Sunday wrap up - updated with pictures

Can I just say, it's hotter than Hades down here. And I'm speaking as someone who loves the heat. If you want to imagine how hot it is, remember what it feels like when you open the oven door to take something out, then imagine that all the time. Even buildings with air conditioning seem rather half-hearted about trying to take the edge off. Back to Sunday. After the All-Racers briefing we took our baby birds Mollie and Esther out for lunch to have a long overdue Q&A session. Then Linda and I spent the rest of the afternoon working through the sectional charts and flyby procedures for the entire route, and determining our strategy for each leg. Feeling much better prepared now. The day ended with a racers banquet hosted by the Rio Colorado Chapter of the 99s in the London Bridge Resort, which was great and another chance to reconnect with the 106 women comprising 49 race teams who are participating this year. We are side by side with flight mechanics, authors, air traffic controllers, flight instructors, students, commercial pilots and all kinds of totally cool women, and it makes us all feel very proud. The most fabulous woman of all today was the speaker at the banquet, Captain Jennifer Wade of the USAF, a petite blonde woman who flies, fights and instructs F16s. She gave an inspirational and very funny speech about the challenges of being the only female pilot deployed to her unit in Afghanistan, as well as a description of what the movie Top Gun would have been like if it had been about women fighter pilots! Each race team also got to go up one by one to be presented with this year's air race charm, and have their photo taken. One more day on the ground to go...

This is Linda adding some pictures from late yesterday and today.

"Fiesta" welcome dinner on Saturday evening

The mayor of lake Havasu makes a proclamation that June 19th is Air race day

Sunrise Sunday morning, you can see the haze in the sky from the wild fire smoke

The mountains outside the city are obscured by smoke

The all racers briefing Sunday morning

We finally got to spend some time with our baby birds, Mollie and Ester. They are a collegiate team from Liberty University in Virginia. 

The start banquet on Sunday night

Our table at the start banquet

Guest speaker Captain Jennifer Wade of the USAF. She was awesome!

Here we are with our baby birds at the start banquet.

The three teams from Eastern PA