Nearly there!

End of day three, and we are writing this from Murfreesboro Tennessee! Yes, seven legs down and only two left to go before the race deadline which is 5pm local time tomorrow in Daytona Beach.

We left Arkadelphia this morning after a very pleasant stay, with wonderful volunteer helpers. There were only three planes there, everyone else having already moved on to later stops - Barbara and Ethel (team 7 in their C172), Teresa Camp and her two team mates in their Piper Archer (team 48), and us. We launched around 8am and made good time to our first stop of the day, Warrensburg Missouri. This was a beautiful stop with hot dogs, pancakes, and lots of wonderful and attentive helpers. We refueled and did the second leg to Champaign, with the flyby being conducted at the very tiny Tuscola airport. Fortunately, because we had checked it out on the way over, we were able to spot it and fly it well. At Champaign we were met with wonderful helpers and great food, and once we looked at the weather options we decided to continue on with the third leg of the day. We really have our team dynamic down now, and the flybys are going very well. Although we are back this side of the Mississippi, on the green side of the aviation maps, at lower altitudes, the flying is very hot and bumpy. We are drinking incredible amounts of water, and we are not a pretty sight when we end the day after seven plus hours of flying. However, other than the back end of a couple large cells east of us around Evansburg, this race has been pretty easy so far in terms of weather.

We arrived in Murfreesboro in time to be reunited with Barb and Ethel, and Mary and Juliet. So three quarters of the Eastern PA teams were together (Alicia and Heather were already one stop ahead), and we were able to go out for dinner to celebrate Barb's big birthday which was today!