Oh, one could only imagine the sheer amount of wackiness that could take place in one week. It was very much a "hurry up and wait" situation on the way over to Tennessee. We were in between two different weather systems, and therefore we had to wait for one to get out of the way, then hurry up and get there before the next system caught up to us. Fortunately, I was flying the newest airplane of our lot, and it was quite comfortable and fast despite myself and two passengers, fuel and baggage. We took off just one hundred pounds under the maximum takeoff weight of the aircraft. We had to stop in Little Rock on Saturday night for weather, and departed early the next morning to stay ahead of what was behind us. We arrived in Smyrna around three o'clock in the afternoon. Once there, we checked into the Double Tree and spent most of the week getting sunburned on the ramp while trying to sit in the shade of our airplane wings. Smyrna's airport is also a national guard base, and the ubiquitous Black Hawk helicopters taunted me and my poor uncorrected vision, but they were fun to watch. At some point during the week, a couple of the guys purchased a few mice and released them into the girls' hotel room. The trick didn't work and the girls became quite taken with the mice.
On the last night, we met a couple of other teams at a go-cart and minigolf place in town. Members from several teams including our own got kicked off the go-carts. Yet another who tried to get kicked out by driving too slowly did not. He only managed to delay the next group of riders for five minutes while he finished a lap. We placed sixth overall out of 31 teams. One of our guys placed first in power off landings, and another placed third in short field landings. We beat everyone from our region, and scored higher in most events than anyone from our region.
On the way home, I got stuck with the slowest and oldest airplane of the lot. It was pretty cool though, as I rigged up my iPod to the intercom using the "hush-a-comm" feature. We rocked the casbah all 550 some odd miles home. We got into a little bit of rain around the Fayetteville area and had to detour a little to the south before landing at Drake Field to refuel. The flight home took seven hours, and I slept for 11 hours that night. It's good to be home and back to the convogination.
Jeff C.
P.S. Has anyone seen my trashcans? This is getting just a little ridiculous.
