Race Day 1

Oh my goodness!  There was a lot of good equipment that was turned to crap in a hurry today.  Everything was going along nicely until about lunch time.  After lunch the skies opened up and parts rained down upon us all.  There must have been 8 or 10 mid-airs and another half dozen or so bad-air incidents.  Throw in a few close calls here and there and you have a pylon race.

In our Canadian team Henry, Kevin Umbach and Delbert each lost a bird in a mid-air.  I thought I had heard a clap of thunder but it turned out to be Henry's plane exploding when it was hit by Marcello from Brazil.  I guess you could say that Henry got a Brazilian…  Tom Scott and Kevin tried to take the same spot above pylon #1 in a race where they both should have hit several times prior to the incident.  Delbert was rounding pylons 2 and 3 nicely when he and Gino Del Ponte collided in the first lap.  The rest of us survived five rounds of racing today.

The winner of the prize for spending the most money in the shortest amount of time is Gabriel Tahan from Venezuela.  Gabriel lost two birds today - both in bad air and one yesterday in practice.  You count 'em - three!  All in all, I suppose there were about 24 planes lost today. That's racing, folks.

What did I say in previous postings about everyone being fast?  Rusty Van Baren and Richard Verano both turned 59 seconds today.  Roy from our team had five first place wins, a time of 1:00.80, and Roy is still fighting for third place.  Wow, that sucks!  The rest of our team looks like this:

11th Randy Smith 1:04

18th Kevin Mooreshouse 1:04

25th Doug Houston 1:08

28th Lyle Baker 1:04

31st Delbert 1:02

32nd Al Umbach 1:04

37th Henry Redekop 1:08

40th Kevin Umbach 1:08

Complete results are posted in the photos.

The weather today was the same as it was for the last two days with a touch more heat in the afternoon.  We are all sporting a bit of racoon face.

The Valley Flyers club did a great job today putting on the race.  The helpers were excellent with Pete Bergstrom leading the charge as race Starter.

We are not sure what is in store for tomorrow.  Everyone is a bit leery of the weather forecast that calls for strong winds beginning tonight and likely to stay all day tomorrow.  We'll see what waits for us when we wake up tomorrow.

Thanks for reading.

Randy

Team Canada