We're here!

Flying from Georgia to Fort Pierce this morning went smoothly. The skies were hazy and at 3000 ft AGL it was at times difficult to see the ground. There were also several ground fires smoking things up.

The number of small planes in the air at any given time can be daunting in Florida. With Orlando airspace taking up a huge section of central FL and all the restricted air spaces, including Cape Canaveral, there are a limited number of north/south routes along the east coast that don't involve congested areas or flying out over the water. There was lots of flight training going on today and the little airports were buzzing. We were receiving advisories from ATC but with so many planes many came quite close to us with no word of warning from ATC. The voice on our in-flight traffic advisory chirped "traffic, traffic" several times, which provides a really good adrenaline rush if you can't quickly locate exactly where the other plane is. The lesson learned for next time through this area is to fly high.

We dropped Bill off in Fort Pierce and proceeded south west to Fort Myers. Several large thunderstorms were building both north and south of us but our route looked clear. The smaller general aviation airport that was our destination is under the large controlled airspace of Fort Myers International. The original plan was to approach from the north so that we didn't have to fly a long distance at less than 12oo ft to say below the controlled airspace. Due to a thunderhead that developed just north of the airport, we ended up coming in on a diagonal which resulted in a long distance at about 1000 feet. After being trained to keep altitude this felt a bit uncomfortable but after an extended downwind we landed uneventfully.

We had a lovely greeting from the crew here and it was wonderful to see so many of the racers from previous years.

Of course we were supposed to put our race numbers on before we got here and we forgot, so Sheryl and I applied ourselves to the task. After getting the first number on Sheryl commented that our number looked smaller than the rest. Well, turns out the folks that made the numbers made them to the wrong size, so we set out wildly looking to see how to find new and larger numbers. All we need are two 18 inch tall number ones.

Terry Carbonell, one of the racers and an official with the race, helped us out with some extra vinyl material she had. As we went back out to the airport to apply the larger numbers that previously mentioned thunderstorm that was to the north hit with a vengeance. The skies opened and it rained torrentialy for over an hour. The lightning was amazing. The logical thing to do instead was to eat, so we did.

Many of the racers have not yet arrived due to the thunderstorms. Sitting in the lobby this evening with one of the racers, call after call came in cancelling this evening's hotel reservation. The weather should be good tomorrow morning so with an early start they should get in before the noon deadline and ahead of the expected afternoon thunderstorms.

We received a call later this evening that our handicap trials are scheduled to be wheels up at 7 AM tomorrow morning, so it looks like a 4 AM wake up call is in store. Tomorrow we will be assigned our handicap.