Flight to Italy

I've been sitting in the airport all day (Special thanks to Jes who mentioned that I should get an Admirals Club pass for the showers) working on taking care of emails, writing my blog, organizing things, and in general getting antsy. Oh -- I also remembered a few things that I had forgotten (thankfully not flight critical -- but annoying none the less)

Now, I'm sitting here on my flight to Italy -- it's 2am in Rome, I know I should sleep but I'm just too excited. What an awesome adventure this is going to be. I've been rereading the team handbook, going over the rules, making lists of things that I want to talk to Mike Westbrook and Richard Maleady about (teammate and captain respectively), and little bits and details that I want to take care of.

A few words about Mike Westbrook. In 2003 I was selected by the Womens Soaring Pilots Association (WSPA) (huge supporters of the JWGC 2007 effort -- thank you so much!) to fly Dave Bradley's Pegasus for a soaring season. I decided that I was going to use that summer to fly in my first competition. I spent two weeks preparing in Moriarty, New Mexico, one of those weeks being a WSPA seminar in which I did my second and third cross country flights with Billy Hill and Chip Garner. My flight with Billy was over 300km and my flight with Chip was 502km when optimized by OLC. Not a bad warm up for a regional. I drove down to the Region 9 Championships, and had an awesome time -- I was definitely hooked by racing. Mike was also flying this contest as a warmup for the 15m Nationals, to be held the week after at Hobbs. Mike said to me, "Kathy, you've gotta come back and fly the 15m national championships. What else are you going to do with you summer -- you've got a glider and you don't have a job." (I'm a slacker at heart and highly succeptable to peer pressure) So I did. I suffered innumerable water bag problems, culminating with an in flight, pilot soaking, rupture but it was an awesome experience. I didn't qualify to the juniors at that event, but I know that it certianly was valuable.

I've been the fortunate benefactor of many generous supporters within the soaring community. Starting with all of my instructors at Minden, Black Forest Soaring Society, Colorado Soaring Association and Caracole Soaring, Dave Bradley, Mitch Hudson and the Southern California Douglas Soaring Association for letting me borrow gliders, countless mentors, supporters and cheerleaders, John Chapman for donating his flight miles which are now transporting my silly butt to Italy, WSPA for endless support, and Northrop Grumman for providing corporate sponsorship just to name a few.

Some people have said that the reason juniors are involved in soaring is because they don't recieve enough support -- I can attest that's not the case. The soaring community I know has been very warm and supportive.

Ok Ok -- the orchestra is playing and I can tell it's time to wrap it up... Let's just hope the Tylenol PM kicks in soon.

Kathy