossed our fingers.

We had a good dinner, and won some raffle prizes, then on to the awards. First, certificates were given out to the first time race teams. Then, plaques awarded for the best leg. If you won a best leg plaque, it means you aren't in the top ten. Whewww, we got no plaque. They announced the score for tenth place-we knew we had done better than that, we knew we were going to get a TROPHY! Just how good, not sure, they kept going and then YAY! We were fifth place and that meant a check to go with the award-WOO-HOO!

It meant so much to Shannon and I, that we got to go on this race with Tookie, we had the best time ever, she had planned every last detail so we could just have the most fun and we can't thank her enough. We hope we can do the same for some of you, that you'll want to do the race and we can help you now that we've done it. You'll never have a better weekend! (And you'll really enjoy those fly-by's)

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Schedule of Events

Thursday

9am to 1pm     Registration at the Administration Bldg & Inspection

Noon               IMPOUND DEADLINE

5pm                 Mandatory Pilot's Briefing for all participants

7pm                 Take-off Banquet and Team Introductions

Friday

7am                 Transportation to SMO

7:30-8:30am     Obtain current weather briefing

8:45am             Pilots to planes for engine start

9am                  TAKE-OFF

5pm                   Deadline to arrive/finish at Red Bluff

6pm                   Dinner and shopping on your own

Saturday

7-7:30am            Transportation to Airport/WX briefing

8am                    Begin Take-Offs

9am                    Take-offs must end by 9am

Noon                  Deadline to finish at Bend

Sunday

7am                   Breakfast at Ameritel Inn

8am                    Awards

9am                    Transportation to airport

UPCOMING EVENTS:

Scholarships:

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